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Integral Leadership Review
Volume V, No. 1 - February 2005

Table of Contents

Leadership QuoteReturn to top of page

"There is a tendency to be dependent on individual leaders. To me, it is important to develop collective leadership. I don't like to get credit for all that we achieved. Millions of people contributed to the results that we achieved...I like more egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to learn.

-- Anatakas Mockus, Mayor of Bogata, Columbia
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

MissionReturn to top of page

Please Note: You will find that some of the articles in this issue are longer than usual. It is my hope that the quality of the content more than justifies this.

We are beginning the fifth year of publication of the Integral Leadership Review. It is increasingly taking the form that I hoped, although I am sure there is still much that can be done to make this a useful document that attracts a wider audience, particularly in the fields of consulting, training and coaching, as well as among business leaders who have a passion for leadership.

I am grateful to the 959 subscribers to Integral Leadership Review. Your support means that we can move closer to a way of viewing and being in the world that is integrative, generative and supportive of our evolving integrity––learning to align our theory and our action, our values and assumptions with achieving what is important to us. Also, I am grateful to the many kindnesses, suggestions and offers of support we have received.

The mission of this epublication is to be a practical guide to the application of an integral perspective to the challenges of leadership in business and life and to the effective relationship between executive/business coaches and their clients. My vision includes that this will be a place where others, as well as myself, can continue to develop and share ideas about integral leadership and integral coaching.

Russ Volckmann

Scenarios and Process: Emanation Return to top of page 
Russ Volckmann

Russ VolckmannIn this series of articles I have been exploring the use of scenarios for leadership development somewhat abstractly. In the next few issues I hope to examine this approach with more attention to method and process. This article begins an outline of the process or approach that one would use with clients to develop such scenarios. In this series we will be examining scenarios, their development and implementation through four stages: emanation, creation, formation and action. Here is a discussion of the first of these.

Contracting requirements are as important for this process as any other. This would include clarifying the purpose of using scenarios, e.g., development of high potentials for executive leadership positions. It would include agreement on process and roles, some of which will be addressed below.

From a dialogue with Keith Bellamy, here is the first key step— emanation: The "scenarioist" gathers data from client to construct scenarios (possible partnering in doing this would be best).

The role of the scenarioist has to be, in the main, catalytic. It is very easy for the ultimate owner of the scenario to "abdicate" responsibility for the scenarios. Often this is done by either passing it down the line of the organization or allowing the consultant to develop the scenarios. This is often done to allow the sponsor "deniability" over the scenarios if they do not gain favor within the Enterprise. This is not, in my opinion, positive or integral leadership and it is essential that we get the leader/sponsor to be fully engaged in the process from the outset. So the role of the scenarioist has to be to assist the leader to gather the information on the understanding that he/she will be supported in its manipulation into scenarios that he/she can own.

One challenge in doing as Keith has suggested above may be how an integrally-informed approach can be used that will not come across as too academic (the death knoll of building relationships with clients in business). As with any developmental engagement it is necessary to meet the client where they are in terms of language, values, assumptions, aspirations, mental models, etc.

Something like the language of the integral leadership model that has been reported in the pages of this e-journal might be helpful. Scenarios need to contain the challenges of group purpose, the effective organization and management of leadership resources, inspired teamwork and business vitality in relation to stakeholders.

Furthermore, models of executive leadership offer additional helpful perspectives. For example, a scenario for executive programs would require development of task and cognitive complexity, engaging multiple roles upward, laterally and downward in the organization, as well as boundary spanning roles with stakeholders. The latter would include the capacity of the individual and collective leadership to shape and attune their work to a vision that acts as an attractor to the motivations of others in and outside of the organization. Such a vision can also be included in the scenario as a given. Step two in our process will deepen attention to what this and other assumptions are that individuals bring to their creative process in developing and translating awareness and possibilities.

How the elements of the scenario are represented in language clearly needs to reflect the culture and systems of the organization in which they are going to be used. The scenarios need to reflect the business realities and representation to variables essential to the business life of the organization. Only by having the perspective and guidance of someone who has a sufficiently high level perspective (an executive) can this be assured.

The scenario design would include elements that challenge an understanding of  these now familiar categories:

How these would be included will be addressed in the next stage of our process: creation.

Leadership Coaching Tip Return to top of page

The coaching conversations related to the use and design of scenarios can offer a useful way to open discussions of values, beliefs, assumptions, mental models, aspirations, etc., that the executive client holds, supports and defends. One of the most useful contributions the coaching process can make is testing and determining what is truly important to the executive, clarity about the existence of confirming evidence, identification of any conflicting evidence, and clarifying what action is required to address executive concerns. The process for this often involves identifying and looking at the implications of alternative courses of action—or scenarios.

Developing Leaders and Ourselves: Return to top of page
An Interview with Bob Anderson
Russ Volckmann

Bob Anderson has been a leader in the development of integral approaches to developing leaders. For additional information, see the complete interview.

Q In your writing I see the words "spiritual" and "soul." Do you use those in the world of business?

A: Yes, but carefully, at the right moment and not in connection with a particular religious perspective. But you’re probably looking at "The Spirit of Leadership" paper, which has a decidedly more spiritual focus than the other papers. And it operates more in the background of the work that I do.

Q: One question I hope we can get to is this whole notion of transformation and movement up the levels. You mentioned the spiral. I’d like to really get into that a bit more.

I have a colleague who I really have a great deal of respect for. He has a very strong alternative perspective on the work of Wilber and others around the notion of transformation. Based on work he’s been doing over the last few years with a lot of people he takes a position that people don’t really change. The change process, the transformational processes, are very long and arduous and, for the most part, most people just simply don’t change. Based on what you’re saying, it sounds like in your own personal experience, that has not been the case or that you have a different take on it than that. I’m curious about how you’re seeing people change in the world of business.

A: I agree and disagree with your colleague. Transformation from one level to another is long and arduous. In business we really shortchange it. Leaders seek to change the culture of the organization and don’t really know that they are making a significant demand on consciousness. This was Kegan’s point in In Over Our Heads. Leaders might be able to conceptualize the kind of organization they need in quadrant four (LR). They get it on the conceptual line, but are not able to embody, in any way, the leadership behavior it takes to create that culture. Leaders and change consultants underestimate how arduous that process really is.

Q: Especially in quadrant one (Upper Left)?

Lead Coach

A:  Yes. I think personal change is demanding and we have treated it too cavalierly in the design of our corporate change efforts. By the same token I do think transformation of a level is possible. But this must happen on more than the conceptual line.

I tend to use Kegan’s model, because I think a leader’s ability to embody their vision has more to do with what I would call the ‘self’ line—how self-awareness is organized. That’s the way Kegan talks about it. Most people are in what Kegan called the third level of awareness. This equates to Beck’s red, blue and somewhat into the orange level of the spiral.

At Kegan’s level three, self-identity is held by the surround. I’m worthwhile if I’m flawlessly successful. I’m worthwhile if I’m liked by other people. I’m worthwhile if I am better than... At this level people have an identity that is made up by external validation. This can shift into Kegan’s level four (which equates to move orange and beyond), where identity is more organized around one’s own vision, values and principals—Who I am, what I care about and what matters.

This level 3 to 4 shift is what Robert Fritz is describing as moving from the Reactive to the Creative Orientation. He is really describing two different operating systems: one that operates more at level three and one that operates more at level four. Psychologists have talked about this as external and internal locus of control.

Much of the work that I have watched be very transformative for people involves helping them that take a perspective on the reactive operating system (level 3 identity).

I was just on the phone before you called with a very senior health care executive who got feedback on our 360? profile. His own scores and those of others indicated issues of belonging. In other words, he is playing it too safe. He goes along to get along. His need for acceptance is interrupting his creative use of authenticity and power.

Q: This is the Leadership Circle Profile?

A: Correct. What I’ve done is create a 360? instrument that gives feedback on both of the two operating systems. That is, to what extend do people play out of the reactive operating system—externalized identity/ locus of control? To what extent are they operating out to the Creative operating system—internally out of their own sense of vision/values? In that Creative operating system, what competencies do they have access to?

Robert Kegan said that most of the leadership literature is being written to level four. Consultants and theorists are making a level four demand on the consciousness of leaders by describing leadership this way. All of the key leadership competencies are level four behaviors in his hierarchy. So, what I have done is measure how you score at level three and at level four as seen by yourself and others. The Leadership Circle profile displays the patterns of interaction between the predominate behaviors run by each level. For example, this particular executive was scoring high on Belonging and his scores for Courageously Authenticity, Focusing on Results and Pursuing Vision were relatively low. That was the pattern in his data.

With this information, transformation can be facilitated with practices that help managers gain awareness of what they are telling themselves that holds this pattern in place. Using our heath care executive, for example, I was helping him learn how he consistently "makes up" that he always has to be nice or go for consensus. When he can take a perspective on this belief/thinking pattern, feel the amount of emotional risk that is associated with it and simultaneously realize that it is an imposter, then he can start to detach from it. As Kegan says, this ability to make an object of reflection of something to which the person was subject is the process of transformation. It is the same as the Buddhist "not me-not me."

We’ve got some very interesting data that suggests that when you can shift this kind of Complying energy, like Belonging, to real empowered Relating, you not only get the gift of good relationships—which was your natural gift to begin with—you get your power, too. We can see this in the data. It’s amazing to see. We’re getting some very interesting data that is beyond the complexity of what I can talk about here. But, in short, if you take Relating as a variable (strong relationship skills) and partial out all the Complying (risk averse, overly nice behavior), you’re left with a variable that I will call Empowered Relating. That variable looks like an Achieving variable. It looks like power, creative power. Thus, we have got some very interesting data that says transformation is possible. Some of these variables (where we partial the Reactive behavior out of the Creative Variable) measure beyond the boundaries of all the other variables as drawn by the computer with multidimensional scaling. In other words they appear to be up the spiral—beyond level 4.

Thus, I would say transformation is quite possible. And it’s hard, courageous, gutty, gritty, long-term work. It’s life work, but we do have evidence that people can make progress, and make progress relatively quickly if they practice.

Q: Kegan has said that moving from one stage to another is typically going to take about five years.

A: Yes, exactly.

Q: Are you suggesting that there are certain practices that one can follow to accelerate this? I would assume meditation would be one of those and probably some of Fritz’s work with creative tension. You mentioned an executive that you were working with recently that was shifting into some new patterns. Have you got an example of somebody you’ve worked with where you have seen significant, sustained shift from one level to another?

A: Yes, actually. I worked with a senior management team of a small business, about 150 employees, 4 or 5 plants, mostly in the United States with one overseas manufacturing plant. It was a 15 million dollar operation. When I came in, the CEO said to me, "We’ve hit a level of sales and have been unable to push through that ceiling. We’re not growing; we want to grow the business. The last time I hit a ceiling like this I just fired everybody and started over. Do you think there’s a better way?"

I said, "Well, I don’t know your people, but I sure hope so."

He said, "It was too painful, I don’t want to have to do that again."

So we got started. I interviewed his key managers and did one of our culture assessments. The results came out more Reactive than Creative—more controlling and a little bit overly conservative. Their culture was primarily bureaucratic and autocratic. The interview data indicated that the senior executives hated each other. They could not stand working together. They actually used demonic imagery in some cases to describe each other.

I did some work with them: coaching work, a lot of self-awareness work, and team development in terms of their ability to really talk honestly and openly with each other. A year of that and we repeated the assessments. They took 25 points off their Reactive scores, the bottom half of our circle, and they put 25 points on the top half of the circle—The Creative Competencies. Now that’s a fairly significant shift.

Now here’s the anecdotal data—it came in lots of different ways—but a couple of examples. The last meeting I had with the CFO went something like this.

"We just decided not to acquire a new business," the CFO said. "It was a very difficult conversation, because the CEO wants to grow the business so he can retire and hand it off to his family or sell it. There is also some ego investment involved: ‘Look how big I grew this business!’ So it was a very delicate conversation with the CEO. But the numbers from my perspective just weren’t there. We had that conversation as a team. It took us three days and we had fun. A year ago, it would have taken us two months. We might have made the same decision, but it would have been painful. That’s the difference."

Shortly after this conversation we had the annual meeting with the supervisors of their plants. I stood at the bar just listening to the conversations. I heard things like, "What’s going on at corporate? It’s so different now. When we call, our questions get answered. When we make suggestions, they get listened to—maybe they don’t agree—but they get listened to instead of shoved back in our face. We ask for support and we get it. What’s going on? This place is really different."

Now mind you, nobody knew this change work was going on at the top of the organization. The only other people that knew anything was happening were the secretaries who were scheduling the meetings. There was no training cascading through the organization. There were no organizational announcements. No new vision statements hung on the wall. We worked quietly with the top team and they had a shift that was measured by assessment from level three to level four. People in the organization were describing the cultural shift while not even knowing that there was one underway.

Q: So individuals within the team presumably made that shift in order for the team as a whole to be able to do that.

A: Exactly.

Well, we started this part of our conversation with the question is change possible? For me the answer is yes and it’s pretty arduous. People want to shift quadrant four, but not quadrant one. However, if we don’t shift in quadrant one, quadrant four goes back to where it was.

Q: In the applications of integral theory that I’ve been looking at, the primary focus has been on quadrant one and to some extent, quadrant two, even to a neglect of the implications for quadrants three and four. The person I interviewed for the last issue of Integral Leadership Review (December 2004) was James O’ Toole. He published a chapter in the Future of Leadership that Warren Bennis and others edited. He focused on quadrant four variables that create the context in which leadership can effectively emerge or that effect how leadership can be effective in companies. It was a fairly standard list of the kinds of systems and approaches that you’d expect to find in quadrant four and in an enlightened organization around communication, information sharing, selection, retention, compensation, those kinds of things. But in the integral literature, I’m not finding much attention to the lower quadrants. Am I missing something?

A: You’re probably right on the money. Part of what has been refreshing for those of us bleeding hearts that the integral framework really creates legitimacy for quadrant one work in organizations. Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far. In addition, a lot of us, who are in this kind of work, have a passion for one quadrant over the other.

I have colleagues that are passionate about quadrant four work and that makes for good collaboration. When I am consulting to an organization that really wants to create a systemic change effort, not just a team building effort, but a real large systems change, I personally have to collaborate with a good quadrant four consultant. Systemic change has not been my area of learning and passion. By the same token, when I do collaborate the consultants leading the system design process consistently report that the design teams achieved better results because of the quadrant one work that was done along the way.

Even that being said, the senior team that is sponsoring a systemic shift may not know that they have the most quadrant one work to do. The senior team understands the need for the shift—the cultural shift, the behavioral shift and systemic redesign work that needs to be done. They often don’t get that they have as much changing to do at quadrant one as everybody else. Because they can conceptualize the shift and sponsor it, they think they have made the shift and they haven’t. They mistake the conceptual line for the self line.

Observing this is what got me into using 360? assessments and eventually to developing my own—one that was designed around integral theory. One of the problems that senior leaders face is that nobody’s willing to tell them that they need to do most of the changing. Once they sponsor the change they need to start working in quadrant one. If they do not, when the change actually starts to work down—as radical change starts to happen—if the senior team hasn’t learned a new way of leading, if they’re still stuck in more reactive, controlling ways of leading, the change effort just grinds to a halt.

Q: Do you anticipate publishing anything in the foreseeable future about the data that you’ve been working with?

A: Yes, I’m actually just starting to conceptualize a book about that. It is very interesting data. Most of it is consistent with the body of leadership research and some of it is new and very interesting, especially the data around what I call ‘Near Enemies’.

Q: Near Enemies?

A: Yes, for example, we measure two different kinds of relationship orientation. One we call Complying, which is this Reactive way of being in relationship. It is a Kegan Level Three variable. On Beck’s spiral it probably would be green and lower, but it would not be orange, might be blue…

Q: So, it’s on the cool side.

A: Yes. The second variable in this example of the near enemy concept is Relating. Relating is a Kegan level 4 variable and is associated with Green and above. The Near Enemy of Relating is Complying. Complying looks like Relating. It smells like Relating. It looks like a behavior strategy that is on my side, but really, it is an enemy in your own camp. It is the enemy in your own camp that you need to be most aware of.

As Complying shifts to Relating something very interesting happens. The leader gets more effective relationships, which is highly correlated to effectiveness, but they also get creative power. They become more authentic, courageous, visionary, strategic and results oriented. In other words they get their power (which is in the shadow of complying). That is the notion of the Near Enemy concept. When you deal with the Near Enemy, you get your strength in a more effective version (in this example relationship competency) and you get the gold in your shadow (in this case, creative power).

The Near Enemy data on Control is even more interesting. When we ask leaders why they use high control tactics or autocratic leadership styles, we find the best of intentions. They say they do it to get results. They get things done. They want to make things happen. They ask, "If I didn’t do it, who else would?" And yet, our data says this style is inversely correlated with results. Furthermore, when you partial Controlling (a reactive, Kegan level 3, or red/orange variable) out of Achieving (a Creative Level 4, Orange and beyond variable), it becomes even more powerful than Achieving in terms of the way it measures. The leader making this shift gets strength in a higher version—the ability to get results—but also becomes a people person though inspiring and involving people as apposed to controlling them.

I am very interested in writing about this transformation from a levels perspective, from an integral perspective. Most of the competency research has not been done from an integral perspective. Competencies are all pitched at Level 4. It, therefore, does not take into account how these same competencies are contained at Level 3. Since we measure these competencies at both levels, we have a new slant on the research. I am interested to learn more about how the whole pattern of a leader’s competency data shifts when the center of gravity of the self line shifts to Level 4.

Read the complete interview.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Another Leadership Quote

"Worshiping in the cult of thehero-leader who drives change is a surefire way to maintain change-averse institutions. In fact on can hardly think of a better strategy to achieve precisely this goal. The price that we all pay in the long run is incalculable: institutions that lurch from crisis to crisis, continual stress on the members of those institutions, mediocre (at best) long-term performance, and further reinforcement of the point of view that ‘common people’ are powerless to change things."

Peter Senge, "Leadership in Living Organizations," in

Hesselbein et al (eds.) Leading Beyond the Walls

Guest Article Return to top of page

P2P and the Corporation
Michel Bauwens
Foundation for P2P Alternatives

In the material to follow I believe we have an example of the analysis that is still so underdeveloped of the lower quadrants of the integral model. While the focus is not leadership, per se, it is certainly about the cultures and systems in which leadership emerges. The immediate challenge it presents, from my point of view, is to explore the implications of this analysis for our understanding of leadership in business environments—be they corporate or otherwise. I find myself enjoying my own reflections on these ideas since Michel Bauwens presents us with a significant challenge to how we think about business leadership integrally.

This analysis raises many interesting questions for us to consider. For example, is there not a symbiotic relationship between corporations and P2P, at least in some cases? While the music and movie industries are being challenged by P2P technology, the very capacity of P2P challenges to corporate hegemony seems predicated on the existence of corporate infrastructure such as the technology it produces to make it possible for P2P to function so broadly today. This further raises the question of P2P services being provided "for free" since the cost of the technology and its infrastructures must be factored into the equation. And, instead of suggesting one displace the other that there is a synergistic relationship between the two systems and that this synergy will create a third model?

Well, these are beginnings of what seems to me a very fresh approach to understanding the hierarchy of social systems and cultures as part of holarchies of leadership, including the implications for developmental streams in all four quadrants. Perhaps in subsequent issues of Integral Leadership Review or Michel Bauwens’ P/1 newsletter (with blog to come) these questions and more shall be addressed.

— Russ

I am writing these comments, prompted by Russ Volckmann of the Integral Leadership Review and LeadCoach, a consultancy that aims at training and supporting a new generation of ‘integral leaders,’ mostly within the corporate environment. His own comment was triggered by a remark of mine that argued that social change will not happen through the corporate medium, but outside of it, to which Dr. Volckmann offered the reply, ‘Why not see change both within and without the corporation. Why make it an either/or?’

I want to answer this remark by addressing it in a two-pronged way. First we will look at the macro scale, the economic-social system as a whole, and the role of the corporation within it, and how the corporation is affected by the fact that this environment is increasingly participative. And second, we will look at the micro level, at the contradictory ways in which peer to peer processes are integrated within the corporation.

THE PARTICIPATIVE NATURE OF COGNITIVE CAPITALISM, OR 'THE COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL'

In many ways, the corporation used to be viewed as an ‘atomized subject’ much like the individual in Cartesian philosophy. This subject would then autonomously undertake relations with outside subjects such as consumers, partners, suppliers, etc. According to Schumpeter, for example, innovation is clearly located within the corporation, within the practices of the entrepreneur.

This view has of course always been a fiction since like any ‘subject’ the corporation always already integrates an inter-subjective field. But we would argue that the relative autonomy that it possessed has been dramatically reduced in the last 30 years. And it is the networked technologies and human practices that are responsible for this.

Let us recall the business process re-engineering phase that started in the 1980’s, to be able to clearly contrast it with the new logic of webification affecting corporations. The BPE trend was started when analysts started to recognize that the new computer technologies were not so much used to their best effect, but merely to increase the efficiency of existing practices. BPE was about reorganizing the internal processes of companies so that they would use the new ‘internally-networked’ computers to maximum effect in order to increase the integration of processes and the cooperation of blue, but mostly of white, collar workers. Clearly, at that time companies were still viewed as ‘self-enclosed’ units. But this has changed today: webification is no longer ‘internal networking’, but ‘external networking.’ The process of webification is responsible for a gradually increasing loss of boundaries between the inside and outside. Companies and their processes are now linked through computer webs with their partners, their suppliers and their clients (through internets and extranets), and internally employees are linked through intranets. So not only are processes interlinked and integrated across boundaries, but employees are no longer confined in their communication and they are communicating on a permanent basis with the outside. This is a first indication of the new participative nature of the economy of cognitive capitalism.

Let us now look at the process of innovation. Employees are no longer linked for life with companies. This means that their learning process has become permanent, not only through their previous experiences at other companies, but as they are working for a company they are constantly in touch with different kinds of collectives. Furthermore, in this era of ‘mass intellectuality,’ learning is no longer confined to institutions (schools) and companies, but takes place throughout the social field. How can one still pretend in this context that innovation takes place in any real sense ‘within the company?’ Innovation has become diffused throughout the social body.

Another aspect is the traditional distinction between producers and consumers. The feedback loops with consumers are increasingly taking place in real-time, not only through market research, but through the permanent communication through networked channels. The increasing adoption of open source models means that cutting edge companies are using their customer base for a co-creative innovation and adaptation process. A significant portion of contemporary consumers takes increasingly active roles in ‘hacking’ the products that they receive from companies.

Let us finally look at the new cooperative modes of production. Production is now increasingly, and essentially, teamwork across time and space. Workers are now experts, but no single expert can produce contemporary products. These workers have—and this is a real revolution for capitalism since they are knowledge workers—an increasing access to their own means of production, which is the networked computer. Managers have become experts in management and coordination, but probably less than that since the project managers play the role of coordinating production. Rather, top managers are the protectors of the ultimate goal of the corporation, which is profit making. One could argue that the role of capital and top management is becoming increasingly parasitic. The success of open source projects is of course in a sense proof that their roles are no longer ‘essential.’ Intelligence is now distributed throughout the periphery of the corporations (and in fact, as we argued, everywhere around it as well since there are no fixed frontiers between inside and outside).

In a sense corporations have become thoroughly inter-subjective in their nature. But the ownership structure of corporations does not reflect this social and cooperative nature of contemporary production.

COGNITIVE CAPITALISM AND PEER TO PEER

Let’s now move from the more general concept of ‘participation’ to the more specific concept of peer to peer, and how this relates to the macro-level of the economic system.

Peer to peer is not marginal to the system, but its very basis. Peer to peer is the format of the technological infrastructure of cognitive capitalism in the form of the point to point Internet in the form of the self-publishing paradigm governing the web and the many other networked forms of communication (instant messaging, blogging, etc.). Peer to peer is also the format of the workgroups that are now the mainstay of the organizational framework governing production; it is a form of social organization. It is also (see Pekka Himmanen’s Hacker Ethic) the form of the new work culture and it is the key format of contemporary subjectivation.

But capitalism itself is not peer-to-peer. Let’s make a short digression. Edward Haskell, author of Full Circle, a scientific synthesis on human evolution written in 1973, has developed a model of co-action that is useful to understand the nature of human relationships.

Interactions, he said, can be of three types: neutral, adversarial and synergistic. In game theoretical language you can win, lose, or draw. Pre-modern social relationships were essentially adversarial: feudal and other pre-modern systems were based on force with the strong expropriating surplus value from the weak. Capitalism, in theory, was a break from that. A consequence of the individualist ethic, it assumes free individuals entering into contractual relationships with each other and the owners of capital and it then assumes a series of ‘fair exchanges:’ work in exchange for salary, money in exchange for products. It assumes anonymous cooperation in the marketplace and that individual motivation for gain will lead through the ‘invisible hand’ to a better situation for all.

In Haskell’s terms capitalism is based on neutrality. In the best possible circumstances we get a win-win situation. But capitalism never looks to the outside; it can never be win-win-win. In other words, participants in capitalist exchange look at their mutual benefit, but not at the effect of their actions on the social field itself. In fact, historically, capitalism has been based on the free use of external resources and on the dumping of its waste products on the external world. It is only when coupled to democracy that an external force is capable of insuring that a corporation takes into account the outside world. By itself and through its own logic of competition it is always tempted, in fact forced, to minimize the cost of externalities, to ignore the wider effects of its action. Furthermore, in practice, despite the theory, capitalism is not based on equal exchange, since the partners are never in reality equal: workers were weaker than factory owners, colonies were weaker than their imperialist masters, and in general, the terms of trade have always been based on force and thus were never ‘fair’.

Nevertheless, despite its drawbacks, it has been socially accepted because its bias towards neutrality in relationships was better than the adversarial model, because social struggles and democracy have humanized it, and because it has enabled a tremendous growth in the productive forces.

Peer to peer is not based on neutral relationships but on synergistic relationships. Peer to peer is based on the assumed equipotency of participants. Cooperation is free and equipotency—the capacity to collaborate and contribute to a project—is proven by practice and communal verification. Peer to peer is not a gift economy in which everything is shared and where there is a give and take, but a form of communal shareholding. It is based on ‘participation,’ geared towards a common action/production that is of benefit to all, not just to its participating members.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE CORPORATE FIELD

Today, people want and need to collaborate and they want to find meaning in their work life. Peer to peer is an answer to these new demands and necessities, because it is based on the free association of individuals who cooperate for the common good and in the process are creating a new ‘commons.’ Corporations need this cooperation, but also fear it, and there is therefore inherent tension: can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

The ultimate aim of the corporation is to make profit and for this it has to measure value. The corporation is not concerned with the use value of products, but only with its exchange value. It will produce anything that can produce profit and in order to do that has become a formidable machine of creating mostly artificial desires.

To protect its ultimate aim of making profit corporations are organized on a feudal basis. Corporations are not democracies, but feudal organizations whether in the older bureaucratic format of the industrial era or the management by objectives of the cognitive era. Objectives are produced in a top-down format.

In the current neoliberal and deregulatory phase capitalism has created a hypercompetitive environment based on speed. Instead of exploiting the body of the worker as in the industrial era, it is now focused on the psyche of the knowledge worker. It has tremendously increased the pressure on individuals with its elusive search for zero time (no wastage of time). Stress and related illnesses are growing by the day and working hours have increased in the United States. Production and productive behavior has left the factory and office to infiltrate the daily lives of everyone. Learning has to take place ‘after hours’. The safe heaven of a fixed salary is increasingly being replaced by precarious and short-term contracts.

A corporation is not based on the common good, unlike P2P processes.

This is why the relationship between peer to peer, which it needed by the system to function effectively, and capitalism, is inherently problematic and rife with tensions.

From within, companies are not drawn to positive social change since their priority is to get the resources at the lowest possible price and to sell products and services at the maximum price allowed by the competitive environment. Pressure has to come from the outside: from the democratic polity with its regulations and through the demands of the new generations of workers that necessitate reform of working practices within the corporation.

This is why peer to peer, while growing in the corporate sector, is thriving in the social field. The dotcom crisis of 2000 was a first indication that the system was not able to harness P2P innovation to its full extent. It could not transform the ‘use value’, increasingly ‘beyond measure’ (See Note below), into exchange value. In the social field, P2P is creating a continuing stream of innovations with corporations such as the music industry vigorously opposed to them. One could argue without too much exaggeration that industry sectors such as the RIAA are pretty much in the situation of the guilds during the advent of industrial capitalism: they tried to stop, in vain, a more productive system.

P2P and Open Source production processes are increasingly making new and better ‘products’ than their for-profit counterparts. People by the millions are flocking to such projects and to the free intellectual exchange and collective knowledge production of the Internet. This is why I argued that the corporation, beholden to its shareholders, is not the cutting edge of social change, but rather a field of tension and contradiction between the cooperative nature of work and its private appropriation, between the demand for cooperative and synergetic working practices and the feudal nature of its power structure and, on the macro scale, between the win-win-win nature of P2P projects (the last win refers not to the gain of the parties involved, but to the wider social field in which they operate) and the social indifference of corporations. This is why we need new forms of cooperative organization, and eventually the instauration of the social wage to stimulate it even further. Meanwhile, through its competition with P2P processes, corporations will be forced to adapt.

Of course, one must applaud change agents within the corporation and their attempts to humanize it as Dr. Volckmann is attempting and stimulating through his Integral Leadership Review. But can they really transcend the inherently feudal nature of its power structure and the inherently a-social nature of its purposes?

TO CONCLUDE, SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

I believe that today, one should speak from a subjective-objective mode of awareness, acknowledging if we can, our own biases, perspectives and experiences. My position above has been of course partly driven not by ‘objective insight,’ but by my own limitations in emotionally and cognitively processing my experience.

My first job experience was a happy one. As reference librarian and analyst for the United States Information Agency, we had a double task, to distribute the positions of the U.S. government, but also, to reflect the richness of its democratic polity by giving access to the wide variety of the opinion press. Furthermore, the ethic of service characteristic of the tradition of reference librarianship, geared to helping people in their research, was humanly very satisfying.

My second job involved three years as strategic business information manager for the top management of the agribusiness wing of a major petroleum multinational. Though I was involved in a major cost cutting (and people cutting) exercise and cultural change project, it was a good time for me, as I had the freedom to pioneer a trend-setting virtual library project. Tensions between the various factions of top management were high, but I had a neutral position, and there was nevertheless a serious amount of personal integrity in this environment.

After that, though I would successfully launch my independent career as an internet consultant, my experience would be more problematic. First within the internet publishing sector, I was witness to the willful overproduction (by 90%) of a magazine’s circulation, only to see the surplus immediately destroyed (the reason being that purported higher production meant higher advertising revenue). I was also witness to the constant pressure to adapt editorial content to the interests of the advertisers.

Then, I created two internet companies. It was a grand and stressful time, with some of the following observations: 1) genuine innovation from knowledge workers who created enormous new use value on the network; great cooperative atmospheres in many of these new ventures; 2) financial capital bent on quick gain, but resulting in a lot of destruction of new projects, which were not allowed organic growth but had to be readied, cost what cost, for the ‘casino capitalism’ of the internet bubble; 3) lots of copycat internet projects, by people without a clue, but driven by the promise of riches; 4) an enormous amount of greed, win-lose negotiations, etc… Of course, though I was personally relatively successful in selling my two companies to bigger entities, we all know how it generally ended with the bursting of the bubble. It meant that financial capitalism was not truly able to integrate Internet innovation, and a split between financial capital and the knowledge workers, many of them penniless after great riches were promised to them. Social innovation did not stop, however, it simply moved to the arena of civil society where it could grow organically and thrive.

After that, I joined a fast growing international Internet consultancy. I witnessed again, a very positive and enthusiastic project team environment with young knowledge workers intent on creating innovative products, services and processes. But also a total inability to cooperate internationally. Calling for help as a small country team meant inevitable that the larger entity would steal the project. The internal competition was deadly. The international leadership had an incredibly predatory tone (‘if your competitor is down, kick again’, ‘we’re the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the park’, are quotes I remember from a rather disgusting ‘Jerry-Springer format-like’ international videoconference which was supposed to energise us, but in fact profoundly disgusted the Belgian staff.) Then, the Belgian section was put in a regional entity under Swiss leadership, who for narrow power reasons intently destroyed the local branch. In the meantime, the international entity was heading for bankruptcy, not before the international directorate had sold the best parts of the company to themselves. I want to add that though I witnessed this, I was personally still rather happy to work in an innovative environment, where I was involved in launching new divisions, thought leadership, and prospective scenario-planning. But the personal satisfaction and local cooperative sphere contrasted sharply with the internal competition and predatory environment of the larger entity.

Lastly, I would join a large Telco as eBusiness strategy director. It is there that I realized the enormous discrepancy between word and deed. I was unlucky enough that from the moment I joined, my patron had already disappeared from the scene, thus I fell through the cracks of the feudal power structure from the very beginning. The eBusiness project immediately turned out to be a political Potemkim project, used as a cover for large-scale cost-cutting, but without any substance of its own. We produced less with a team of 60 people in 3 years, than five people in the dotcom sector in three months. The leadership was so dysfunctional, that it generated enormous turnover, people loosing their hair, the taking of sedative medication. The in fighting between divisional leaders was atrocious and permanent. Employees were divided between a small leadership group which overworked and constantly involved in bickering and power struggles, and a large majority which had decided, though they may have been very innovative in their private projects at home, that in that company, they had to leave their energy and drive at the doorstep. They collectively decided to act as zombies, choosing the financial security above their job satisfaction, and you could see bright people getting dull eyes after just a few weeks in this environment. 

I was told that small technical projects that my graduate students were able to pull off in a single weekend needed over 100 working days and 40-page documents to be approved. People with abilities were purposely deselected from the team. When I could no longer accept these goings on and went straight to the top to attempt to reform the process, despite promises, I got in fact the Japanese treatment (new desk facing a wall, and isolated from any communication), culminating in a death threat. At that point, I asked for a transfer. It was better, a group of small people, but nevertheless, the main activity turned out to be producing largely fake numbers (compare it to Enron), for political reasons, and these experts were proud and laughing when they pulled it off. The strategic plans of the division were purposely skewed to large and expensive investments, not because they would be successful but because it meant greater control over resources and hence more power. Incredibly, failure seemed to be rewarded at every turn. (though, after my departure, after new top management came in, they would all have to leave). Eventually, I asked to head my own think tank within the company, the proposal got accepted, but you will understand that my enthusiasm had already dwindled to a large extent.

I want to add that I was not a hostile person. I got tremendous support from rank and file co-workers, but it was all to no avail. And that in the midst of the environments I am describing, I was still rather successful in the projects I undertook. My cumulative experience, both with the macro neoliberal logic at work in world society and with the dysfunctions described on the micro level, is what would eventually lead to a re-appraisal of my relationship to the corporate world. It is because of the wider ethical environment, or rather the lack of it, and the generalization of Enron-style practices that I decided to leave the corporate world.

Now of course, it is only a personal experience. Perhaps I just had ‘bad luck.’ I drew the conclusion that after the high promises of the late seventies, when companies were told to evolve towards stakeholder policies, the eighties brought a detrimental change that became cumulative. It was the narrow shareholder interests that were to become dominant. Work and business became hypercompetitive, psychologically unsustainable, and an enormous strain developed between the emergent network models, and the fundamentally feudal nature of the core power structure.

One could also argue, it is just human nature; people have always been like this and will always be so. I could have adopted such a cynical attitude were it not for my contrasting experiences in the new civil realm of P2P cooperation.

Indeed, at the same time I was increasingly part of a social field of knowledge exchange and production on the Internet, where we not only successfully produced innovative services, but did so in an atmosphere very conducive to cooperation and job satisfaction. The creation of a large range of new use values was extraordinarily ‘meaning-producing.’ When I understood that the common format of these new ventures was the peer to peer form of exchange and that there was a clear isomorphism (same format) of its emergence throughout the social field, I decided to monitor and investigate the phenomenon, seeing it as a portent of things to come.

It has led to the creation of the newsletter P/I, and to plans to create a Foundation for P2P Alternatives, amongst other things.

Needless to say, my departure from the corporate field has greatly re-invigorated my spirits. I am no longer surrounded by the sole focus on profit.

NOTE: With ‘beyond measure’ we mean two things: that creative, problem-solving work cannot be measured ‘objectively’ and that the increasing immaterial value that it brings to products and services are equally difficult to measure. Furthermore, lots of the new cooperatively produced services are used by millions ‘for free’ and cannot be translated into monetary exchange value. They are already ‘beyond money.’ Hence, it is difficult for the ‘new economy’ and financial capital to value these services in monetary terms. It was one of the key causes of the wild value fluctuations of the new economy and its collapse and of the enduring difficulty to harness open source production in a pure economically-biased way.

Email: michel@noosphere.cc
Personal Website: http://www.exponentialservices.com/michel.bauwens/

Keith BellamyIntegral For the Masses! Return to top of page
Keith Bellamy

Integral Leadership Advice from One of the First Management Consultants

As I embarked on my own personal odyssey and started to develop a personal Transformative Practice in the days before I had heard of Integral let alone started to try to understand what it means, I pursued three avenues of enlightenment.  Before I tell you what they were, I feel I need to give you a little background information to put what I have to say into context.

At the time I was a senior executive with a major international bank responsible for all telecommunications and distributed computing development.  I sat atop an empire of over 800 people with a budget in excess of $200M.  My personal Everest had been conquered and I sat wondering what next, when out of the blue a double "whammy" brought me crashing back to ground zero with an almighty thud.

Not wishing to bore you with details suffice it to say my wife at the time decided that she was no longer prepared to be the second love of my life after my work and demanded a divorce; and the new Chief Executive of the bank chose to restructure my division and effectively dismantle my own personal fiefdom.  Looking back, I think that I could overcome one of these two blows without necessarily having to change too much.  The one-two combination proved too much and sent me into a spiral that left me looking precariously over the precipice into the abyss.  I was left with no option but to transform or, well I’ll leave that to your imagination.

With the help of three saints who appeared into my life, I started to adopt three practices to help keep body mind and spirit together.  The first, which still amazes me to this day, was to take up a so called new age dance practice called 5-rhythms developed by a lady called Gabrielle Roth.  For somebody with two left feet and a belief that I wasn’t in line when rhythm was being handed out to spend all his spare hours on a dance floor left most of my family and friends completely bemused.  But for the first time in my life I felt in touch with my body and the spare tyre around my midriff from too many executive meals soon disappeared.

The second practice area that I fell into was an attempt to reawaken my mind by catching up on the developments that had been taking place over the past two decades or so in respect of scientific development.  When I wasn’t on the dance floor, my nose was buried in some book or another on chaos and complexity theories or attending lectures by leading edge practitioners.  Breaking free of the constraints of Newtonian mechanics was a truly liberating experience as it allowed my mind to explore options that were previously hidden from my worldview.

The third leg of my transformative practice sent in search of something to raise my spirit that had been recently awakened.  I set off on a path of discovery that most of my generation had pursued 25 years earlier.  I tasted what was on offer from all of the true mystical traditions and also some of those not so traditional.  In the end I found myself being pulled by the bedrock of my own culture and became a student of Kabbalah long before it was made fashionable by Madonna, Roseanne and Britney.

At the time, I could see no overlap between these three practices.  I started to build three very distinct and separate communities with whom I pursued my interests and satisfied the needs of body mind and spirit.  At the same time I was attempting to rebuild my career in the so-called "real world" of business.  With the collapse of my personal business empire, I was passed by my boss at the time what seemed to be a poisoned chalice, yet with hindsight might prove to be the greatest gift that I have been given in this lifetime, apart from the birth of my three children that is.

Basically, I was moved a long way sideways out of the mainstream activities of the bank.  I was asked to take a long-term view of the future of business.  A pot of money was made available to me and I was told to go and sit at the feet of whomever I chose to try to uncover fresh insights into how business might evolve over the next 10, 20 or even 50 years and to come back with suggestions as to how the bank might prepare itself for future changes and transformation.

My immediate, almost Pavlovian, response was to track down the leading business school professors and like a dry sponge seek to soak up their wisdom.  Smart as most of these modern day pundit’s were, I soon found very little new in what they were offering.  Sure they were ahead of the curve, but only just so.  I then moved on to the futurist community and whilst I felt at home with many who practiced their trade in this arena I was starting to feel distinctly uneasy about what they were preaching.

It wasn’t until I discovered Ken Wilber a couple of years later that I realised my uneasiness stemmed from the fact that most of the knowledge and wisdom that I had been soaking up was flowing from the flatlands of the right-hand quadrants.  There was little that attempted to deal with the interior quadrants, even though most admitted that culture and personal evolution were critical to the final outturn of any future scenarios.

I was stumped and stymied and felt as if I had ventured a great distance up an impassable canyon and was going to have to turn back.  As this realisation dawned, I sought solace in the practices that had been serving me so well up until now.  A two-day dance workshop left me feeling wonderful in body and open to possibilities but delivered no answers.  Of the six books that I was reading concurrently, no answers to my quandary manifested.  Finally, I chose to go to an open class of a new Kabbalah teacher and in that class the light finally switched on.

The essence of what I learnt in that class was that the scriptures that had been passed down over the centuries have locked in them lessons that are as applicable today as they were when they were written.  The challenge was learning how to read the biblical myths and to unstack them so that their meaning becomes apparent for today.  This is extremely difficult, because the key to understanding the Old Testament is the language in which it was originally written.  The chain of translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English to further English has acted to throw away those keys, leaving us with some nice fairy stories to tell our kids but little of use when it comes to gaining insight into our world today.

I would like to give you one example, which is so apposite to understanding leadership from an integral perspective and hopefully demonstrates that if we want to understand the future delving into the distant past is often a good place to start.  The story I am talking about can be found in the book of Exodus and concerns the visit of Moses’ father-in-law Jethro who comes to visit with his family in the wilderness.  This little story is easy to miss as it sits between splitting of the sea of reeds (and not the Red Sea as it has been mistakenly translated) and the description of mass enlightenment as the Ten Commandments (again another mistake it is really ten statements containing thirteen commandments) are given.

