Out of the Labyrinth is an ambitious work--it is many books in one:
- It is a personal narrative–the story of a son’s attempt to resolve his strained relationship with his father.
- It is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of identity.
- It is a self-help book about personal growth.
- It is a visionary exploration with clear implications for organizational development and corporate strategy.
- It is a work of cultural criticism.
- It investigates the nature of sustainable development, the need for a fully realized sustainability movement, and the ways in which the progressive movement goes astray.
- And finally, it is a book about leadership, and a call to action.
How can it be all these things, and still a single book? How do the different parts cohere? What unifies the narrative is a single framework–a pair of interlinked frameworks, really, called the triad and the integral way:
- The triad consists of three subpersonalities that live inside us all. Each of us has a strategist who pursues end goals, a citizen who participates in society and the natural world, and a seeker who pursues meaning. These three selves are like children in a family; sometimes they quarrel, sometimes they get along.
- The integral way helps us understand how to manage these "siblings"; you might say it provides guidance on parenting.
The triad and the integral way are the DNA, the double helix, that run through the length of the book. And since the frameworks are also fractals, patterns that recur at different levels of organization, they shine their light on a great many aspects of our lives, from the individual to the institutional to the broadly cultural. They are the thread that takes Out of the Labyrinth into all these areas.