What the heck is Teal?

• It is a blue-ish green colour as seen in teal ducks 
• It is also a code used in Frederic Laloux's book 'Reinventing Organizations' referring to a new stage in the development of human consciousness and of the corresponding organizational model
• It is quickly becoming an attitude & life-style 

The Teal organizational models are best described by their three main characteristics and a metaphor

Self Management

Teal Organizations have found the key to operating effectively, even on a large scale, with a system based on distibuted authority and peer relationships without the need for either hierarchy or consensus.

Wholeness

Organizations have always been places where people show up with a narrow 'professional' self and to leave other parts at the door. They often require us to show masculine resolve and to display determination and strength. Rationality rules as king, while the emotional, intuitive, creative and spiritual parts of ourselves feel unwelcome, out of place. Teal Organizations have developed a consistent set of practices that invite us to reclaim our inner wholeness and bring all of who we are to work.

Evolutionary Purpose

Teal Organizations are seen as having a life and sense of direction of their own. Instead of trying to predict and control the future and create strategies for it, members of the organization are invited to listen in and to understand what it wants to become and
what purpose it wants to serve.

Metaphor

A living organism
The founders of Teal Organizations often refer to their workplace as a living organism or a living system. Life, in all its evolutionary wisdom generates eco-systems of unfathomable beauty, ever evolving toward more wholeness, complexity and consciousness.
In these organisms change happens everywhere, all the time in a self-organizing urge that comes from every cell, with no need for central command and control to give orders and pull the levers.

Examples of self-managing structures around us