By Lucía Ledesma · Integralis
Business challenges are becoming more complex and require us to reach a new level in the way we understand and respond to them.
How do we achieve our KPIs? How do we make the business more profitable? How do we outperform the competition, attract more customers, and sell more? These are questions that constantly arise in our work with organizations and occupy much of their leaders’ attention.
We hear these other questions less often: What comes next for our organization? What do we need to develop to achieve what we have set out to accomplish? What do we need to learn or change in the way we operate in order to respond to what the business demands of us today?
These questions become especially relevant when, even with a defined strategy and experienced teams capable of carrying it forward, we still find it difficult to make progress. Decisions remain concentrated in the hands of a few, departments work independently from one another, and agreements reached in meetings do not translate into action. We are clear about our goals, and at the same time, the way we make decisions, coordinate, and put agreements into practice holds us back when we try to move forward.
To understand what sustains and reinforces this way of operating, we need to stop and pay attention.
From which beliefs and assumptions are we interpreting what is happening and deciding what to do about it? What drives us to keep doing the same things even when the business is already asking something different of us?
What Is Keeping Us Stuck?
A particular way of operating may have been highly effective for years. Consider a company in which the founder knows every customer, sets the priorities, and approves expenses. During the company’s early years, this closeness allows the founder to respond quickly and manage resources carefully. Over time, the company opens new business units and hires more people, yet everyone continues waiting for the founder to decide. What once enabled the company to move forward begins to delay customer responses and project execution.
The founder needs to learn to trust, give others room, and support them so they can make decisions autonomously. People need to take on that responsibility, and the organization needs to make that way of working possible.
Business growth brings them face to face with new challenges that can no longer be solved in the same way they have handled things until now. What once depended on one person now requires others to understand what is happening and take responsibility. It now requires teamwork among a group of leaders to whom the founder can delegate. For the founder, this means recognizing that others may see things that he is not seeing and contribute answers that he could not build alone.
For those who were accustomed to waiting for his decisions, it means taking ownership while considering what the company needs and how their decisions affect others. The company has grown and now requires them to broaden their perspective, observe, understand, and create a new way of responding to the challenges ahead.
Looking at What Is Happening More Completely
Over the years, at Integralis we have been developing a framework to help our clients understand where they are today and what they need in order to reach what we call their “next level”; we do this through the Integral Development Map (MDI). Created by Integralis and inspired primarily by Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and by the contributions of many people who have studied human development, we have adapted this framework so that it is relevant to the challenges organizations face.
To better understand how it works, let us return to the example of the founder and the company. We could change the decision-making process. But what happens if the founder still believes that no one will take care of the company the way he does? Or if people have learned that it is safer to wait for instructions than to make a decision? The process is one part of what we need to examine. We also need to understand what people believe, how they relate to one another, and what they do in their everyday work.
The MDI helps us look at all these elements at the same time, from four perspectives:
The Personal
This reveals how we think and make sense of what happens: our beliefs, assumptions, and motivations.
The Relational
This shows how we relate to others and build connections: the way we communicate, collaborate, and coexist with others.
The Objective
This shows how we act and what results we generate: our behaviors and concrete actions.
The Functional
This reveals how we organize work: the processes, systems, and practices that sustain what we do every day.
In practice, we may say that we want people to make decisions while continuing to correct every decision they make. We may ask for collaboration while maintaining incentives that reward only the results of each individual area. This is where the MDI comes in: it allows us to view these perspectives together, recognize how they influence one another, and understand why changing a process may not produce the effect we expect.
Business results are only one part of reality. To understand how we arrive at them, we need to look at how we are generating them; above all, we need to ask ourselves: From what place are we responding to these new challenges?
Are we responding from a place where we want things to remain as they are and continue doing what has always worked for us? From a place where we want to win, have more, and prove that we are better than others? From a place where we care about listening, considering what each person needs, and seeking what is best for all of us? Or from a place where we ask why we do what we do and what we leave behind for others, for those who come after us, and for the world.
