The Quadrants Within the Quadrants

At the Integral Institute’s Integral Healthcare Training Showcase I attended last weekend, Dennis Harkins, of Madison, Wisconsin, tapped into a pretty interesting “all-quadrant” analysis. He showed a rather standard “all-quadrant” slide, then followed that with one I hadn’t seen – one with little 4-quadrant models housed within each of the 4 quadrants. In simple graphic, crafted (he says) in the Madison airport while awaiting his flight to Denver, he both complexified the AQAL world and, for some, may have simplified it. Let me say that this is a variant on the advances that Ken Wilber has made in his all-quadrant model that involve noticing the interior an exterior dimensions of each quadrant (see Integral Spirituality for a complete treatment of this theoretical advance). Ironically, Dennis offered this model as his way of coping with the new level of complexity that Ken’s advances have added to Integral Theory, this, despite the fact that his model at least doubles the complexity of Ken’s model. So, is the new complexity worth it? Can I understand my world better with this “quadrants within quadrants” approach? My tentative answer is “yes”. Much of my work is with major healthcare organizations, predominantly in the managed care component of the $2 trillion U.S. healthcare sector. Among my colleagues in the Integral Healthcare world, they automatic reaction often is to say that I work in the lower-right, or “systems” piece of the healthcare world. At one level, this is right: HMOs, PPOs, utilization management organizations, and health website organizations are inarguably systems and belong in the lower-right quadrant of an integral analysis of healthcare. Yet, at another level, it is an oversimplification, one that is cured, in part, by Dennis’ approach. If I am an employee of an HMO, my inner experience (upper-left) as an employee is clearly a relevant consideration in the functioning of this (lower-right) system. Similarly, the good news (Whole Foods) and bad news (Enron) out of corporate America is that organizational culture (lower left) really, really matters. And, what we know about organizational culture is that it is most strongly influenced by the attitudes (upper-left) and behaviors (upper-right) of senior executives. Will Dennis’ “quadrants-with-quadrants” model be useful every time I apply AQAL thinking to a practical problem? Probably not. But just the bare awareness that it might will help my process of inquiry more complete. Integral Theory, in my view, is not about providing answers, but equipping me with better questions. Dennis’ model provides just such a thing.