A Teal (R)Evolution - Mainstream crossover, unnoticed fusion or niche alternative to the convention?

LONG POST ALERT (and no TL: DR).

As always with Lisa Gill - a thoughtful and inquisitive post on a Friday morning captured my attention.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/lisa-gill-23815a4_planning-for-the-reinventing-organisations-activity-7232692279067516928-1Jh9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

New ways of working are still very much that. New. Aspired. Mythologised. Hopeful dreams of a more balanced, humanistic, equitable way to reposition the age-old "labour proposition".

This work has hugely influenced me, rocket-propelling my belief in what was (in 2014) about seven years of interest in self-managed systems of work (inspired by Ricardo Semler, Gary Hamel, Isaac Getz, Julian Birkenshaw, and Traci Fenton).

But ten years later, Teal organisations' evolution, cross-over, and growth didn't materialise as I hoped (and in some cases predicted) it might. The prevailing traditional organisational ways remained the default with $1tn companies and raging capitalism seemingly untouchable by any more virtuous alternatives.

A pandemic fluctuation later, and emerging from that, arguably, the whole world probably needed a reset. And what do we see? Demagogues, fascists, warmongers, capitalist barons and billionaires appear to have multiplied.

Where's this wholeness-centred, evolutionary-purpose-led, self-managed revolution when we need it the most?

It's still "lying around" (to coin a Rutger Bregman quote on where neo-liberal capitalism from the Friedman-Hayak school of economics was built from theories "lying around").

Teal as a concept hasn't truly crossed over and become mainstream, nor has it vaporised as some pipedream.

I hear about organisations that have adopted something like Teal a lot. Thanks to some people out there "flying the flag" and teaching, advising and experimenting with "new ways of working". I'll name-check them in the comments.

Some people (I'll also check them in the comments) have made a business out of advising organisations to adopt this approach.

Some, like my own enterprise,?People & Transformational HR Ltd, ?are built on, live, practise, and adapt Teal in all we (or they) do.

I'm encouraged by continued interest in the areas of purpose, meaning, self-management and even non-hierarchical models in referenced work like:

• 2017 - Michael Y Lee of INSEAD and Amy Edmonson of Harvard Business School explored the benefits and challenges of self-managing organisations, emphasising the conditions necessary for non-hierarchical structures to succeed and concluded that in turbulent conditions, self-managed, non-hierarchical organisations are better positioned to succeed than their traditional hierarchical counterparts.
• 2019. The Business Roundtable in the USA (made up of Apple, Nike, Disney etc) declared a departure from Shareholder value only to Stakeholder value. OK hardly Teal but pretty symbolic of the nature of business as a force for good.
• In 2019, there were about 3,000 Certified BCorps in the world. There are now over 8,000. OK, that's a small percentage of the overall number of companies worldwide. Still, a 166% increase in five years is pretty telling, as those companies exhibit strong alignment to at least two core tenets of Teal (evolutionary purpose - business as a force for good - and wholeness).
• In 2019, the UK's RSA published a report on four potential futures of work, including the Empathy Economy, which (IMHO) resembles much of Teal's purpose-led enterprises for the greater social good.
• 2019 also saw The British Academy report that purpose-led companies have become more mainstream, and sustainbly successful. They boldly asserted that the aims of companies as "The purpose of business is to solve the problems of people and planet profitably, and not profit from causing problems." - a leaning towards Teal's evolutionary purpose perhaps?
• JustCapital.com measures and incentivises corporate performance based on social, environmental, and economic justice, guiding companies toward more equitable and sustainable business practices and not just share prices.
• In 2021 and 2022, Korn Ferry published reports with seemingly Teal-pro conclusions. 2021 was "Purpose-Driven Leadership: How Today’s Leaders Can Unlock Extraordinary Business Performance." and 2022's even more strongly Teal-leaning "A New Era For Humanity" with the quote "Power has shifted - from organisations to people; from profit to mutual prosperity; from "me" to "we".
• A 2021 academic research paper was published on Teal and Industry 4.0. Studying pilots with organisations, the authors concluded that many of the desired skills for successful adaptive change to Ind 4.0 are those found in applying Teal principles.
• A 2023 study was published testing the hypothesis that Teal increases Employee Engagement. The study found that Teal's three core tenets did not appear to create a causal link to improved engagement. Still, two factors do—social openness and organisational trust, which many Teal companies naturally exhibited due to their shift away from controlling management and bureaucracy.
• In 2024, UK Employee-Owned enterprises stood at 1,300 compared to 370 in 2019—a massive increase in this model, which is going up yearly, as far as I could ascertain.

