Frederic Laloux: Trump is a distraction - and new kinds of organisation show a better way
Frederic Laloux has been something of a phenomenon in business and government circles in the last few years. His book Reinventing Organisations has tried to show that it's possible to run commercial entities in ways that deeply respect the autonomy and humanity of employees, and in that way provide world-class services and products for customers and citizens. Laloux is an adapter of some of the techniques of integral studies, which seeks to show how adults can consciously develop their capacities for wisdom and insight.
In the video above, Laloux speaks to the camera about Trump, but specifically about one of the underlying economic reasons for his election - the perception that many high-quality manufacturing jobs were being lost to American shores, taken by cheaper Chinese labour. Laloux asks us to focus instead on the question of whether American enterprises are actually managed well enough - citing many examples where they are, but arguing that there needs to be something of a revolution in the way the US does business.
We're interested in Laloux because he has his antennae raised for what Alternativet in Denmark called "fourth-sector enterprises". These are futuristic kinds of organisation that draw best practice from the three preceding sectors (the state, the market and civil society), and make powerful new hybrids that can solve our urgent collective problems - climate, energy, housing, alienation.
Self-management is Laloux's great theme - that workers given autonomy are at their most effective, and that managers shorn of their egoistic arrogance can enable that power. And this might be the secret to save jobs in the industrial rustbelt, that turned to Trump as their saviour.