New Work needs Inner Work

A handbook for organisations on the way to self-organisation
Most approaches to introducing self-management, agile forms of work, and "teal organisations" are doomed to failure. After five years of extensive experience with new forms of leadership, we have seen this process happen over and over again. Most of the time, this is because teams focus exclusively on the external, visible dimension of change.

However, any external change in structures and processes must necessarily be accompanied by an internal transformation. For that reason, this book is particularly dedicated to the "inner innovation" of teams. By this we mean the way that employees and teams can mature and grow in order to shape the complex, flexible, and accelerating world around them with competence and purpose.

New Work needs Inner Work is a practice-oriented manual in which we describe, step-by-step, how to introduce self-management into a team or company. We combine the perspectives of the entrepreneur (Joana, betterplace.org and betterplace lab) and the coach (Bettina). This combination allows us to use organisational principles, as well as concrete examples and exercises, to explore which competencies are important for reducing hierarchies and working flexibly and meaningfully.

This first English edition was enabled by Ashoka - to spread the message that social change requires deep inner work and new ways of leadership.

The Authors
Joana Breidenbach is founder of Germany's largest donation platform betterplace.org and the Think-and-Do-Tank betterplace lab.
Bettina Rollow develops organisational and leadership forms, e. g. with betterplace lab and Ashoka Germany.