Integral Information Architecture

Developmental Stages

“Levels/stages” relate to the fact that everything develops in levels. As Source Integral wrote: “After 30 years of mostly Harvard-based research (e.g., Kegan, Cook-Greuter, Kohlberg, Gilligan, Piaget, Loevinger), there is strong academic consensus that the human mind organizes and develops in levels along predictably stable lines, levels and lines that can be measured. The mind develops toward greater complexity. At each level you are able to hold progressively more perspectives, able to solve more complex problems, and can visualize longer time horizons. These levels are not personality “types”; they are qualitative shifts in the complexity a mind can manage.”
Each level has different values and motivations. Each level – including your own – interprets given situations, businesses, problems, even reality through its own colored lens. Those levels/stages cannot be skipped. The related knowledge is based on the view, compilation and pattern recognition of more than 100 developmental psychological approaches of more than 100 researchers. People do not develop along a one-dimensional scale, just as the element “lines” points out: we all have multiple parallel intelligences and lines of development like cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, kinesthetic, ethical, spiritual, etc. The center of gravity of those lines/intelligences can be different when looking at different people, resulting in complex psychograms that should be reflected in our work and products.

At the occasion of conferences, projects and workshops, we frequently visualize developmental levels when an integral framework is foundation of the work. Some examples from the VisionLabs at the Celebrate Life Festival 2012: