For all those who are tired of going to work counting the days until Friday, of playing Candy Crush or Tetris to combat the boredom, of practising meditation only to vent their frustration, of eagerly waiting for the coffee break or lunchtime, of swallowing the umpteenth bitter pill because they need the productivity bonus. And in general for anyone who would simply like to find some sense in their professional career, here’s the good news: the future has arrived in Italy too, and it’s called Teal Lab.
From hierarchy to distributed leadership
In Milan today is the start of an innovative scheme conceived by Peoplerise – Alessandro Rossi, Andrea Farè, and Demetrio Labate – which aims to make workplaces more healthy, human places, where people can contribute to their own development, that of their firms and of society in general.
It sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t; in fact, the format is based on the most advanced organisational theories, in particular the Teal Paradigm, which is gaining ground all over the world, demonstrating how it is possible for firms of any size to move from the hierarchical pyramid to distributed leadership.
Advanced organisational theories in practise
Teal Lab is structured for the long term, based on an extremely pragmatic workshop approach. By means of a shared experience over two days, participants can discover directly what it means in concrete terms to organise the firm’s work on the basis of independence, responsibility, and decision-making ability for every individual.
Managers of various types of organisation will tackle, for example, simulations of projects involving a series of decision-making processes using the conventional approach and the Teal method, thus enabling them to compare the two and see the difference for themselves.
Activating the process
This is a transformative process, then, which also uses the technique of social presencing theatre to give a central place to collective intelligence and the added value of shared decisions, and to enable leaders to view their situation from within and from the outside simultaneously, and therefore to recognise what is needed to activate the process of change.
At the end of the two days, participants will be able to create a project prototype that they can take back to their firms and use to instigate change.
The network for changemakers
However, there is no magic wand; the journey is first and foremost a personal one, and since it throws the status quo into crisis, it needs a support network. This is why Alessandro Rossi, Andrea Farè, and Demetrio Labate decided to offer a follow-up session for every workshop, to provide support for the prototypes activated in individual firms and to continue the connection between participants so that their exchange of ideas can progress.
And who knows, perhaps this ongoing revolution will even make us like Monday mornings a little more. But for the moment we’ll be content with other times of the week.
