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An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey
TAKE a careful look at any organisation - large or small, private or public, for-profits or non-profits. You will see that most people, “are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations,” the authors assert.
This is a huge waste of talent and resources suffered daily by organisations. Individuals too, suffer knowing they are not the person they are presenting themselves to be.
The authors are all faculty members of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. When they began studying organisations where no one is encouraged to spend time faking and covering up, “normal began to look strange to us.”
This book is an answer to the question, “What is the most powerful way to develop the capabilities of people at work?” The answer they found was, what they call, “deliberately developmental organisations.” It applies what we know about helping individuals grow on a one-to-one basis, and spreads these principles and techniques to entire organisations.
What could you expect from an organisation that creates the opportunity for everyone, from workers to managers, to develop emotionally, socially and professionally? What would this incubator of capability look like and produce?
In the first instance it would require that the environment is supportive, allowing for everyone to make their weaknesses public, so colleagues can offer support in the process of overcoming them.
Too extreme to contemplate with any seriousness? Read on…
The companies the authors describe are not their clients, and their relationships are only for research purposes. None of the companies they researched is formally in the ‘human potential business’, neither do they sell services related to helping people overcome their limitations. The three companies they describe are an e-commerce business, an operator of movie theatres, and a hedge fund manager.
This is a most unlikely group to naturally adopt the process of continuous, public, self-examination for personal development. But these companies view their unusual cultures as an investment in their own business success. They understand that you cannot separate the people who make up the business, from the business itself.
The authors researched Next Jump, Decurion, and Bridgewater Associates.
Brilliant jerks
‘Next Jump’ built a marketplace that connects 30 000 merchants with 70 000 000 employees from 4 000 large businesses (700 of the Fortune 1 000), and over 100 000 small businesses. The company generates billions of dollars in annual sales.
Charlie Kim, CEO and cofounder, recalls that they used to recruit for the same characteristics that others do — “We looked for the most competitive and driven people. We ended up hiring what we later called ‘brilliant jerks.’”
Recruits are chosen for their technical strength, but are interviewed for the hard skills required in real-life settings. Are they humble? Are they willing to learn from others in order to grow? Do they show persistence through challenging times and setbacks, rather than giving up? Are they takers, only in it only for themselves, or do they have the ability to be givers?
Kim has built a culture where staff remain calm, nodding, agreeing, and finally thanking others for their help when they receive public, hard feedback on their performance. They have created an environment for learning where winning is understood as less valuable than what is learned by losing - in the pursuit of excellence. Feedback is seen as a way people show deep caring for others.
Everyone is acknowledged as having ‘backhands’, (as in tennis.) Strengths are ‘forehands’, but to be a great tennis player, you must also work on your backhand, areas where you feel less comfortable, less natural, less skilful. Every project is a practice ground for working on people’s backhands. In public forums everyone is expected to get better at spotting opportunities for overcoming limiting behaviours and mind-sets.
In Next Jump, a deliberately developmental organisation, this is not a shark tank, but rather a respectful and brave space.
'Love' mistakes
Decurion, a movie theatre business, has as its purpose to create places for people to flourish. This is not ‘flourishing’, in the sense of appreciation and good feelings, but growth and development which does not always equal feeling good.
Working life at Decurion is organised around the idea of community, with individual accountability for decisions that affect the business. People still report to one another, are dismissed, and are overruled on decisions, but every member is expected to look at the success of the whole company, rather than the myopia of their own role or function. When an authentic community forms, it is greater than the sum of its parts, and can deal with complexity better than a group of brilliant individuals could.
People are encouraged to ‘love’ mistakes. The issue is not looking good, but rather achieving goals. “When you experience pain, remember to reflect.” The talk concerns “Is it true?” and “Does it make sense?” and people are expected to be assertive and open-minded at the same time.
Working on overcoming their limitations is a regular part of working through business problems – all in the pursuit of business excellence. This is what trying to create a place for people to flourish looks like, according to Decurion.
Fast learning
Bridgewater Associates manages approximately $165bn in global investments. It was rated by the Economist as having made more money for its investors, than any other hedge fund in history. This has been achieved because founder Ray Dalio has always put how fast you are learning, ahead of how good you are.
The culture is transparent at every level, from glass meeting rooms, to the recording of every meeting with alerts to you, if your name is mentioned. Transparency is prized as the best disinfectant.
Bridgewater is unrelenting in the search for truth, including the often painful truths about one’s own limitations. Problems are identified, not tolerated, because most problems are “potential improvements screaming at you”.
Recognising and learning from one’s mistakes and the mistakes of others, is understood as critical to eliminating problems. It is common to stop meetings for a ‘step-back moment’, to take stock of errors, diagnose their causes in people’s habitual actions and thinking, and to identify what individuals can do to learn from this. “What does what happened say about you—about how you think?”
The search for what is true, no matter how inconvenient, is understood as both a business necessity in the financial markets, and as a path for personal evolution.
The result of these ‘deliberately developmental organisations’ is an increase in profitability, improved employee retention, greater speed to promotion. It produces greater frankness in communication, better operational and strategic error detection, more effective delegation, and enhanced accountability.
This book is as much about realizing organisational potential, as it is about realizing human potential. No business leader, at any level, should miss this one.
Readability Light
----+ Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High ---+- Low
* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
