Radical wisdom - an inspiring example of Conscious Leadership and an Integral approach.
Since watching this video a few months ago, I think of Ricardo every time I discuss leadership and organisational design with clients. He demonstrates what it looks like to choose the leader you show up as each day. He also makes clear the extraordinary generative effect of being clear about purpose, in his case creating an environment for wisdom. Staying connected to the 'why' has enabled him to be unattached to the 'how' and 'what' leaving him free to be creative, agile, innovative and adaptable in service of his purpose. He has thought deeply about how people feel and think as well as the structures and processes that will create the type of environment that supports wisdom. The way he describes this reminds be of Ken Wilbur's Integral theory brought to life so brilliantly in the context of organisations by Frederique Laloux in his book 'Reinventing Organisations'. He gives examples of what 'teal' the next level of development, looks like in terms of its structures, practices and processes. Here are three examples that I noticed in Ricardo's Ted Talk that I think match some of Laloux's indicators: * "How can we be taking care of people? People is the only thing we have, we can't have a department than runs after people and takes care of people". This is an example of the Laloux teal indicator that I think correlates. "Most such functions (*such as HR) performed by teams themselves or by voluntary task forces" and few staff remaining (*in functions such as HR) have only advisory role" * "Lets agree that you sell 57 widgets a week, if you sell them all by Wednesday please go the beach, come back on Monday and start again". This is an example of the Laloux teal indicator: "High degree of flexibility in working hours, as long as commitments are upheld." and also, "Honest discussion about individual time commitment to work vs. other meaningful commitments in life." * " We wanted everybody to know everything and to be truly democratic about the way we ran things, so on our board we have two seats open, with the same voting rights, for the first two people who show up and so we had cleaning ladies voting.." He also talks about providing permanent access to all company financials including salaries to employees via easily accessible computer terminals. These are great examples of the Laloux teal indicators; "All information available in real-time to all, including about company financials and compensation" and "Total transparency invites outsiders to make suggestions to better bring about purpose". So for me Ricardo epitomises what a conscious leader, taking an integral approach looks like. It is evident the difference that his approach and stand has made for the hundreds of thousands of people he has impacted; employees, students, their families, his customers and suppliers, and their families and communities. #integral leadership # Ken Wilbur # Frederique Laloux #Conscious leadership #purpose