8 Colors Driving Our Lives

Intro

What are the philosophies or ideas that you consider when you think about your own development, or the development of others?

?? If you said none - watch out, you may be re-inventing the wheel.

?? If you said a few or even several of them, and Spiral Dynamics didn't come up in that picture... I may have something for you! If you are into change management... I may have something for you! If you are into games, or creativity, or psychology... you got this.

"Spiral Dynamics", by Don Edward Beck and Christopher C. Cowan got into my life through a gaming experience, called Global Community Game. Something I am actively engaged with through Merel Wolff, MSc Org Psychologist , Jahn Werner , Michael Fuchs , Jochen Messner and Kesja Erdmann .

The very funny thing about it is that before engaging with them I heard they were working having Agile in the foundation (and they are), but then I read something about "spiral" and started googling about it.

After the game experience, it only made sense that I would get more serious about something with a huge potential to shift my understanding of the world, of relationships, of work... and myself.

Ok, but what is it?

A little disclaimer before that: I am no psychologist, rather a human being enthusiast and welcome anyone pointing my flaws in the analysis to follow.

Spiral Dynamics tells us that....

Different times produce different minds

But not in the sense one would have expected it.

What it is really trying to address are the times in OUR lives, rather the historical times (though they obviously play a strong role given the different limitations at different times).

The concept is very properly labelled as Life Conditions and it is rather contextual than general. What I mean with that is the following: you may be experimenting different life conditions in your work life, your love life, your parenting life, your community life and so on.

All at the same time.

Which means you may be bringing up a different mind to each of those contexts. Especially if you become more aware of those.

Ok, we understand it now: different life conditions surface different minds.

Let me address now the word I used, "surface": according to this theory, all these different "minds" already exist in us and always existed within us since the beginning of the times, and are waiting for the right life conditions to be activated.

That's why, according to the authors, the different levels in the spiral were activated already centuries ago, but didn't become dominant. The life conditions experienced by majority will dictated the most commonly spiral level found in society, and yet at individual levels there are no boundaries.

Consider this for a moment: it talks about all the flexibility that exists within us, and allows us to both survive (under horrible conditions) and thrive (given the right conditions), in an almost impossible range of possibilities.

You have that within you.

Why a Spiral?

I know you want to know about the colors - hang in there! There is something really, really important you should know before.

Spiral dynamics does bring in it a sense of evolution, "up in the spiral", and yet it is made abundantly clear that there is no good color, no good level.

There are rather positive and negative aspects within each level that can be either leveraged for human development or push us through the most difficult times.

It also means the transitions are not binary, e.g. now I am back, next day I am white. The references in the book are more like BLACK/grey, black/GREY, GREY/white, grey/WHITE and so on.

On purpose I used here colors not used in the book, but that should give you an impression of a gradient, changing shades of the colors. The CAPS mean that such is the current dominant colors, and that helps understanding the possible transitions that are going on.

But now it is time to find out more about them

And Finally, The Colors

?? Beige (so sorry there is no emoji for it!)

That's where life starts and therefore it is deeply connected to the most basic needs (see the connection with Maslow here!).

It is named "SurvivalSense" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by automatic thinking.

?? Purple

We realize we are part of a family, a community, a group and have blood relationships and mysticism as our motives.

It is named "KinSpirits" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by animistic thinking.

?? Red

Back to ourselves as we start to challenge that mysticism, we want then to enforce power over self, others and nature through exploitive independence.

It is named "PowerGods" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by egocentric thinking

?? Blue

Someone needs to control that crazy red out there who is truly convinced to be a God, and that requires a group of people - and rules. Tons of rules. Then there is ONE right way and obedience in place to enforce such control.

It is named "TruthForce" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by absolutistic thinking.

?? Orange

Figuring out that there are ways to bend the rules in the benefit of sense without harming the rules, here the motive becomes self-development and the idea that one has no boundaries. We can get all we want - and more!

It is named "StriveDrive" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by multiplistic thinking.

?? Green

As orange starts exploiting the environment a little too much, the attention gets back to the group and to the "common good". Well-being of all people (watch out: in the particular group that the individual identifies with) and building consensus become priority.

It is named "HumanBond" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by relativistic thinking.

?? Yellow

As this is a new tier in the spiral, it starts with the individual becoming aware of all the other levels prior to that and being able to navigate them through. Flexible adaptation and big-picture views are distinct marks of this level.

It is named "FlexFlow" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by systemic thinking.

?? Turquoise

Recognizing the need to bring attention back to the group to solve ever-so-complex problems, attention goes to whole-Earth dynamics and macro-level actions.

It is named "GlobalView" and has as basic motive staying alive and sustained by holistic thinking.

Now take a step back to observe two very interesting things happening here.

First, each odd color is centered in the self, and each even color centered in the group. That is where our focus and support is navigating towards to. And you guessed: it is normal, and expected according to this theory.

