Stage 4 tribes

In response to what I said about right brained thinking, Lynn came back musing, " The notion of creativity is the chatter for later -- a representation of the thing. The authentic experience for me at once is visceral and ineffable. In hind site, a Stage 3 [the stage at which most organizations function] state was more like a systemic, unhealthy condition that permeated itself from the top down. Is it plausible to interpret a Stage in the pejorative... sort of seeing it from the dark side?"

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Lynn,

It seems to me that at every stage there is a set of core values around which tribal members are aligned. They may not be consciously distinguished, and viewed from a different stage they may even seem detrimental, but they are there.

It's clear to me, having spent much of my executive career in stage 3 organizations that there were, and are, very real core values in place. I assert that domination and avoiding domination were two of those core values. And I also assert the people working in those entities are aligned with those core values, and are quite adept at working within that framework.

It occurs to me that stage 4 is a shift - something shifts in the makeup of the core values. And that shift is a function of some sort of consciously chosen cause - what we're calling here the noble cause. The effect of that noble cause is to regenerate an innate sense of integrity, one I see for instance, still naturally operational with my 8 year old grandson - one that is not yet snuffed out.

So I want to avoid making stage 4 some sort of romantic ideal. The first time I experienced it, it wasn't something we were trying to attain. It was a collective shift in being that caused extraordinary business results while leaving us (tribal members) related to each other within a different framework, feeling like what were doing really mattered and who we were as individuals had to contribute to what "we" were doing. Those that were about themselves, or not contributing were not tolerated, a true meritocracy

In that stage 4 state conflict was missing. I don't mean there weren't passionate disagreements. There were. But the territorial aspect wasn't there, so the word "conflict" didn't fit. There was variance, tension, competition, divergence, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Yet there was a harmony to it. The context was not territorial. Disagreement, when it arose, was a cause for reminding ourselves of what we were up to not for dominating another.

It's interesting when you say, "The notion of creativity is the chatter for later -- a representation of the thing.", because creativity was rampant in that setting but I doubt most people would describe the experience that way. Intense, energized, passionate, active, fun, and high-risk-but-safe, maybe, but not what they might label as "creative". For few of them thought of themselves, or even the process as creative.

As for what you say about how stages or entities come and go. I think it may be the natural order of things. Our TLCC group and indeed I think, given a choice most people, want to belong to stage 4 or 5 tribes. From stages 1,2, or 3 we think of stages 4 and 5 as nirvanic, something we want to last forever. It doesn't.

It may live as a possibility, something to strive four (pun intended), but just as you describe about the dissolution of the stage 3 organization above, (and it's unpopular I know to say) but stage 4 tribes, like all these modeled stages, come and go, ebb and flow.