Spiral Dynamics is arguably the first, major, systemic, conceptual system and complex way of thinking about everything that addresses the “big picture.” Holistic perspectives, that are currently in vogue in cutting-edge executive leadership thinking, provide a mechanism and methodology for looking at macro and micro issues simultaneously. These perspectives lay down a specific, practical and usable change technology that aligns and connects all of the variables; stakeholders, cultures, sub-cultures and other interests within an elegantly designed organism. The perspective in this book is one that integrates technology, business systems and human dynamics within a seamless, interactive process. Nothing similar to Spiral Dynamics can be found in any applied literature, journals, bestseller books, academic programs or consultant packages. It stands alone. This makes it difficult for many to get their minds around the whole because we are so trained to focus on parts. We are accustomed to looking for quick fixes, single-cause analysis and solutions, car-wash interventions or micro-applications.

For me, the reason for the existence of Spiral Dynamics, as cited in Chapter 12 of this book, says it all. What I then have to say can only whet the appetite for the formidable work that Clare Graves and Don Beck in America, Loraine Laubscher and Rica Viljoen in South Africa, Said Dawlabani and Elza Maalouf as Lebanese Americans, Teddy Larsen and Sergey Solonin as Europeans, and the innumerable others cited in this book, have accomplished to further the lot of individuals, organizations and whole societies across the globe.

I first met Don Beck in South Africa, early in the 1990s, after reading his extraordinary book, with co-author Graham Linscott, The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future. I immediately gave Graham a call, as I was in the country at the time, and asked him, “Who is this man, Don Beck, and how I can meet him?” With due humility, as such, I became the midwife for the first book by Don Beck and Chris Cowan entitled Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change, some two decades ago. This formed a key part of our then Blackwell series on Developmental Management.

It was no accident that this seminal work would emerge out of a meeting Don and I had in South Africa, as the new country was being born in the early 1990s. For it was in South Africa that I had already met Rica Viljoen, and thereafter Lorraine Laubscher, in the context of a project on South African Management. This was the first of its kind, and is still today the only one that attempted to uncover the role that Africa had to play in management. Central to our work on such was Spiral Dynamics, and the multi-faceted cultural memes that thereby underlay that great “rainbow” country. Why then was the Spiral of such seminal value to us?

Before answering that question, let me move across to Israel and Palestine, where I have spent so much of my life outside of Africa and Europe, and where great work was done, as we shall see, by Beck, Maalouf and Dawlabani. For decades now we have been grappling with the dynamics of economy and of enterprise in that region of the world, in a way that takes account, not only of the organizational and personal dynamics we find there, but of the overall societal ones. Again, the insights provided by the cultural memes of Maalouf were incredibly important. For how else would we uncover the genius of a place, of a people, notwithstanding all the trials and tribulations along the Palestinian–Israeli way, if we were not to take account of all these, including their dynamic interaction, for good or ill?

And now we go to the Nordic countries. Norway has played such a key part in the now faltering “Middle East” peace process. In fact, living in Europe as I do, though Africa and specifically Zimbabwe is my place of birth and origin, I have always felt that these Nordic nations were the evolutionary catalysts on the European continent, if only they rose to the occasion. In fact, my erstwhile Indian co-author, Sudhanshu Palsule, spent many years teaching at a college in Denmark when writing our Managing in Four Worlds. Thereby I was introduced to Danish “northern” folk traditions, and the folk colleges born out of this. Our book at the time, in the mid-1990s, was duly informed by such, as well as by folk traditions of the east, west and south.

So we have America, South Africa, Palestine and Israel, Denmark and also Russia, where I recently made my latest writing journey through Integral Advantage: Emerging Economies and Societies. There I discovered the “Second Tier.” This was the ultimate wisdom of that great country, if you like, that both communism and capitalism have completely by-passed. Let me then return to my earlier question: what is so special about Spiral Dynamics in Action?

It is the very fact that it crosses all these frontiers, from east and west to north and south. What is so tragic about most of the literature on leadership today is that the “West,” primarily America, leads, and the rest follow. It is as if Donald Trump ruled the world! Yet, via Beck and Graves, together with Laubscher and Viljoen, Maalouf and Dawlabani, Larsen and Solonin, we have that other America, that place where all worlds meet, rather than their being “melted down” into one amorphous mass.

And now I say the final word. The reason why, some two decades ago, we immediately saw Spiral Dynamics as the center-piece of our Developmental Management Blackwell series, is that it addresses, simultaneously and interactively, not only the four corners of the globe, and its center, but, at one and the same time, the individual, the organization and society in each. The catastrophe of leadership theory and practice, today, is that it assumes one size, duly melted down, fits all, and that the individual can “lead” in isolation of her or his community and society, if not also their organization. The authors of this book show us that it can be otherwise.

Ronnie Lessem, Co-founder, Trans4m, France, and

Professor of Management, Da Vinci Institute, South Africa