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I found myself thinking about it in relationship to two very different books I had read during the previous year (both of which had had a profound effect on my thinking), namely, Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux and Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson. As different as their subject matter might appear, each of these books felt immediately relevant to origins of the catastrophic fire I was witnessing.
I look to Laloux not because he is the latest discoverer of new lands, but because he is an intelligent, articulate, and intuitive observer and promoter of better ways of managing our affairs. I wholeheartedly salute the “re-interpreters” of our age who are inspired by Teal concepts. We live, most assuredly, in a time needing profound re-storying. But: will we have the cultural humility to admit that many peoples had found their way to “Teal” arrangements long before us, or will we continue with the hubris that we are “pioneers” and “heroes,” discovering another New World?
At the end of Reinventing Organizations, Laloux speculates about what an “Evolutionary-Teal” society might look like. He consults “futurists and mystics” without consulting the work of Native spokespeople, anthropologists, and others who have documented “Teal” societies which functioned successfully for millennia. While we don’t know what the future will look like, these traditional societies give us the greatest actual evidence of the functionality, sustainability, and ultimate promise of these so-called “new” approaches. If we don’t learn from our successes as species, in the course of reinventing organizations we will spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel.