Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

How Templates Work on the Spiral

Templates outline the most natural designs for people, technology, and work flow to accomplish specific outcomes. Each Template must be cut to fit a specific circumstance, the indigenous life conditions and ^vMEME systems. Such issues as rank, ideology, territory, interpersonal relations, and tradition are initially set aside. This is Second Tier work. The rigid, pre-cut First Tier shapes of PURPLE through GREEN are temporarily shelved, too. For now, they are contaminants. Awaken, instead, the YELLOW and turquoise ^vMEMEs, rouse Second Tier models and follow closely.

Visualize the motherboard of a PC with its synergistic blend of modules, components, channels, and processors all connected in a grand design. The ten-element sequence of Streams (see Figure 1) is the leader's diagnostic that identifies which ^vMEMEs to plug where in the organizational circuits because they are congruent with the work and life conditions in that space. The three Templates (see below) give Spiral managers the tool to customize, tweak, integrate, and upgrade the corporate machine's operation by applying principles of Second Tier thinking.

Instead of being rigid, permanent cutouts, Spiral Templates are alive, like the interdependent layers that fuse together, stretch, and adjust in our skin. For now we will artificially separate the three Templates to explain their different functions, though they actually mesh together so that what happens in one instantly impacts the others. ...