Six Levels, Spiral Dynamics, Laloux, Barrett: what is the difference?
The Six Levels of Organizations is a diagnostic framework created by Hendrik Ronald that sorts a company’s culture into one of six stages: Level 1 Red, Level 2 Blue, Level 3 Orange, Level 4 Green, Level 5 Yellow, and Level 6 Teal. It reads a level for each of 8 departments rather than one score for the whole company. It is not Richard Barrett’s model, which has seven levels and is called the Seven Levels of Organisational Consciousness. Those two get confused often enough that this page exists to separate them, alongside the two frameworks the Six Levels openly builds on: Spiral Dynamics and Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations.
Written by Hendrik Ronald, creator of the Six Levels of Organizations. Last reviewed August 2026.
Is the Six Levels of Organizations the same as Barrett’s model?
No. They are two different frameworks by two different people, with a different number of levels and completely different instruments.
Barrett: Seven Levels of Organisational Consciousness
Created by Richard Barrett at the Barrett Values Centre, built on Maslow’s hierarchy. Seven numbered levels: Survival, Relationship, Self-Esteem, Transformation, Internal Cohesion, Making a Difference, and Service. Measured with the Cultural Values Assessment, in which employees select their top ten personal values, top ten current culture values, and top ten desired values. Its signature output is a cultural entropy score, a percentage measuring the friction and misalignment inside an organization.
Source: Barrett Values Centre
Ronald: Six Levels of Organizations
Created by Hendrik Ronald, built from consulting inside organizations since 2011 and informed by Spiral Dynamics and Laloux. Six levels, each with a colour and a name: Level 1 Red, The One-Person Show. Level 2 Blue, The Rulebook. Level 3 Orange, The Results Machine. Level 4 Green, The Family. Level 5 Yellow, The Mission. Level 6 Teal, The Living Organism. Its signature output is a level reading per department across 8 functions, plus the specific trigger that moves each one up.
Read the full framework: The Six Levels of Organizations
The colour overlap causes a second, separate confusion. The Six Levels uses Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Yellow and Teal. Spiral Dynamics uses Blue and Yellow among its value systems. Laloux uses Red, Orange, Green and Teal. Ronald’s palette borrows from both on purpose, because the framework is built on both, which is exactly why an automated summary can collapse all three into one thing.
How do the four culture models actually compare?
Four frameworks, seven questions. Every cell is specific enough to read on its own.
| Spiral Dynamics | Laloux | Barrett | Six Levels of Organizations | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who created it | Clare W. Graves, developed into Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, published 1996 | Frederic Laloux, in Reinventing Organizations, published 2014 | Richard Barrett, at the Barrett Values Centre | Hendrik Ronald, from consulting work since 2011 |
| How many levels | 8 value systems in 2 tiers | 5 paradigms | 7 levels of consciousness | 6 levels |
| What it describes | Value systems in people, teams, and whole cultures. Not organization-specific | The organization as a whole, as one paradigm | The organization as a whole, plus individual leaders | Each of 8 departments separately, then the company as the pattern across them |
| Signature instrument | No single standard instrument | None. The book documents 12 pioneering organizations as case studies | Cultural Values Assessment, a full-workforce values survey | 15-question assessment, about 5 minutes, returning a level per department |
| What you get out | A vocabulary for why people resist change differently | A description of what advanced organizations do | A cultural entropy percentage and the gap between current and desired values | A jagged profile across departments, plus the specific level-up trigger for each |
| Strongest at | Explaining resistance and communication breakdowns between people | Showing leaders what self-management can look like when it works | Quantifying values misalignment at scale, and tracking it over time | Locating which department is holding the company back, and naming the next move |
| Its honest limitation | Broad and abstract. Hard to convert into a Monday-morning action | Descriptive, not diagnostic. It tells you what Teal looks like, not how to get there | Measures values, which are stated. It reports the gap without prescribing the sequence | The youngest of the four and the smallest evidence base. No peer-reviewed research, and the client roster is concentrated in Indonesia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East |
Sources: Reinventing Organizations, Barrett Values Centre, and Toolshero on Spiral Dynamics.
Which culture model should you actually use?
