Last week I wrote that adult development was the missing link for many big questions we’re struggling with in business and society. This week Bill Torbert elaborated on his research that business transformation can only be successful when the CEO is at the strategist level of action logic.

In this blog I will explain to you:

1. How Bill Torbert describes adult development
2. How the first two post conventional stages (individualist & strategist) will look differently at organisational transformation. And consequently,
3. How CEO’s succeed in organisational transformation

Adult development

Bill Torbert describes adult development as occurring through 7 levels of action logics: from opportunist, to diplomat, to expert, to achiever, to individualist, to strategist and finally to the alchemist. Action logic is how people at different levels of development “try to figure out what to do in any situation.”

Bill explained that one of the key characteristics of adult development is that it occurs in sequence. You cannot skip a level and developing up levels requires considerable work. He describes the experience of developing to a new level as being ‘born again’, which emphasizes how these different levels really shift ones perspective of the world. Furthermore, each action logic has a set of assumptions, and in order to grow out of this action logic, you need to inquire into it’s core set of assumptions. If you don’t challenge your assumptions, you will stop developing.

The individualist

There is a key assumption contained in all levels before the individualist, which is that “the world they see is the real world and that people who don’t agree are stupid”. The individualist challenges this assumption, and starts to understand that people have different world views, different frames of reference, and as a consequence, they will act differently. This shift is the hallmark of post-conventional development.

If you look at organisational transformation from the individualist perspective, suddenly it becomes important to listen to the other perspectives in the organisation. Their feedback will now be seen as valid, and might even challenge a leaders assumptions. From the individualist perspective, this will be seen as a good thing, as an individualist know they do not hold the absolute truth. This is precisely the reason why Bill explained that the individualist starts to prefer difference over similarity.

An Individualist leader understands that, if a key success factor for business transformation is motivating and empowering their people, they will need to motivate them within their own worldview. Listening suddenly becomes a golden skill. Consequently, a unilateral hierarchical approach seems futile, as you cannot force transformation – a painful lesson many organisations still do not get.

The developmental challenge of the individualist

The problem that an Individualist faces is that he has difficulty figuring out how decisions have to be made. Does everybody need to agree? Integrating all “valid” perspectives can be an endless task and will severely hamper organisational effectiveness.

This might be the dark place many developing leaders in organisations find themselves in – not yet knowing how to combine their newly emerged worldview with their old habits of steering effectively. Downshifting back to unilateral control feels wrong, but what do you do? This is the kind of challenge can lead people to develop further.

Enter the Strategist

The Strategist understands that while all perspectives have a value, they are most effective within a certain context. The strategist action logic allows for a new level of discernment, through which effective decision making and cooperation can be combined. Because of a deeper understanding of the different action logic’s, the strategist can devise collaborative processes in which the best of all perspectives can be integrated. They can use the “hot” buttons of the different action logics to motivate and avoid all their “cold” buttons. This way, strategists start to master a shifting of their style depending on who they meet – knowing what to do, when and where.

During an organisational transformation, the strategist is able to generate a shared vision and co-create new structures. These solutions don’t need to be imposed on the employees, as their needs and different developmental perspectives have already been integrated during the creative process.

The three key elements for leading a successful business transformation

A CEO will only be able to succeed in transforming their organisation if they:

1 – understand that people have a different worldview, or level of development (individualist perspective)
2 – are able to appreciate the specific qualities and limitations of the different developmental action logic’s. (strategist perspective)
3 – have the leadership skills to apply their insights into co-creating processes that will result in solutions, systems and structures that engage all different action logics. (applied strategist competencies)

The result

The result is a truly transformed organisation that creates an engaging working environment for all the different action logics. This enables the business to effectively catalyze the motivation and productivity of all employees, in service of realizing its vision and goals. Through integrating the best ideas of developmental perspectives, leaders and CEOs can find highly competitive solutions to the current challenges of organisational life.

Our evolutionary challenge
According to Bill Joiner only about 10% of the people (at the so-called ‘Catalyst level’ and above) are agile enough to deal with the evolutionary challenge we’re collectively facing. To be clear, that doesn’t mean the other 90% is incapable of leading their businesses, fixing bikes or raising children. However, to truly be able to deal adequately with the complexity we face, you need a developmental or agility level (i.e. inner operating system) that goes beyond the conventional level of our times.

The missing link is stage development
Ken Wilber speaks about society facing a ’war of memes’. Our internal operating systems, or levels of development, are not always in harmonious agreement. This can either occur between people, or within people. As Bill Joiner mentioned, adult development is the missing link for many of the big questions we’re currently struggling with in business and society.

Developing individuals is not the (quick) solution
If we assume that only 10% of the people can deal adequately with our current challenges, then what can we do? The easiest answer would be to help people develop so that they will be able to deal with the complexity, but there are some constraints.

• Development can only happen when an individual is intrinsically motivated. You can bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink. So, we can only work with a developmental coalition of the willing.
• Many sources write that development takes about 5 years a level. You can’t make the grass grow harder by pulling on it.

So, even though developing individuals is the long-term solution, our coalition of the willing will need to explore other options. Here are two I’d like to suggest.

Optimally leveraging developmental capital
Right now, our institutions, ranging from business to politics to healthcare to education, are not aware of adult development. This severely limits their ability to select effective leaders. Wouldn’t it be great to transparently get test results from our ambitious politicians, before we have to vote? With their developmental level as an integral part of any assessment. There is no reason why business couldn’t include adult development levels in their leadership selection, assessment, and allocation processes. Quick wins, baby!

Exploring Conscious systems
Conscious systems and structures allow an organisation to operate as a system above the developmental level of many of its individuals. We don’t all need to know how a telephone works in order to use it. Unfortunately, the same is true for guns. However, I believe it is safe to assume new conscious inventions will serve individuals better in their needs to pursue purpose, passion and effectiveness. I also doubt the R&D team of an organisation will come up with a Kalashnikov 3.0. when you ask them to improve organisational effectiveness. (Check our call with Brian Robertson about Holacracy, which I believe is such a conscious system – you’ll find it in the downloads section)

Conclusion
The organisations investing in adult development, leveraging their developmental capital, and building ‘conscious structures’, will gain a great competitive advantage.  But the best part is, that at the same time, they will be providing a great service to the developmental coalition of the willing. So that we can kick back, relax and enjoy a beer.

We embarked upon this series with a question unashamedly routed in idealism. What could business look like beyond the sole pursuit of trade and profit? What would happen if we saw business as a vehicle for evolution itself – a transformation of our potentials and of our deeper dreams and aspirations?

I still feel ignited by that question, and yet, I am now also holding a further aspect of that question. How can we role model the ideals of a conscious approach to business, while also creating a bridge to the conventional business world? How do we meet people where they’re at?

Our conversation with Leadership Circle CEO Bob Anderson brought that second aspect of the question to the forefront of my own enquiry. While Bob is a strong advocate of these very sophisticated and cutting edge approaches to business he also made an important statement.

“The language of business is effectiveness, not development.”

I want to take the time to explore and unpack that statement further, as it feels like such a central principle of this idealistic quest.

A personal reflection

I’m going to come at this issue from a rather personal space, as it is a perspective that I am still myself exploring, and I’m not sure I can claim to offer any concrete answers. I hope that at least some of my questions speak to things in your own life and work.

Part of my personal motivation for this series was to widen the space for this conversation of Conscious Business. I still feel called to that exploration, but as I am also starting to notice, there’s another motivation. And that is to perhaps try and extricate myself from the growing realisation that there’s no escaping the practical realities of the mainstream business world.

I still have this hope that if we help make the case for Conscious Business more widespread, then I will be excused from having to deal with the ‘pre-conscious’ business world, and enjoy the freedom of this idealistic space.

Something Bob mentioned during our call brought this hope, and its limits, further into my own awareness.

In his work with leaders, helping them to address the issues of increasing their leadership effectives, Bob uses a very powerful two part question.

• What is it that I really want – what is the vision of where I want to be?
• How do I get in my own way – what are the beliefs and assumptions that have me show up counter to that vision?

In listening back to the call this morning I noticed myself posing that question to myself, and to my desire to effectively bring these ideas out in to the world.

Am I excusing myself from the party?

If I have a vision of being someone who is helping embed these more conscious and developmental approaches into business, what are the things that have me get in my own way?

While I have no intension of off-loading my idealism (if such a thing were even intentionally possible), today I notice a questioning of it. In what ways is that idealism de-railing the mission I find myself upon?

Or perhaps, as a wise friend said today, it’s not the idealism that’s the issue, it’s the escape into it that is a problem.

If business isn’t interested in development for its own sake, how do I, as well as this series in general, help business become more conscious (which by definition is a developmental process)?

I notice myself starting to see that some of my idealism has a rather personal agenda. While masquerading as a force for change, it’s perhaps also a clever way of excusing myself from the business of meeting people where they’re at.

Where is business at? If it’s in the business of effectiveness how is my role in the spreading of these ideas making business more effective?