There is no "wrong" in feeling that need to focus on yourself! And it is not specially "noble" to be focusing on the group.

Second, what is that enables people to move from one color into the next? Different - and way more complex - problems. It will connect to our discussion on applicability for change management: the movement will only happen once the individuals (life conditions!) have dealt with the problems of the current level.

What can't you see from the diagram?

First, that according to the theory there are two tiers (up to now), the different between the first and the second being a complexity led by a world-view or world-village concept. That second tier starts with Yellow.

Second, that this is not the end of the spiral. According to the theory, these are the levels we can already recognized (as a function of the problems we face as a species) and as we start solving the problems from turquoise we will reach to a next level (CORAL - which will, again, become centered in the individual).

What that all means is that the history as well as our abilities are still developing, parallelly, and there is a lot more for us to see.

That's inspiring.

What Is My Color?

Maybe the first thing to consider would be the importance of such question.

And here I have a little story to tell...

I heard from people, even those very experienced in spiral dynamics, "I'm this" or "I'm living that". If we read the books with any minimal attention, we know that to be wrong.

We will be experience the different colors within different contexts, and that's rather how it is supposed to be. And while there is no right or wrong in terms of the colors, it won't be useful to be "green" if life conditions are "red". Unwise, to say the least.

The other risk here is again that people go into that direction because they rather WANT to be experiencing the mindset of a particular colors. Even if they are stuck somewhere else. I have seen that playing a very obvious role with a person who claimed to be "Green" while displaying all behaviors one would be expecting in "Orange".

Last but not least - keep in mind there are the shadows within every color. I won't go into the details of all, but let me pick again on "Green" just because it is the "trendy" one: people who are truly living most of their experiences at that level may be very quick into shutting the doors close for those who don't agree with the group consensus (cancellation culture, anyone?) and that may even lead systems spiraling back down into orange, blue and even red (yes, people fight it back up).

Thinking about myself, a lot of my (corporate) life was lately based on a strong "orange", camouflaged sometimes in "green" for marketing purposes (camouflaging happens quite frequently when life conditions are not sufficient for the development and yet it is desirable for some reason) and, whenever any obstacle would be faced, it would trigger some descendance back into "blue".

That contrasts with the mixed "Green" and "Blue" experiences I feel part of living in Switzerland, depending on where exactly I am looking.

Before any temptation is triggering there within my dear reader: none of this is good, or bad. It just is.

Applicability Within Change Management

I thought about having two sessions, one with regards to change management and another within Leadership.

But let's keep things concise here: in the end, Spiral Dynamics will be especially helpful for both as a platform of understanding, as a source on insights to the "why" some things are working in the way they are working, and what are the possibilities of development.

Example: if you are a leader jumping into a "blue" culture, speaking "orange" won't resonate. And if you are a change manager, promoting a change into "green" won't work as you are skipping steps and leaving too many unsolved problems in the way.

There in the book, the authors will even give additional tools to help those who want to understand and use spiral dynamics to facilitate change, including:

• 6 Conditions for change(starting with the potential: open, close or arrested?)
• 5 stepping stones along the path in the transition(special attention to the GAMMA trap!)
• 7 variations of the degree of change(around vertical, oblique and horizontal movements)

It is actually a rather long and detailed chapter that I will treasure going forward as gold in any change management activities I take the lead or support on.

I could also write a short section on the applicability for parenting... but I promised to keep it concise, so here it comes: trying "orange" with a 2 years-old is simply mind-blowing wrong; think about the conditions of their lives!

A Word About the Global Community Game

Or... rather a video where I summarized my experience with it.

Because of how I felt about it, I am much looking forward to spread the experience and therefore will complete my certification as a Global Community Game facilitator by Feb 5th 2024.

If you are interested to bring the game to your company, your team or your community, reach out over message and let's talk about the possibilities!

Observations

As one read this book, there will be references to thinkers like Maslow (and his pyramid of needs) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who you may know indirectly from the more mainstream books from Daniel Kahneman).

That helps making sense of a number of theories together.

Another reasons why I really recommend this books - well, I just said it! fully recommend this one! - is that it is aging very well. See, it is easier to write a book that makes sense to whatever is happening within 6 or 12 months.

Writing something that still makes sense after almost 30 years later, very well connect with the past, deserves another level of respect.

Leading into the ratings...

• Easy of reading: 2 stars. It is dense, heavy, requires having some previous knowledge on other theories and some psychology otherwise it will be difficult to critically understand it. I hid some elements, like the vMEME, as I found it would be distracting and not appealing for a more general community of readers. I am not convinced the structure of the book makes things any easier.
• Learning something new: 5 stars. it is a completely different theory, and I loved how it actually moves across the theory and some practice and then examples.
• Interesting and Engaging: 5 stars. the more I read this, the more it connected with my and current events - from macro-economics to the routines of my own life - and truly made me want to understand more.

Where do you see the different colors playing a role in your life?

If you are interested to talk about more about it - glad to share a cup of ?.