When surrounded by two myths of such gargantuan impact that fuel the psyche of possibly half the world it is not very surprising that the visit of Jethro in the desert barely registers on the radar screen.  Jethro is described as the priest of Midian and was a former adviser to the Pharaoh in Egypt who had so much difficulty in meeting Moses’ demands to let his people go.  In the backing commentaries to this story we discover that Jethro was really the Ken Wilber of his day.  He was a seeker of truth and enlightenment and recognised that there were elements of both in the myriad of spiritual practices that were extant at the time.  Jethro’s lifework had been to seek out and learn these practices and had become the world’s greatest expert in these matters.

Jethro hears that his son-in-law who had lived with him for forty years up until a year ago had recently had been quite successful in a new venture that he had undertaken.  All the time he had known him, all that Moses had done had been to take care of the sheep.  Now he had gone head to head with the most powerful man in the world and was leading close on to 2 million people across the desert to a new home.  When he arrived there he was horrified at what he saw, Moses had become the archetypal heroic leader.  From sunrise to sunset the people would queue to see him to resolve some issue or other.  As a consequence no progress was occurring.

Without batting an eyelid, Jethro drops into super management consultant mode and tells his son-in-law that he is doing it all wrong.  OK it’s a myth and in most modern day households such an action would probably lead to the outbreak of world war III and a family feud.  But Moses is an archetypal leader.  He knows that the system that he has in place is not working but he is too busy having to answer every query to do anything about it.  From this we learn our first lesson for successful leadership to be open to advice from others who can see the situation from a different perspective.

Moses’ response was along the lines, "You say I have a problem, what do you propose that I do about it?"  The reply that came back proves to be interesting. It starts with a statement that reinforces the reason why Moses got himself into this mess in the first place.  Jethro tells Moses that, "he is a representative to God and that he conveys the matters to God."  As we unpack this, we realise that what is really being said is that as the Leader of this overall Enterprise gifted with vision and the strategy of the venture it is essential that you focus on those things that only you can undertake.  Not every action requires your personal involvement, to attempt to do so will tire both you and the rest of the population."

Jethro emphasises the need to communicate effectively the path that they are following and the deeds that need to be undertaken.  Our second lesson for leaders from 3,500 years ago is on the need for communication above all else to dispel any uncertainty and to move the venture along.  If you allow yourself to get distracted from doing what you and you alone can do, then it becomes a vicious downward spiral.

But our Leadership Guru continues by saying that effective communication is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for success.  Communication needs to be supplemented by structure that allows the message to flow.  Moses is instructed to implement a leadership cascade that allows the message to pass down and more importantly allow queries to be handled at levels along the cascade.  Now many modern organisational theorists might start to emit steam from their ears at the thought of hierarchy.  But from an Integral perspective it is a necessary stepping-stone that is included and then transcended.

The next big question that Moses put to his personal coach was, "What attributes should I look for in appointing leaders throughout the people."  Jethro identified four traits that are as relevant today as they were all those millennia ago.  He started in the upper-right quadrant by stating that the leaders need to be men of accomplishment.  The great sages and interpreters of the scriptures always understood this to mean women as well, sadly through the mistranslations this understanding was lost, and misogyny allowed to prevail when it was never intended to do so.

The key point that is being emphasised here is that the first attribute of leadership that we automatically look for in a leader is what have they achieved so far.  Followers are more likely to follow somebody who has a track record and accept his or her judgement is what Jethro is attempting to impart to his son-in-law.  Good leaders are measured in the first instance by what they have achieved not by accidents of birth or popularity. This is a lesson that we need to keep reminding ourselves of in this day and age.

The next trait that Jethro described was that leaders needed to be "God fearing."  Now here we need to unpack what the text is attempting to say.  It is not suggesting that our leaders should be afraid of an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud above us.  The term really means that our leaders should be connected to a higher self, and understanding of events that transcend the obvious and reflect the great chain of being.  Jethro is arguing for individuals who are not constrained by just the circumstances in which they find themselves but have the ability to see the bigger picture.

In our integral model, the ancient consultant has moved across to the upper left quadrant and is arguing for our leadership to have a reached at least second tier in respect of their value systems.  Having the ability to see the "big picture" and how everything before them fits together becomes the next critical trait that Moses needed to look for in the selection process.

Moving round the quadrants, Jethro drops into the lower left when he describes the next trait, which is that, the appointed leaders "be seekers of truth."  This is a case where the long chain of translation can lead us totally to the wrong understanding of what was being said.  Of course we want our leaders to seek out the truth it goes without saying.  To understand the real meaning of this phrase we need to look at the Hebrew word for truth, which is EMET.  It is made up of three Hebrew letters, which are Aleph, Mem and Tav.  These three letters just happen to be the first, the middle and the last letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

Now the mystics and sages tell us nothing is by accident and that when Moses is told to appoint seekers of truth he is being told that he needs individuals who in assessing any situation start at the beginning move through the middle and finally reach the right conclusion.  They need to overcome the culture that was prevalent then and still exists today of individuals who start a task but cannot see it through; or those who jump into the middle of a dispute and without having the full context cannot reach a conclusion or worst still those who believe that they know the answer and decide to ignore taking the painstaking steps to validate their position.

Today, we find ourselves under so much pressure that we seek to find short cuts.  In doing so we encourage actions that result in the likes of Enron and Worldcom.  The Myth writers of yesteryear knew that only by appointing leaders who truly sought the truth were we likely to create a fair and just culture for the masses to prosper in.

Jethro’s fourth trait, at first glance appears to backtrack into the upper left quadrant when he urges Moses to select leaders who "despised money."  However, as with everything written in the scriptures, things aren’t always as they might seem!  We get a clue by the use of the verb "despise" which seems overly strong compared to the other instructions.  The interpreters of the hidden codes over the centuries suggest that this means that we need to focus not so much on the action but the system of money itself.

As he scanned the assembled masses under his son-in-law’s charge, Jethro could see that their primary mode of daily living was survival from day to day.  They were being provided for with Manna from heaven and a well that followed them around (I don’t really have time to go there in this article).  Many of the systems that would be needed to establish a sustainable community had not started to emerge; however, Jethro knew that of all of those systems which would populate the lower right hand quadrant of this new Holon, one system alone had the potential to destroy the leadership structures that he was suggesting be put in place.

That system was, as you might have guessed by now, money.  When Jethro told Moses to select leaders who despised money he was issuing a major warning to his client of the danger that could arise from the emergence of monetary systems.  "Money is an inevitable consequence of emergent societies," he is saying, "beware its ability to corrupt leadership structures at your peril!"

Having completed his assignment, like all good Management Consultants took his leave of Moses & Co, and returned to his home office in Midian.  If we summarise the advice that he left behind we find that we should be seeking leaders who are recognised for their accomplishments, are driven by their higher selves, seek the truth in a thorough manner and are aware of the potential for monetary systems to corrupt the leadership systems.  Sounds like a pretty good recipe for selecting leaders in the modern age too.  It’s just a pity that too few organisations seem to act in such a manner.

In today’s frantic and frenetic world, where we are constantly scanning the horizon for new ideas on how to respond to the issues that present themselves everyday, perhaps it would make sense occasionally to look backwards and gain access to the wisdom of the first Management Consultant on record. What do you think?

Keith Bellamy is an independent consultant to businesses in Great Britain. He formerly was an IT executive and a futurist for Barclay’s Bank. He is active with Integral and Spiral Dynamics groups in London.

