Most of us will know more about the story of Humpty Dumpty than we do about the story of Spiral Dynamics …

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The thing about Humpty Dumpty is he had a big fall and then (please ignore the sexism of it all) all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

In some societies, the government would have issued a statement, at this point, to re-assure us that rumours of Humpty’s fall have been greatly exaggerated and asking us to trust them when they say he’s fine.

We wouldn’t fall for that in the age of mass communication, twittering and what have you, word would get out, we would recognise the archive footage for what it was.

Unfortunately, we still have societies where governments would say things like “We can confirm that Humpty has had a fall, but can assure you that everything is under control, no resource will be spared in our efforts to put Humpty together again and we can announce today the formation of the Humpty Redevelopment Agency, henceforth known as the HRA” (use of initials, so we can gloss over what we are really talking about here).

Rumours would no doubt spread that all was not well with Humpty really, but for most people it is just more comfortable to believe the government when they say everything is going to be OK.

No politician with any interest in being re-elected would dare to tell the truth : “Humpty is dead, get used to it ! – Now, what are we going to do with this mess ?” – OK, so that’s a bit blunt, but even the politician who said solemnly “I am afraid I have some very bad news, I want you to sit down and listen to me carefully, what I have to tell you will come as a shock to many, Humpty – the egg we have grown to love and take for granted is no more; we all need to take our time to mourn, but somehow life will have to continue” – even that politician would be taking a big risk.

And so it is, even when the system has collapsed into lots of little pieces and a big mess, most governments will say it is OK, we can re-build it, we’ll set up a specialist agency and a new improved regulator to stop such falls in the future.  Yeah right.

Sometimes, leadership involves calling it as it is.

And so to Spiral Dynamics – here’s a picture :

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Spirals are lovely things, ever so common in nature.

Spiral Dynamics derives from the work of a psychologist called Clare Graves and as he puts it :

“Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems change”

This wasn’t very catchy, so two guys called Don Beck and Christopher Cowan took his thinking and published in 1996 a substantial, and slightly more accessible, tome called “Spiral Dynamics ; mastering values, leadership, and change”.  The back cover of the book claims to reveal “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 and organisations, and forge the rise and fall of nations and cultures”.

Since the first time I read it, I have found it a profoundly useful book, as one ‘map’ for giving an explanation for how different people are different and how transformative change happens in systems.  Armed with a useful ‘map’, much change work gets much easier.

I went back to it the other day to see what wisdom it had to impart on what happens when systems collapse and was delighted that it began its analysis with the story of Humpty.  I’d forgotten it was there.

If you are interested in the really big picture, like the entire history of the evolution of humanity to date, then I’d really recommend the book.

If you haven’t noticed, the egg has fallen, it proved to be much more fragile than we had been led to believe and in spite of the protestations of many with a vested interest it can’t be put back together, it is broken, it is no longer an egg.  We now have some work to do together to move forward from this mess.