default Archives - The Daily Evolver

In this episode I share some thoughts on the evolutionary power of Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist, and her visit (via sailboat!) to the UN Climate Summit.

Every stage of human development creates radical new ways to organize work. The holy grail for today’s companies is to function so that everybody has a real chance to contribute their gifts. Instead of operating top-down, more power must be distributed throughout the organization, giving individuals and teams freedom to self-manage, while staying aligned to the organization’s purpose.

Achieving this is the promise of Holacracy, a self-management practice for organizations, developed by my guest Brian Robertson using explicitly integral principles.

Over 1000 companies utilize Holacracy today – in healthcare, insurance, banking, retail, technology, nonprofit and government sectors; and in places as diverse as Dubai, Shanghai, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, New York, Bangalore, Las Vegas and rural Africa.

Holacracy enables employees to act more like entrepreneurs and self-direct their work instead of reporting to a manager who tells them what to do.”– Tony Hsieh CEO, Zappos

It so happens that I and a group of colleagues at the Integral Institute were guinea pigs in Brian’s laboratory a dozen years ago, trying out his ideas on meeting practices. I remember some truly remarkable results and a flowering of group wisdom that I had never experienced before. It’s great to catch up with Brian now that Holacracy is catching on!

Brian Robertson is a business partner at HolacracyOne, the organization he launched to steward the Holacracy practice and assist other organizations seeking to adopt it.

Celebrity chef David Chang’s irreverent new series on Netflix, Ugly Delicious, illuminates the developmental arc of some of the world’s favorite foods. Each of eight episodes highlights one dish or concept, such as BBQ, fried rice or home cooking, and explores its roots in different regions and how it has evolved.

Today I’m reviewing the first episode, which follows Chang and his gang as they seek the soul of pizza, from the 300-year-old classic Neopolitan Margherita, to a sushi and ginger pizza in Tokyo, to Wolfgang Puck’s California reinventions, to a Dominos delivery shop in New Jersey.

Ugly Delicious imparts a distinct integral flavor as Chang concludes his exploration by legitimizing all claims of pizza purity. As he puts it, “authenticity is something that has been overvalued, but which really has not been scrutinized enough.”

by Jeff Salzman

Today I’m joined by one of our most impressive young integral thinkers, Jeremy Johnson. Jeremy is a scholar of the 20th century poet/philosopher Jean Gebser, and is currently president of the international Jean Gebser Society. Gebser is a major (if eccentric) figure in the integral lineage, most famous for describing the structures of human consciousness as archaic, magic, mythic, mental and integral.

Surprisingly (to me at least) Gebser did not see these structures as evolutionarily continuous, but as “mutations” which are all online now in various states of “efficiency” and “deficiency”. Further, not only are the structures of history online, but so are the structures of the future – and they are calling to us right here and now.

This presents a terrific koan to the integral practitioner, and Jeremy Johnson transmits it in a way that left me inspired and the world reenchanted. May he – and Gebser – do the same for you!

“What is gaining importance now is the spiritual light reigning between objects – the tension and the relation between them.”

Jeremy Johnson has a degree in sociology from Fordham University, the Jesuit College in Manhattan, and a Masters in Consciousness Studies from Goddard College. Jeremy is the founder of Nura Learning, a conscious media learning platform, and is an editor and writer for numerous publications. He is currently working on his first book, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness, from Revelore Press.

Another week of cultural evolution at warp speed was brought on by a real-life daytime TV drama. It started on Tuesday, with NBC morning host Megyn Kelly defending blackface as a Halloween costume choice. She apologized and had her consciousness raised live on her Wednesday show, and was fired from the network on Friday. In this episode I use an integral lens to tease apart some of the cultural forces at play in this story.

Plus, I take a look at another daytime tv show that also powerfully moved the ball in race relations this week: Dr. Phil’s “What You Need to Know About White Privilege”.

Each stage of human development features a unique way of organizing work. From hunting and gathering, to agriculture, to industry, to the Information Age, each emergent represents a radical evolutionary expansion of capacity, and each remakes the world in its turn.

