Laloux Culture Model (2022 Update)

It helped me understand that a lot of the conflicts that I noticed in organizations, in politics, and even in individual relationships were not so much about the thing that people were arguing about as it was about a core difference in their values.

It’s been 8 years since Peter created an animated illustration of Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations (the source of the term “teal organization” that’s become popular in the Agile community). Since then, that video has hundreds of thousands of views and the overview illustration from the video is used all over the internet as an illustration for the model.

Since releasing that video, we’ve learned quite a bit about the model, including its roots in the research of Clare Graves and the Spiral Dynamics model described by Don Beck and Chris Cowan. A better understanding of those roots helped us see some important nuance that was missing a bit from the Laloux model.

In this video, Peter gives a quick intro, then shares a version of a keynote talk he was asked to present at the World Trade Promotion Organization, where he describes how he currently thinks of and uses the model. Then, Richard and Peter have a brief discussion of their differing viewpoints on the usefulness of the model.

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