Rather than trying to answer these questions myself, for now I feel content to hold them and allow them to run their own course. And at the same time, I’m also interested in your thoughts and needs.

If this series is about asking what business can be in the most ideal sense, how can it best help you in your own mission to make business more effective?

There’s this idea that if you make the case for something strongly and persuasively enough, sooner or later people will start to listen to you.

Last week, we spoke with Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter, one of the foremost experts on adult development – basically the ‘conscious’ bit of Conscious Business. Something she said made me think very carefully about that idea.

Here’s my take on why I think that approach is not only ineffective, but perhaps even unconscious!

Waking up is a developmental process

Susanne’s life work has been to map out the ways in which people make meaning. Based upon the work of her predecessor – Jane Loevinger – her research shows that the way we make meaning unfolds in a stage-like process.

The difference between one stage and the next is a quantum leap in understanding and perspective. To give a concrete illustration of how different these stages are (and Susanne’s model identifies 8 major ones), let’s look at what ‘feedback’ means to different stages, an example Susanne herself shared with us.

While feedback to the lower stages is seen as a personal attack – a way of aggressively criticising one’s very person – to a higher stage it is more often seen as a gift. It is an opportunity to see through one’s own limitations and let go of the old patterns that no longer serve. The two meanings may both refer to something called ‘feedback’, but the similarities don’t go much further than that.

Most people don’t care about Conscious Business

I asked Suzanne, at which point in her model the inclination toward a conscious approach to business – or waking up the workplace – comes on-line. She told us that it only begins at what she calls the ‘Autonomous’ level.

As you can see from the table below (taken from Susanne’s doctoral dissertation), the percentage of US population that has reached the autonomous stage or higher is less than 7%. That means that only 7% of Americans  have the kind of meaning-making structure that would be even likely to take an interest in Conscious Business.

That leaves 93% who, no matter how hard you might make the case, will simply not resonate, or even take any notice. Why? Because it just isn’t something that shows up on their meaning-making radar. To give an extreme example, just as quantum physics doesn’t register as something a baby can ‘see’, so Conscious Business is something that the vast majority of the world’s population can’t see. They don’t resonate, because they simply can’t see it due to their meaning making stage of development.

So what do we do to spread this stuff?

• Let go of the idea that shouting louder to our traditional corporate colleagues about the need for Conscious Business will make much difference.
• Cease thinking that using the most innovative tools or practices will make traditional business ‘change their mind’.

As Tami Simon so beautifully articulated in our dialogue a couple of weeks ago, one of the most important things we can do to practice Conscious Business, is to meet people where they are at.

I don’t think pushing the need for Conscious Business to people who can’t see it is ‘meeting them where they’re at’, and I don’t think it embodies the conscious principles we’re trying to embed.

I think there’s another way. And my contention is that is starts by being conscious that most business isn’t very conscious, and it won’t become so anytime soon.

Instead, I feel called to actually role-model Conscious Business and show the world that’s ready to see, just how effective, meaningful and apt it is. The proportion of the world’s business that is going to embrace a conscious approach is small, and is going to remain small for some time. But the impact that that small group can make is huge!

Let’s wake up the workplace by being an evolutionary alarm clock for the people that made a 9am meeting with meaning, and leave the rest to sleep in. I’m sure they’ll wake up when they’re ready…or not 😉

How do you feel called to role-model Conscious Business? How do you want to contribute to that HUGE impact? What’s your particular tone of the evolutionary alarm clock?

Here we are, running this interview series, calling people from across the world to ask them what work could also be. It’s absurd!

Don’t get me wrong: We are on a mission to wake up the workplace, and we do care deeply about making work work.

Yet last week’s conversation with Tami Simon of Sounds True also made me think. She has been successfully running a conscious business for over 25 years now. What, then, has she found is at the heart of conscious business?

“To be willing to be yourself, and tell the truth,” she says. “To take time to reflect. To build intelligent business models, so that you can work together with others to fulfill the purpose of the business.”

Is there more to it? Yes, there probably is. Is it any more complicated than that, though? No! Conscious business is simple. It’s natural. It’s deeply human. And it works, too.

Then why are you reading this? Why are you participating in this series? Why are we going through the hassle of finding those few people who seem to understand this, and calling them up to ask them about it?

Because apparently even though conscious business is both simple and natural, it’s not! Because we do not bring our whole selves to work. We do not tell the truth at work. We do not take time to reflect. And even though we do generally build pretty intelligent business models, do we really do it for purpose? Or do we ‘simply’ do it for profit?

