The Integral Model

In a very complex world, with an unlimited number of opposing views and positions, making choices can be a daunting task. This is particularly evident when it comes to making decisions about how to lead and manage an organization to higher levels of performance. There are literally thousands of articles and books about it published every year. This much information can make it very difficult for leaders to choose any strategy,Integral Diagram much less the best strategy, for their particular situation. We believe that superior organizational performance is dependent upon an organization’s ability to integrate the right people equipped with the right skills to the right objective at the right time. It takes an integral approach.

You may think that one simply needs to look to the top educational institutions for direction. Unfortunately, this approach can also be very confusing. In many universities, you can find leadership and management courses in the schools of Business, Public Administration, Public Health, Policy Science, Sociology, Psychology, Engineering, and Theology with conflicting approaches.

Why is there such complexity related to leading and managing organizations? One of the main reasons is that there are so many different types of organizations. The majority of the leadership and management literature is based on practices within large publicly traded corporations. Of the over 5 million plus organizations that existed in the United States in 1990, only 1.7% of them had more than 100 employees. However, approximately 61% of all the employees work in organizations with more than 100 employees. This shows that the majority of people are employed by large organizations but most organizations are small. This leads to much of the mismatching and confusion between organizations and their leadership and management practices.

it is important that the leadership and management methods used be appropriate for the organization. Knowing what's the most likely to work best within a particular organization requires an understanding of the organization's industry, services, culture and level of development. 

Integral Performance Solutions approaches the challenge of helping an organization to improve their performance with the aid of the Integral Model developed by Ken Wilbur. It is depicted in the illustration below. We use this as a framework to help organizations explore and plan their future, regardless of their current level of performance, development or goals.

Jim Collins in his sentinel work “Good to Great” has summarized this idea as having the:

We believe that organizations can make move from 'Good' to 'Great' by choosing chose the correct methodologies to build critical capacities. We believe that the only way the only way to produce different results is to take different actions.  These actions have to take place at the individual and group levels, have to be long lived and should be data-driven. These are what we refer to as integral solutions.

Integral solutions result in change in four distinctive areas as shown in the illustration above. One line is vertical and divides actions into those of individuals and groups. Without both changes shown in the top two boxes, it is unlikely there will be any change in results. In order to sustain the changes at an individual level, there must be changes in overall group actions. as one of the most prominent predictors of individual action is group action.  The dichotomy is that without individual change there can be no group change. 

The second line divides individual and group actions into those that are internal and those that are external.  Internal individual changes are those that involve changes in the meaning that one applies to interpretations.  These meanings become the driving force for all that we do.  They are our values, principles and reasons for existence. 

On a collective level, it is important that organizations have shared visions and values.  Shared visions are more than a compilation or collection of individual values.  Instead they are literally collective meanings that derive out of the existence, collaboration and reflective actions of groups within organizations.  Each of these four areas requires a solid infrastructure, continued nurturing and produces specific results. 

Our unique integral approach is based on a wide array of teaching that is continually growing as we work to further extend our ability to meet the needs of organizations at various levels of development.  Here is a brief list of some of the individuals that have been especially insightful in helping form our unique prospective.

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