SummaryReturn to top of page

William B. Locander, Frank Hamilton, Daniel Ladik, and James Stuart, "Developing a Leadership-Rich Culture: The Missing Link to Creating a Market-Focused Organization," Journal of Market-Focused Management, 5, 149-163, 2002.

Something we should prepare ourselves for is a growing body of literature in academic journals that bring in integral perspectives. Not only are there new journals about to be published (Integral University, ARINA, Inc.) that are "integrally informed," others are accepting articles that draw on the work of Ken Wilber and others. This year a special issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management will include a group of articles related to integral approaches (including my own article, "Assessing Executive Leadership").

Imagine my surprise when I discovered such an article in a journal that was published almost three years ago. written by a professor of marketing at the University of South Florida (who is now at Jacksonville State University in Florida), two of his graduate students and a co-founder of Leadership Circle (I am trying to find out what that is), the article was actually written in 2000 and revised in 2001 before its publication. I know of very little literature applying integral theory to leadership that early.

One of the interesting things about this article is that it brings the question of leadership and integral theory to bear on a specific business challenge: how to make organizations be more market-focused. The authors suggest that leadership is required to shift organization cultures to achieve an increase in market focus. Further, leadership development has been too focused on the individual-exterior quadrant. From their integral perspective they suggest a more comprehensive approach that addresses all four quadrants as they conceive them (See Figure 1).

Drawing on the work of David Nadler, Ian Mitroff, Peter Senge and others, the authors suggest an approach to leadership development that addresses the factors in Figure 1. "The major developmental challenge facing organizational leaders is to synchronize all four quadrants so that they progress and expand together." They do focus on "B. Leadership Development" and include several suggestions for development such as Ira Progoff’s journaling approach and attention to spirituality and purpose.

Finally, the authors suggest a cascading approach to leadership development based on a market-focused strategy. As a result, "leadership should happen at all levels of the organization. To that end the commonly shared metal model that leaders are th chosen few and the rest are followers must be replaced with a more inclusive, fluid model of the leader-follower relationship."  

Lead Coach

Figure 1: Development Model for Leading Market Focused Organizations

In closing the authors suggest that their approach has several paradoxical relationships embedded within it:

  1. Leading others starts with leading oneself.
  2. Changing an entire culture starts with the individual.
  3. The invisible power of personal purpose is the most concrete lever of culture change.
  4. The shortest distance to building community is the great circle route of dialogue (their cascading approach to leadership development.)
  5. A circular dialogue dance is quicker in building community than linear marching orders.
  6. The way to gain control of change is to give up control to others.
  7. Change in a mechanical world is fostered by seeing the organization as fluid relationships.
  8. The journey is the destination in leading organizational change.

CODA,
Russ VolckmannReturn to top of page

Hardball

Remember all of that work that has been done to propagate the idea that the culture of a company and its people count? And remember all of those reports of near death experiences and the visions that people have? Well, George Stalk doesn’t put the lies to those, but he does challenge our images about what near death experiences are like.

George Stalk is one of those high powered consultants who has traveled the world learning about and consulting to the mega-Corporations and earned a reputation as one of the best. He is focused. He sees problems and solves them before others realize they are there. A strong competitive strategy is what counts.

Sure, culture and leadership are important in business competition, but what is REALLY important is strategy and – if you want to win – the strategy must challenge the competition to the point of causing them pain, even putting them out of business. In that way you stay in business and survive to take on the next challenge. Well, all of that has been spelled out in his co-authored book

Hardball: Are you Playing to Play or Playing to Win? where you can find principles like the hardball mind-set:

          To win at hardball, you need the guts and the passion to confront the fundamental issues that are          harming your business. Here’s what you have to do.

           • Live at the Rock Face. You—not just your assistants or vice presidents or salespeople—have

             to truly understand your customers and your marketplace.

           • Don’t Know. Having the courage to admit ignorance or asking the simplest of questions-"Why?"

             or "Who are our customers?"-can lead to winning insights.

           • Build a Truth-Telling Network. Hardball doesn’t mean managing down. It means building a team

             of people who aren’t afraid of the truth, even if the truth hurts.

Fast Company

What I find intriguing about this recent Fast Company article is the account of Stalk’s recollections of a three-month brush with death, much of that spent in a coma. In the early stages, Stalk’s hallucinations centered on war (nuclear — between Great Britain and Japan) and death (his own and that of others he knew). Then he reached a point at which he shifted to seeking a way to avoid death. The turning point featured this memory:

As he contemplated his own death, Stalk suddenly had an idea for a management story: Where have all the gurus gone? He consoled himself with the fact that he wasn’t the only one about to disappear; many of the management strategists who had been big names throughout Stalk’s career were dead or no longer adding new ideas to the field. But Stalk couldn’t write the story because he was going to die. So how could he communicate it to someone on the ground? There was no way, he discovered, to send faxes or email from Heaven. ‘I have to come up with something better here,’ he thought.

From there, his hallucinations moved to survival challenges from flying invalids in a helicopter with a heavy hospital bed attached during a Colorado snow storm, to a scuba diving obstacle course and a "Survivor" challenge in the 1700s. From those emerged his own survivor strategy: be able to answer three questions:

          Who are you?

          Where are you?

          What’s the date?

If he could answer those questions he would survive.

Well, survive he did. He regained much of his health—although to date is altering his work style and staying close to home, completed the book Hardball, and seems even more certain that business is about survival of the company with the fittest strategy. The lessons he learned from his near death experience? Not much. He says that this is outside his area of expertise.

And what are we to make of this? A clear red-orange demonstration that even near death experiences don’t change us much? What of all of the hype about moving to second tier in this lifetime? Congratulations and condolences to those who manage it. I hope they can help us all see life from such lofty heights. 

Well, it all reminds me of this quote from Ray Bradbury who some might say could see into the future well enough to know what such visions might be:

"The first thing you learn in life is you’re a fool. The last thing you learn is you’re the same fool. Sometime I think I understand everything. Then I regain consciousness."

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If you are finding the Integral Leadership Review to be bringing useful, fresh perspectives to the subject of leadership, please think of the leaders in business and life that might be able to benefit from subscribing to this epublication. Please send them a copy or a link to the web site, www.leadcoach.com so that they may explore it. In this time of intense internet communication, we all need to manage our time and read those things which are most relevant for our work, our thinking and our values. It is my hope that many people will find the evolving Integral Leadership Review does just that. Your help is deeply appreciated.

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Thanks for taking the time to consider this epublication in a world of data overload. For leaders, collaborators, consultants, academics and coaches alike, I welcome you to some ideas and a dialogue that may benefit us all. I hope you will contact me soon with your idea, reference or article. Suggestions on improvement are welcome.

Russ Volckmann, PhD
Coaching Leaders in Business and Life
Email: russ@leadcoach.com
Web: www.leadcoach.com, Tel: 831.333-9200, FAX: 831.656-0110
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This material is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Financial, Legal and Professional information is not Financial, Legal and Professional advice. You should see a Financial, Legal or Professional in the area in which you live if you need advice.

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© 2001-2006 Russ Volckmann. All Rights Reserved

Russ Volckmann, PhD, LeadCoach™
733 Mermaid Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA 93950
russ@leadcoach.com (831) 333-9200
Copyright © 2001 - 2007, All Rights Reserved, Russ Volckmann