Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi)
Spiral Dynamics Integral is the evolutionary theory inspired on the work of Clare W. Graves, and further developed by Chris Cowan and Don Beck.
The perspectives that SDi offers were brought into my professional life by my wonderfully inspiring mate and business partner, Peter Merry. At the time, around 2001, these perspectives provided for different consciousness emerging in our work, and therefore new understandings of and different solutions for the complex and challenging problems that we were invited to collaborate on with our clients.
Essentially, SDi describes the evolution of worldviews of us - human beings - and our coping strategies in response to the world as we view and understand it.
SDi helps to determine why a system, such as teams and organisations, faces certain challenges and what obstacles possibly stand in the way of resolving these or elevating them to a next level of development.
SDi provides helpful insights in how people give what meaning to their life and work conditions. It is a map to help navigate the complex dynamics of developing systems.
In my current work, SDi proves to be most useful to understand how people understand the problems and challenges that they are facing in their work. It gives an insight in why different people point to different sources and causes for these conditions. It helps to understand 'how they think', not 'what they think'.
Often, I describe SDi as my 'operating system', in analogy with the world of ICT. It's not something I do or apply as such. It rather provides the theoretical background and context for my analysis or diagnosis of the dynamics of an organisation, a team or an individual.
It is my starting point to see what possibly releases creative energy, where possible blockages and obstacles are that stand in the way of fully living and manifesting one's potential and to support my clients in taking their next, developmental step.
SDi is chaordic by its nature: it helps to bring an order, a pattern, to the complex chaos of human development. And, as a model, it describes the interaction between 'chaos driven systems' and 'order driven systems'.