So what’s next? Frederic Laloux‘s blockbuster book, Reinventing Organizations, offers  compelling answers to that question. A McKinsey consultant for many years, Fred has identified and researched what he calls “next stage“ organizations, and identifies the specific features that set them apart.   

The key emergent of next-stage organizations harkens back to early human history: small bands of people on a mission, each deeply seen and valued by the others, responding together to changing conditions and making their way forward.

Today’s cutting-edge version of archaic bands are self-managed teams, which have become the building blocks of companies of all types and sizes. It’s a fascinating (and explicitly integral!) thesis whose success is demonstrated in organizations all over the world.

In this conversation with Jeff Salzman, Frederic Laloux unpacks his key ideas and lays out some of the new rules of the road ahead.  

Today I’m sharing my I my guest appearance on Radio Evolve, a German podcast hosted by Tom Steininger. We talked world politics, and focused on neoauthoritarian movements that are challenging the neoliberal systems that have been in place for decades. Are they entirely regressive? Or are they also doing the work of progressive emergence? Join Tom and me as we try to sort it out.

Today Jeff is joined by Dr. Warren Farrell, who has co-authored (with John Gray) a new book, The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It. The book illustrates how boys are falling behind girls in crucial metrics of well-being: in academics (61% of college degrees will go to females by 2020), in mental and physical health (boys commit suicide at six times the rate of girls), in behavioral problems, career prospects, even life expectancy.

Warren brings an integral sensibility to the situation by advocating a path forward that expands options for boys to find purpose and meaning, much as girls are able to do as a result of the feminist revolution. He also emphases the role of fathers and postive male role models for boys. As Gail Sheehy, author of Passages, writes of The Boy Crisis:  “As an activist in the women’s movement, I’m proud of expanding life choices for our daughters. But no one did the same for our sons—until now.”

Warren will help you think differently about the issues of sexual dynamics, and how we can move forward into a future where there are more ways to be human and fulfilled for all sexes.

Dr. Warren Farrell  is the author the the bestseller, The Myth of Male Power, and is the only man in the U.S. to have been elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in New York City.

Today Jeff talks with Scott Ford, author of Integral Consciousness in Sport: Unifying Body, Mind and Spirit Through Flow.

Scott, an elite tennis coach for decades, is at the leading edge of thinking and practices for enhancing athletic performance. He has mapped out a five-stage developmental sequence of athletic performance, the first three of which are familiar:

Stage 3, online for less than 50 years, is where many elite athletes function today.

But it is at stage 4 and 5 that things get more interesting. At these higher stages we are working with flow or the zone, that elusive state where the player and the game merge. This “subject / object collapse” is what Scott calls “flowing presence” and is the gateway not just to greater performance, but to a profound enjoyment and fulfillment in the act itself.

Scott is also a founding member of the Sports, Energy and Consciousness Group, a collective of doctors, psychologists, scientists, world-class athletes and leading-edge coaching, which is having its third annual conference in San Rafael this July.

In this podcast Scott offers a specific practice for entering flow, which is applicable for “in the zone” performance in all aspects of life.

Today Jeff visits with integralist Tom Curren, who has launched a new non-profit initiative with the goal to Change the Rules of the American political system. Tom has identified four structural problems in American politics that exacerbate the electorate’s most tribal impulses:

Our political system seems to be carved in constitutional stone, but actually many of its most dysfunctional rules are not in the constitution, and have been built up to support the business of politics. Listen as Tom explains a series of non-flashy, non-partisan strategies (ballot initiatives, legal challenges and legislative pressures) that are already proving to drain the swamps in states and municipalities across the nation..

While The Daily Evolver usually focuses on integrating the polarities arising in consciousness and culture, this episode offers exciting, third-person structural solutions with high leverage. Tom also offers listeners an efficient way to participate personally on-the-ground in their communities.

Tom Curren is founder of Hawthorne Consultants, a firm specialized in the integration of strategy and organization change. Find out more about his new non-profit, Change The Rules.