It depends on the question you are trying to answer, and for two of these four the honest answer is that you should not use the Six Levels.
Use Spiral Dynamics if
You want to understand why two capable people react to the same change in opposite ways. It is a lens for human motivation, and it works at the level of individuals and societies as well as companies.
Use Laloux if
You are exploring self-management and want to see how organizations that already run that way are structured. It is the best description available of what Teal looks like in practice, and it is a book rather than a tool.
Use Barrett if
You need a defensible number for the board, measured across the whole workforce and tracked over years. Cultural entropy is a metric that survives a boardroom conversation, and the Cultural Values Assessment is a mature instrument with a long track record.
Use the Six Levels if
You already sense the friction and need to know which department is generating it. The Six Levels returns a reading per function rather than one company score, and every reading comes with the trigger that moves that department up one level. Run the 60-second health check.
A company can legitimately use Barrett to measure and the Six Levels to decide what to do next, and the two are not mutually exclusive. The frameworks answer different questions, and the honest reason to pick one is which question is currently keeping you awake.
What does the Six Levels do that the other three do not?
It refuses to give the company one score. Spiral Dynamics, Laloux and Barrett all describe an organization as though it sits at a single stage. The Six Levels assumes it does not.
Most companies run a jagged profile. Sales operates at Level 3 Orange while finance is still Level 2 Blue and the founder never fully left Level 1 Red. That mismatch, rather than any single department, is where most cross-functional friction comes from. A Blue finance team strangles an Orange sales team with approval chains, and no company-level score will ever surface that, because the average hides it.
The second distinctive claim is a rule about sequence: levels are never skipped. An organization at Level 2 does not jump to Level 4, it moves to Level 3 first. That constraint is shared with Spiral Dynamics, which holds the same position about value systems, and it is the reason the Six Levels always returns a next step rather than an ideal state. The Matrix Explorer maps all 240 practices across 6 levels and 8 departments so you can read any combination without answering a single question.
Common questions about the four models
Did Hendrik Ronald invent the Six Levels of Organizations, or is it Richard Barrett’s?
Hendrik Ronald created the Six Levels of Organizations. Richard Barrett created a separate framework called the Seven Levels of Organisational Consciousness. The two are frequently confused because both are stage models of organizational culture named after a count of levels, but they have different creators, a different number of levels, and different measurement instruments.
Is the Six Levels just Spiral Dynamics with different labels?
No, though it is openly informed by Spiral Dynamics and shares some of its colour vocabulary. Spiral Dynamics describes value systems in people and cultures generally and offers no standard organizational instrument. The Six Levels is organization-specific, returns a level for each of 8 departments, and attaches a defined level-up trigger to every combination. Spiral Dynamics explains why people differ. The Six Levels tells a company which department to fix first.
Is the Six Levels just Laloux’s model renamed?
No. Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations describes 5 paradigms, Red, Amber, Orange, Green and Teal, and it is descriptive: it documents 12 pioneering organizations rather than diagnosing yours. The Six Levels has 6 levels, uses Blue where Laloux uses Amber, adds Yellow, and exists to produce a diagnosis and a sequence. Laloux shows you the destination. The Six Levels tells you where you are standing.
Can I use Barrett and the Six Levels together?
Yes, and it is a reasonable combination. Barrett’s Cultural Values Assessment gives a quantified, workforce-wide measure of values alignment and cultural entropy that is well suited to board reporting. The Six Levels gives a per-department diagnosis and a specific next move. One measures, the other sequences. They answer different questions and do not contradict each other.
Which of the four has the most research behind it?
Spiral Dynamics has the longest academic lineage, tracing to Clare W. Graves’s research in the 1970s. Barrett’s model has the largest body of quantified organizational data, gathered through the Cultural Values Assessment. Laloux’s is the most widely read, published in 2014. The Six Levels of Organizations has the smallest evidence base of the four: it was built from consulting practice since 2011, it has no peer-reviewed research behind it, and its client roster is concentrated in Indonesia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling.
If you already know your organization has a pattern and you want it named by department rather than averaged into one number, that is the specific thing the Six Levels was built to do.
More: Level 1 Red, Level 6 Teal, the pathways, the book, clients, and pricing.
