Product Description

Spiral Dynamics introduces a new model for plotting the enormous economic and commercial shifts that are making contemporary business practice so complex and apparently fragmented. Focusing on cutting-edge leadership, management systems, processes, procedures, and techniques, the authors synthesize changes such as:

• Increasing cultural diversity.
  
• Powerful new social responsibility initiatives.
  
• The arrival of a truly global marketplace.

This is an inspiring book for managers, consultants, strategists, and leaders planning for success in the business world in the 21st century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20182 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From the Back Cover
Spiral Dynamics reveals the hidden codes that shape human nature, create global diversities, and drive evolutionary change. These magnetic forces attract and repel individuals, form the webs that connect people within organizations, and forge the rise and fall of nations and cultures. This book tracks our historic emergence from clans to tribes to networks and holograms; identifies seven Variations on Change, and adds power and precision to the design of human systems and 21st century leadership.

Spiral Dynamics is an extension and elaboration of the biopsychosocial systems concept of the late Clare W. Graves; work that Canada's Maclean's Magazine called 'The Theory that Explains Everything'. The authors mesh UK biologist Richard Dawkins' concept of 'memes' with Gravesian 'value systems' in crafting a timely transformational change formula and process. Their concept of MEMES represents the first major statement of the new 'Science of Memetics.'

Don Edward Beck and Christopher C. Cowan, who were closely associated with Clare W. Graves, apply the principles of Spiral Dynamics worldwide in both corporate and top-level governmental sectors. They helped transform South Africa out of race categories, design organizational and marketing systems for a wide range of industries, and revitalize local communities, educational and professional institutions, and sports programs. Based on motivational MEMEs, they also designed a "hearts and minds" strategy for the South African rugby union team, winners of the 1995 World Cup.

Beck and Cowan were on the faculty of the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, for a number of years before forming the National Values Center.

About the Author
Don Beck is Co-founder of The National Values Center, Denton, Texas. He taught at the University of North Texas; played a major role in the South African transformation; and applies and enhances Gravesian/Spiral Dynamics concepts in corporate, educational, and geopolitical initiatives worldwide. He is active with Ken Wilber in the Integral movement.

Chris Cowan is Co-founder of The National Values Center and is based in Santa Barbara, California. He is partner in NVC Consulting which seek to continue and build on the legacy of Dr Clare W. Graves through research, application, and publications.

Customer Reviews

May be one of the most important books of the millennium
The flaws in this book should not obscure the fact that this may be one of the most important books on human behavior of the millennium-probably even more important than even the authors realize. For this is the first book to link two of the most important concepts in human behavior of our time-the theories of psychologist Clare Graves and the concept of memes.

(I have been working with Graves' theories for about 25 years, and had the pleasure to collaborate with him on a consulting project in 1976. Regarding memes, I have been teaching about them for about 5 years.)

Graves integrated "bio-psycho-and socio-" in a way that resulted in the identification of clearly distinct levels of existence, with each level having its own psychological and behavioral characteristics. This was a remarkable revolutionary achievement, especially in light of the subsequent work of others that corroborate the characteristics of each level. Beck and Cowan have conveniently provided excellent references for each level.

A second revolutionary idea comes from the 1973 work of Richard Dawkins, who while discussing the need that genes have to replicate themselves ("The Selfish Gene"), also posited the existence of another replicator, a unit of cultural transmission, which he dubbed a "meme" after the French word for imitation. After lying dormant for many years (except at Microsoft-see Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind") the concept of memes has arrived. And although I have been teaching about memes for five years, even I have underestimated their importance until recently, thanks to Susan Blackmore's book "The Meme Machine." Since Beck and Cowan are the first to write about the linkage of Graves' theories and memes, they are blazing the trail for what may become a major field of study in the future.

And now for some nit picking. The authors use colors (Red, Blue, Orange, etc.) to identify the Gravesian levels. I understand why they did so, because I, too, have grappled with the issue of whether to use Graves' original nomenclature or some other scheme. I personally prefer Graves' original nomenclature, and believe colors have more disadvantages than advantages.