The Levels: Where We Respond From
These ways of responding express different levels of development. They tell us what matters to us, what we value, what we take into account when making decisions, and what remains outside our field of view. In the map outlined by the MDI, we classify them as Amber, Orange, Green, and Teal.
Consider a decision that affects different areas of the company.
From Amber, we look for guidance in what has already been established: how we have done things before, what the rules say, and who is responsible for deciding. Experience and authority provide an answer about what we should do.
From Orange, we compare alternatives based on the results we can achieve. We choose what works to reach the objective, define actions and deadlines, and measure what we accomplish.
From Green, we seek to understand what each area needs and how the decision affects it. We listen to different voices and look for an agreement that takes the people involved into account.
From Teal, we pay attention to what the whole system needs and to how the decision serves the purpose. We consider its consequences beyond our own area, beyond our company, and beyond the immediate result.
Here is what is interesting: moving to a next level means expanding our capacity to understand what is happening and respond to it. It means being able to consider something we could not see before, even though it was already there, while also integrating what is new. We retain the capabilities we have already developed: we still need order, the ability to achieve results, and attention to people, while incorporating the capabilities of the next level.
But there is an important caution: every way of responding contributes something and can also reach a limit. Seeking the best result for our own area can cause us to lose sight of what the company needs. Seeking agreement from everyone can prevent us from acting in time. Recognizing these limits allows us to ask what we need to develop in response to the challenge in front of us.
Where Is Our Organization Today?
The development of an organization is not uniform. Therefore, to answer that question, we need to look more closely. We may have a strong ability to define objectives and achieve results while still struggling to resolve conflicts or change the way we work.
The MDI addresses these differences through what we call “developmental lines.” These represent the different capabilities in which an organization, team, or individual can grow and develop. Some of them include communication, strategy, leadership, conflict resolution, prioritization, and working methods, among others. Each line represents one aspect of our development and may be at a different level; some may be higher while others are lower at the same time.
For example, we may define goals and track results from an achievement-oriented perspective while turning to authority to resolve any disagreement. We may create spaces to listen to different opinions and, when we need to change a process, insist on doing things the way we have always done them.
That is why saying that an entire organization is at one level is not enough. We need to recognize—by looking inward—how it responds in each of these capabilities and how they relate to one another. A good result tells us not only what we achieved; to understand our development, we also need to look at how we achieved it and what we do when circumstances change.
From the Map to Practice
To move forward, we need a map that helps us understand where we are and where we want to go, as well as a practice that allows us to travel that path.
Defining our next level gives us direction. Then we need to choose something concrete that we can practice in our everyday work. If we struggle to address differences, we can begin by having a conversation we have been postponing: listening to what each party needs, reviewing our assumptions, and taking responsibility for what belongs to us. Then we practice again when another difference arises.
We understand practice as attention, discipline, and consistency. Attention to observe how we respond and what we generate as a result. Discipline to sustain what we have decided to practice, including when it is difficult. Consistency to do it again and again until that capability is available when we need it.
Along the way, we need to stop. What did we do? What happened? What are we continuing to repeat? What do we need to adjust? The experience of practicing and reviewing what happens allows us to learn and continue moving forward.
This is how we gradually build a different way of responding through the decisions we make and the conversations we have every day.
What Comes Next in Our Development Journey?
The MDI is a map, not reality itself. It offers us a reference—a snapshot; we are the ones who have to travel the path.
What would our organization look like at its next level? What could we understand and resolve that is difficult for us today? How can we align what we do with what we say matters to us?
Our development is expressed in how we understand challenges, how we respond to them, and what we take into account when making decisions. Along that path, we shape our organization and what we generate for the people who work with us, for our customers, and for the world of which we are a part.
Circumstances will continue to change. We can begin with the challenges in front of us today and with what we need to develop in order to respond to them.
What is our next level? What do we need to start practicing in order to move toward it?