I was thinking about how Knowledge generation and use are overlapped in Teal organizations. The fact is knowledge model is linked with the organization levels in Laloux model. Going back to Laloux model, overlapped knowledge generation and use need a distinctive organization structure and culture.
I would say the crucial constraint to overlap knowledge generation and use is that there is no central point where knowledge is managed (Think management as validation and distribution control). If you don’t rely on your employees to allow them to decide when a piece of knowledge is right to be spread, you cannot overlap generation and application. Otherwise, there is a milestone (maybe several) separating these 2 workflows. Someone must discriminate good and unuseful or even harmful knowledge. And someone needs to decide whether to disseminate it (make it accessible) or not.
Want knowledge overlapping? Go Teal.
These “knowledge treasuring” structures act as a brake to knowledge deployment. And they can just be removed -by definition- on Green or Teal Organizations. Just teal organizations can overlap Knowledge generation and usage. And to a lesser extent, maybe Green organizations. A good reason to go Teal.
Note 1: Reinventing Organizations summarizes the main characteristics of Teal organizations into three parts:
- Self-management. Everyone follows their interests and passions.
- Wholeness. Everyone feels comfortable bringing their whole self to work.
- Evolutionary purpose. The organization grows organically (in the right direction).
And this leads to Reinventing Organizations implementations and impacts. Some more notes:
- “A radically inspiring way to work together” by Kevan Lee
- Any post in we-q.com’s blog. They map Laloux principles and seminal ideas to any organization area. ( Team Innovation or Employee Engagement)
- The model has evolved from an individual effort to an enriched open-source communal wiki. This is inspiring. And on the same page as Laloux’s perspectives.