Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness

A strong, shared culture is the glue that keeps empowered organizations from falling apart.

Green Organizations retain the meritocratic hierarchical structure of Orange, but push a majority of decisions down to frontline workers who can make far-reaching decisions without management approval.

Green leaders should not merely be dispassionate problem solvers (like in Orange); they should be servant leaders, listening to their subordinates, empowering them, motivating them, developing them.

In Orange Organizations, strategy and execution are king. In Green Organizations, the company culture is paramount. CEOs of Green Organizations claim that promoting the culture and shared values is their primary task. The focus on culture elevates human resources (HR) to a central role. The HR director is often an influential member of the executiv

Orange holds that for-profit companies should operate with a shareholder perspective. Management’s primary (some people claim its sole) obligation is to maximize profits for investors. Adam Smith‘s “invisible hand” is often invoked to explain how this benefits all stakeholders in the long run. Green Organizations insist that there should be no such

The worldview at this stage is solidly materialistic—only what can be seen and touched is real. Achievement-Orange is suspicious of any form of spirituality and transcendence because of a difficulty in believing something that cannot empirically be proven or observed.

Amber Organizations are entirely process driven; Orange Organizations are process and project driven.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

There is nothing inherently “better” about being at a higher level of development, just as an adolescent is not “better” than a toddler. However, the fact remains that an adolescent is able to do more, because he or she can think in more sophisticated ways than a toddler. Any level of development is okay; the question is whether that level of devel

In terms of outcome, Amber Organizations surpassed anything Red Organizations could even contemplate. Achievement-Orange Organizations ratcheted this up another level, achieving results on entirely new orders of magnitude, thanks to three additional breakthroughs: innovation, accountability, and meritocracy.