Episode 38: Frederic Laloux
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Reinvent the Wheel: What to Do When Your Management Model is Outdated
Are you considering a new way of working? Is it possible to give people the freedom to lead projects they are great at and to collaborate regardless of hierarchy? It might be time to consider self-management. In this episode, Frederic Laloux, best-selling author and former Associate Partner with McKinsey & Company, discusses these ideas as well as his book Reinventing Organizations.
Greg & Frederic discuss new models of self-management management, as well as myths and misconceptions surrounding teal organizations and self-management.
Episode Quotes:
Why management education has remained the same for the past 15 to 20 years
“15, 20 years ago, there was still faith in our management systems. Like at the time, it was G.E. and Jack Welch. That was the kind of hero we have, and G.E. had to figure out how management works. And I don't know anybody who says that management works today. Like all the business leaders I talk to —will behind closed doors —admit that everything is too slow. People aren't motivated, it's not innovative enough, and it's all too bureaucratic.”
What is a teal organization?
“This is not a model that I cooked up. This is not a theoretical thing. This is me observing stuff emerging everywhere and just studying organizations whose leaders were discontent with the existing model and who went out to create something entirely different— just an entirely different way of managing their organizations. Often by a lot of trial and error and stumbling upon something powerful, that worked extraordinarily well. And they often thought that they were the only crazy fools doing that. And, at some point, when I found 1, 2, 3, 4, or 12 of them, I noticed that there was this pattern.”
The biggest misconception about self-management
“The problem with self-management is that as soon as you say it, a lot of us, including me, got all these wrong ideas when I started researching this. “Oh, self-management means everybody is the same. Everybody's equal”. No, it's everybody is as powerful as they can be. We actually want hierarchy. We just want organic hierarchies. We don't want to be fixed in boxes, in reporting lines.”
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