So no, it's not become mainstream. Still, I have encountered more Teal-like tendencies in companies I get closer to (maybe because of who I work with - i.e. I don't work with raging capitalist enterprises). They wouldn't necessarily label their practices as Teal, but things like:

• Purpose-led, values-centred, culture-pro approaches to the People Experience of work (and ways of leading, decision-making and working (evolutionary purpose)
• More choice, versatility and "outside job description confines" of work, i.e. emergent, adaptive and more agile approaches (self-management)
• Inclusion, well-being, flexibility and choice of working patterns, roles, internal mobility, careers and learning (wholeness)

But for every one I come across, I still hear the horror stories of oppressive, coercive and draconian examples in many more. Being as far away from Teal as can be.

I guess I never thought Teal would become the dominant enterprise model or that hierarchies would entirely disappear. And yet, reading between the lines, things are turning—maybe not as obviously as we had hoped and not yet as proliferated and ubiquitous as we'd dared dream about.

Deloitte Human Capital Trends research year after year (and their 2024 version extols the virtues of "boundaryless" approaches to work, which are departing from fixed, mechanical and industrial models) talks of agility and self-directed teams swarming to solve word problems,

OC Tanner and Reward Gateway are two vendors whose research shows that participation, inclusion, appreciation, and recognition are vital to strengthening the employment proposition and inviting more self-directed, choice-based approaches to how people work, team up, and create value.

In Pharma and Bayer specifically, more adaptive, fluid teams and capability pools show signs of self-management. They are linked to purpose-led research and medicine creation to combat disease, thus saving and improving people's lives.

In BioTech, Teal-based organisations take Agile and add a twist of wholeness and evolutionary purpose to be more mission-led than their platform and app-building counterparts.

In Healthcare, patient-led service design decouples from KPI-based operations to adaptive, human-centred, self-managed teams.

Can we (David Marquet HT) turn this ship around?

As Lisa says, is there renewed interest in Teal without necessarily using that as the desired state?

Probably.

ESG has received its fair share of criticism and false dawns, but we do see many more organisations caring about things like social, community, human, and planetary good. They are going beyond operating budgets and profit margins and into more mission-led, purposeful ways to do business and be a force for good.

Maybe we need some new definitions of Teal:

Deep-Teal - Pioneering and Integrated: Unashamedly framed by that model and departing from traditional, capitalist-profiteering, hierarchical and orthodox operating. Operating for 2050 and likely at most 5% of enterprises.

Mid-Teal - Progressive and Implementing: Using a lot of the principles and practices seen in Teal organisations fused with sector-traditional elements (stronger people-centricity, choice, agility, versatility and adaptive practices, softer hierarchies and more robust mission-led approaches). Operating for 2030 and around 40% of organisations

Light-Teal: Emerging and Exploring: Using a small set of Teal approaches (more focus on culture, inclusion, well-being, and flexible work options) whilst still being majorly traditional. Operating for now and a majority of 45% of businesses.

Perma-Orange - Abstaining from Teal and seeing themselves as stoic traditionalists operating through orthodox people practices, leadership and controlling bureaucracy. Refusing to believe Teal has anything to offer their organisation and around 10% of companies.

My conclusion then.

Teal is still too radical for many companies, yet more are "betting on" improved people experience, culture, and more dynamic, adaptive, and responsive organisation design concepts. They are focused on skills and talent as differentiators and the need for more attuned, inspiring, and people-centric leadership. So maybe we'll see more of those Teal threads in the tapestry of work I talked about at Teal Around the World in 2023?

Here's my (anonymised) list of Teal Threads (so in the main, Mid- and Light-Teal in my definitions) from organisations I either worked with or researched.

Maybe there's more Teal than we realise, and perhaps that's because we are weaving threads into the tapestry of work, and it's a teal infusion rather than a teal take-over?

So that's the TL:DR. Teal Lives: Despondency Removed.