Somewhat more troublesome is the authors' tendency not to clearly differentiate Dr. Graves' theories from their own extensions of his work. While I have no trouble separating the two, the average reader would have trouble doing so. Nor am I comfortable with calling the various levels "vMEMES," because it implies that each Gravesian level is primarily memes as opposed to a complex combination of a neuro-chemical predisposition and memes that are compatible with it.

One major advantage of Graves' theories is that it allows for prediction of second tier characteristics based on the characteristics of corresponding first tier levels. The authors missed the opportunity to project what the "Coral" (Graves' C'P') level would look like. The authors also omitted consideration of where Graves got some of his memes. They don't mention the early influence of Gerald Heard ("The Five Ages of Man") or the work of Harvey, Hunt and Schroder ("Conceptual Systems and Personality Organization").

Aside from these relatively minor criticisms, Beck and Cowan's book is extremely important because it ushers in a new focus on Gravesian levels and memes-a terrific combination for understanding and predicting human behavior. Hopefully their book will stimulate academic research as well as a wide range of practical applications.

Clarification Concerning Previous Reviews
A brief note regarding comments made by the previous reviewer:

When Blackwell Business Publishers published Spiral Dynamics, they did not include an index developed by Don Beck and Chris Cowan (mistakes like this do happen sometimes with academic publishers). Interested readers can contact the authors directly at ... for further details and updated research. Any initial "X-Files" feeling is dispelled once you become more familiar with the model, and the milieu that it evolved from.

Spiral Dynamics draws extensively upon over 40 years of research by Beck, Cowan, and their mentor Clare W. Graves. The original research data includes over 500,000 interviews conducted over five continents, and is comparable to other "biopsychosocial systems development" research conducted by Jane Loevinger, Stanley Milgram, Laurence Kohlberg, Erik Erikson etc.

What makes Graves unique however is that he created a dynamic model of human consciousness evolution which can assimilate other models and worldviews. He also recognised that insights from Cognitive Psychology, Genetics, and Neurophysiology would need to be examined. Fans of NeuroLinguistic Programming, General Systems Theory, Memetics and the Human Potential Movement will find a wealth of material, plus reading resources for further specialised research.

SD has been applied to resolve racial tension in South Africa, in education systems and government, by the World Future Society State of the World Forum, Arlington Institute, and Integral Institute, and by major companies such as Nedbank and SouthWest Airlines. Anyone questioning its credentials simply haven't done their research.

Its scope and depth surpasses what masquerades as "snake-oil" solutions: SD asks "why" such solutions are posed; what the prevailing "life conditions" are in an individual's life, company's growth, or country's situation (the interaction of historical times, geographic place, human existential problems, and social circumstances); and in examining change, questions "from what . . . to what?"

Valuable Theory - Difficult Writing
This book is based on the work of Clare W. Graves, a professor of psychology at the Union College (Schenectady, NY) who developed an evolutionary model of values somewhere in the 60ties. I was introduced to this material through the work of Wyatt Woodsmall, who wrote a more accessible introduction to this material as part of the book "Time Line Therapy and the Basis of personality" (published in 1988). If you are interested in studying values and cultures, I recommend buying both books.

The two reasons why this book only gets 3 stars are 1) the way it is written and 2) because the authors have written it "as if" they are the *sole* owners of this theory, a kind of thinking that shows they haven't reached the highest level of evolution themselves. The second remark may explain why one cannot distinguish between the original thinking of GRAVES and the extensions of the authors. The first remark explains why this book is hard to "digest": the structure of the book doesn't make it easy to collect all information for each level, nor is it easy to derive from the book how one would apply these principles, say in a therapeutic or business context. Also an index is missing, but that is partly compensated by adding a good resource list at the end of the book.

Graves' model is a dynamic model of human consciousness evolution, which includes 7 levels of development, each with particular kinds of thinking and beliefs. At jobEQ we recommend this kind of thinking to find out whether someone you want to hire is "compatible" with your companies culture. Beck and Cowan have been using Graves work on an even larger level: looking at values that are valid across cultures and subcultures in society, for instance helping to resolve conflicts between subcultures in the UK and South-Africa.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"