How might developing consultants, decision-makers, researchers, and strategists that are Catalyst–or post-logical stages–and working on major problems–like climate change–help increase the probability of survival of intelligent life? How can individuals affect the course of civilization?

Groups of related individuals interacting can be studied as a system, with culture as the macroscopic description. For any complex system, the macroscopic concepts cannot be derived from fundamental interactions.¹ However, experience and study have resulted in a number of hypotheses about the relationship between individual stage of vertical development and broader culture:

1. Leaders transform organizational culture;
2. Leader level shapes organizational culture;
3. Leading edge shapes society’s culture; and
4. Culture limits level.

1. Leaders Transform Organizational Culture

The hypothesis with the most evidence is that the hidden variable, and significant factor, in predicting whether and how an organization transforms (predicting 59% of the variance) is the stage of the organization’s leader and lead consultant:

The ten organization study found that adding together the performance of each organization’s CEO and lead consultant predicted 59% of the variance, beyond the .01 level, in whether and how the organization transformed (as rated by three scorers who achieved between .90 and 1.0 reliability)…. In short, in these ten cases the development action-logic of the CEOs and their lead consultants emerged as the single largest cause in whether or not the organization transformed.²

Of thousands of professionals, only the most developed 15% of managers show the consistent capacity to innovate and to successfully transform their organizations.³ These managers move beyond gaining stakeholder buy-in to developing stakeholder relationships in which shared goals/outcomes are identified and aligned on. Continued personal work results in their development of greater empathy—improving their awareness of conflicting interests and their ability to transform conflicts into mutually-beneficial outcomes.⁴ They become increasingly aware of and able to inquire about their own effectiveness, and increasingly able to act in ways that build trust and commitment rather than erode it:

This is so because only at these late action-logics do people regularly (and more and more intensively) inquire about and transform their own action for greater efficacy, and also because only at late action-logics do people seek to exercise shared-commitement-enhancing, mutually-transforming powers, not just unilaterally-forcing types of power that gradually erode others’ trust and commitment.²

Photo by Nikolas Gogstad on Scopio

2. Leader Level Shapes Organizational Culture

Frederic Laloux hypothesizes that the leader level shapes organizational culture:

What determines which stage an organization operates from? It is the stage through which its leadership tends to look at the world. Consciously or unconsciously, leaders put in place organizational structures, practices, and cultures that make sense to them, that correspond to their way of dealing with the world. This means that an organization cannot evolve beyond its leadership’s stage of development.

Specifically, organizations created by different leaders operate on different paradigms. For these paradigms, Laloux uses the color system from Integral Theory.⁵

Leadership and Culture

Leader Level	Paradigm	Color
Operator	Impulsive	Red
Conformer	Conformist	Amber
Expert	Conformist	Amber
Achiever	Achievement	Orange
Catalyst	Pluralistic	Green
Co-Creator	Evolutionary	Teal

Laloux provides guiding metaphors, values, key breakthroughs, and example organizations for each of these paradigms.⁶

Organizational Cultures

Paradigm	Description	Guiding Metaphor	Key Breakthroughs	Current Examples
Impulsive -Red	Constant exercise of power by chief to keep foot soldiers in line. Highly reactive, short-term focus. Thrives in chaotic environments.	Wolf pack	Division of labor, command authority	Organized crime, street gangs, tribal militias
Conformist -Amber	Highly formal roles within a hierarchical pyramid. Top-down command and control. Future is repetition of the past.	Army	Formal roles (stable and scalable hierarchies); stable, replicable processes (long-term perspectives)	Catholic Church, military, most government organizations (public school systems, police departments)
Achievement -Orange	Goal is to beat competition; achieve profit and growth. Management by objectives (command and control over what, freedom over how).	Machine	Innovation, accountability, meritocracy	Multinational companies, investment banks, charter schools
Pluralistic -Green	Focus on culture and empowerment to boost employee motivation. Stakeholders replace shareholders as primary purpose.	Family	Empowerment, egalitarian management, stakeholder model	Businesses known for idealistic practices (Ben & Jerry’s, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Zappos)
Evolutionary-Teal	Self-management replaces hierarchical pyramid. Organizations are seen as living entities, oriented toward realizing their potential.	Living organism	Self-management, wholeness, evolutionary purpose	A few pioneering organizations

3. Leading Edge Shapes Society’s Culture

Ken Wilber hypothesizes that whenever the leading edge of development becomes around 10 percent of the population, major changes occur throughout the overall population, as new values saturate the culture and 10 percent turns out to be an important “tipping point.”⁷ However, when showing manager and consultant stage data, Susanne Cook-Greuter notes that 10 percent is not a robust estimate from data, but more of a hunch–and a hope.⁸

4. Culture Limits Level

Most people grow rapidly through development stages into adolescence and then plateau in early adulthood, for some reason slowing down long before reaching the upper stages of maturity. One potential reason for this is the absence of any further interpersonal environments that disconfirm expectations at the plateau, the way secondary education or college can disconfirm expectations prior to the plateau.⁹ More broadly, I hypothesize that a society’s dynamics, institutions, traditions, etc. reinforce the current mode of development, and don’t support growth beyond the conventional.¹⁰

Research Ideas

Each of the hypotheses above can be tested by further quantitative analysis of empirical data in social science, using adult development research to model cultural and leadership development in human populations over time. The results could inform efforts to enable human societies to survive and thrive.

Notes