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The evolution of consciousness in business
And where we’re headed
One of the most on point models about the evolution of business, and of society at large, is Spiral Dynamics, developped by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan.
In this framework, each leap in consciousness in organisations, and in society, has its own colour and metaphor.
Right now, we’re currently still very much in the orange/yellow and green phases of evolution.
The orange/yellow phase
The orange/yellow phase has a strong machine analogy : organisations are seen as a machine to be assembled, part by part, and then controlled through strategic plans, KPIs, careful ressource allocations which allow us to ‘know which levers to pull’ so that the machine/business can respond to our desire to control it.
This is still the predominant view of business, even though the green phase, which is the next phase up, is becoming increasingly entrenched as more people start rejecting this transactional, mechanistic way of looking at business.
When things turn green
The green phase has a family analogy. Some organisations seek to evolve from the lifeless machine to the family, where founders/CEOs are the benevolent parents, seeking to…