Now let’s look each other in the eyes and play it straight: Is it really conscious business that’s absurd? Absurd enough to need the qualifier ‘conscious’ to tell it apart from ‘normal’ business? I think that’s pretty absurd, and Tami seems to think so, too:

“I do know that the scaffolding of a workplace that is defined by people leaving their souls behind, and coming in in order to make something called ‘money’, so they can try to still squeak out a little time so they can have soulful lives, is an absurd tragedy.

That scaffolding needs to be taken down and not bought into. It’s not serving our families, our communities, or the world and the health of the planet. It’s not serving any of that.

And I don’t think we do ourselves justice if we believe that we have to buy into it. We don’t!”

So, what do you think? What are you buying into as ‘normal’? And how is that serving you and those you care about? We would love to hear your thoughts!

Want to hear more of what Tami was saying about her 25-year experience of building and running a conscious business? You can listen to the recording of the call on the downloads page (find the link in your registration email). If you’re not participating in the series yet, you can register for free above and get instant access to all calls.

Curious about Sounds True? Find more info over on their website. Tami also does a regular podcast with leading spiritual teachers and writers, called Insights at the Edge, which is well worth checking out!

Can you really mix consciousness with business? Can you keep getting things done if you pay lip service to all that ‘soft’ and ‘fluffy’ stuff like feelings, passions, energy, purpose or god forbid, spirituality?

In many circles, this idea is met with at best dismissal, and at worse ridicule. You can’t mix business with that stuff, business is about results, goals, and tangible outcomes. The idea of combining business with consciousness is an oxy-moron – it’s like saying you can have dry rain. Ridiculous.

Inspired by our talk with Jeff Klein last week, I’m going to tell you why this dismissal is not only inaccurate, but actually deluded.

Did you ever notice that stuff changes?

Whether we like it or not, things change.  In fact, things have been changing for quite a while now.  Well, forever actually.  And one of the things that changes at a rather rapid rate is us humans.  We’ve come a long way over the last 200,000 years.

We swapped caves for towns and cities.  We swapped god for science.  We swapped file-o-faxes for iPhones.  And now we’re in the process of swapping traditional capitalism for conscious capitalism, traditional business for conscious business. It’s inevitable

Conscious Business just works better

It’s a rule of Darwinian evolution that the stuff that works best, wins out.  Conscious business just works better.  And here’s why.

People are fed up of having to leave their own hopes and dreams on the night stand, and come to work to do someone else’s bidding.  Henry Ford’s revolutionary production line approach is breaking down. Why?  Because there’s more to life than work, and people know it.

So, while the old dogs of business are still fighting it out in the corporate bored-room, (pun intended), there’s a new guy in town: Conscious Business.

Conscious Business is where we no longer pretend that a business is simply an isolated entity designed to create wealth for its owners.  It’s not just a tube where you feed in time and money in one end, and get Ferraris and nice houses out the other.  It’s an entity that affects all its stakeholders – it’s employees, customers, environment, community and yes, also shareholders.

OK, but how do we judge if it works better?

Let’s make this as hard as possible.  Let’s judge the ‘works better’ claim on the values of traditional business, even though from a conscious perspective, they’re fundamentally limited.

So, from a traditional Business perspective, success is about profit.  Conscious Business can only be judged as working better if it makes more profit that traditional business. A tough challenge? Let’s look at the evidence.

In the Book ‘Firms of Endearment, research shows that companies that use a multi-stakeholder model (one of the core principles of Conscious Business that Jeff shared with us last week) actually make more money than traditional companies.

Did you get that? Companies that work on the principle of purpose beyond profit, and address the needs of all their stakeholders actually make more money than companies that exist purely for profit!

So, even judging the performance of Conscious Business on the cranky old values of traditional business, it still wins out.

Conscious Business is inevitable

It’s inevitable, because it works better – it makes more money. But of course it doesn’t stop there.  The whole purpose of Conscious Business is that it brings in a deeper purpose. It’s about using the power of business to truly engage with people so they align their own passions with their work. What happens then?  The actual world starts to work better.

Evolution has a pretty strong agenda.  It favours the stuff that works best. This stuff works best, and it’s here to stay.  It’s here to change the world.

If you want to hear our conversation with Jeff in full, check out the download’s section (linked to in the email you received when you registered). If you aren’t a member of the Waking up the Workplace community yet, you can register for free above and get access to all the calls.

Check out Jeff Klein’s website for more resources on the topics covered in this post. For more information on Firms of Endearment, check out this site.