Ken Wilber on Integral Business
An Excerpt from A Theory of Everything – An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality by Ken Wilber
Applications of the holonic model have recently exploded in business, perhaps, again, because the applications are so immediate and obvious. The quadrants give the four “environments” or dimensions in which a product must survive, and the levels give the types of values that will be both producing and buying the product. Research into the values hierarchy—such as Maslow’s and Graves’s (e.g., Spiral Dynamics), which has already had an enormous influence on business and “VALS”—can be combined with the quadrants (which show how these levels of values appear in the four different environments) to give a truly comprehensive map of the marketplace (which covers both traditional markets and cybermarkets). Of course, this can be used in a cynical and manipulative way—business, after all, is business—but it can also be used in an enlightened and efficient fashion to more fruitfully match human beings with needed products and services (thus promoting the health of the overall spiral).
Moreover, management and leadership training programs, based on an integral model, have also begun to flourish. Daryl Paulson, in “Management: A Multidimensional/Multilevel Perspective,” shows that there are four major theories of business management (Theory X, which stresses individual behavior; Theory Y, which focuses on psychological understanding; cultural management, which stresses organizational culture; and systems management, which emphasizes the social system and its governance). Paulson then shows that these four management theories are in fact the four quadrants, and that an integral model would necessarily include all four approaches. He then moves to the “all-level” part, and suggests a simplified but very useful four stages that the quadrants go through, with specific suggestions for implementing a more “all-quadrant, all- level” management.
Other pioneers in this area include Geoffrey Gioja and JMJ Associates, whose Integral Leadership seminars (which use three levels in the four quadrants) have been presented to dozens of Fortune500 companies (“We believe that until recently, the transformational approach of organizational change has been the unmatched champion for producing breakthroughs, both subjective and objective.
We now assert that the transformational approach has been eclipsed by the integral approach.”); John Forman of R.W. Beck Associates, who uses an all-quadrant, all-level approach to supplement (and correct the flatland distortions of) systems and complexity theory; On Purpose Associates (John Cleveland, Joann Neuroth, Pete Plastrik, Deb Plastrik); Bob Anderson, Jim Stuart, and Eric Klein (co-author of Awakening Corporate Soul), whose Leadership Circle brings an all-quadrant, all-level approach to “Integral Transformation and Leadership” (“The main point is that the evolution of all of these streams of development in all of the quadrants are intimately bound up with each other. Spiritual intelligence is literacy in the practice of transformation. Spiritual intelligence is fast becoming a leadership imperative.”); Leo Burke, Director and Dean of Motorola’s University College of Leadership and Transcultural Studies, who oversees the training of some 20,000 managers around the world; Ian Mitroff (A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America); Ron Cacioppe and Simon Albrecht (“Developing Leadership and Management Skills Using the Holonic Model and 360 Degree Feedback Process”); Don Beck of Spiral Dynamics, which has been used in situations totaling literally hundreds of thousands of people; and Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, who are working with an all-quadrant, all-level approach coupled with very specific change technologies built around the optimal management of energy—physical, emotional, and mental. Tony is now writes the monthly Life/Work column for Fast Company and can be contacted there. All of the above individuals have joined theInstitute of Integral Business, along with Deepak Chopra, Joe Firmage (Project Voyager), Bob Richards (Clarus), Sam Bercholz (Shambhala), Fred Kofman, Bill Torbert, Warren Bennis, and numerous others.