“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Thoreau’s lyric observation (adjusted for gender balance) might describe the modern workplace. Too many professionals not engaged in their jobs, plodding in fruitless search for “greater-than-me” fulfillment. In the Creative Economy, talent maladies destroy business value.
Two Harvard learning researchers, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, propose an unusual remedy in their new book, An Everyone Culture.
They begin by reframing the problem: White-collar malaise is simply a symptom. The real issue, they argue, is us working stiffs are doing two jobs: one we’re paid for, and a second, silent and corrosive—here’s the desperation—politicking to hide weakness from colleagues and bosses. Job No. 2 is you constantly jamming the company radar to avoid revealing your limitations. And everybody does it, unconsciously or not, because everyone’s afraid of not being perfect. Small wonder, the authors imply, that productivity is staggering.
It’s Not About Freedom Or Perks
Kegan and Lahey’s solution bypasses the usual suspects. Everyone Culture is no cry for better corporate training, more freedom on the job, or bosses doubling down on farm-to-table cafeterias.
Instead, the book offers a hard-headed discussion about how to turn the “second job problem” into an opportunity, to increase any company’s effectiveness. Like others, Kegan and Lahey believe today’s “VUCA” environment—the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous global economy—requires organizations with ever more agility and innovation. Which in turn depends on better, and continuously growing talent.
OK, how to do that?
Of The People, By The People…
The way forward, these researchers propose, is building company cultures which fundamentally put everyone on the hook for developing themselves and everyone else around them. All the time, merged seamlessly with the business itself. Job No. 2 disappears when Job No. 1 is not just making the widgets but also improving your colleagues. Call it strategy of the people, by the people, for the people.
Meet The DDO
Kegan and Lahey sketch this aspiration via an analytical tour of three current, so-called “Deliberately Developmental Organizations” (DDOs): high performing, visionary companies, delivering exemplary results by obliterating their employees’ “second job.” These DDOs are transforming the lost time and energy of people hiding weaknesses by creating more transparent and developmentally-accountable ways of working. Goodbye to quiet desperation, hello to open and collaboratively-pursued professional growth.
DDO logic is simple: As assets lost to human dissimulation are improved and redeployed, you and your cubicle mates flourish–by the efforts of each other. The organization overall becomes more engaged and adaptive to change. Over time, collective performance soars.
Getting To Better
Kegan and Lahey aren’t promoting warm and fuzzy. Consider their account of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest and most successful hedge fund—and a prime DDO. Founder Ray Dalio demands gut-wrenching candor of his people: the ruthlessly transparent culture is tuned to making every employee a better performer (per the Bridgewater’s “Principles”).
Every workplace conversation is recorded, open to all; associates also use tablets to record “dots”—ratings and comments on everyone else’s mistakes and successes—constantly aggregated and then publicly discussed. “Issues” arising in daily interactions are tracked, and employees must use those to continuously improve “the machine” of their business. People are fired if they don’t get better: “We’re not in the business of rehabilitation.”
Work On Your Weak Backhand
Next Jump, another profiled DDO, promotes a similar ethos with a simple formula: “Better Me + Better You = Better Us.”
This e-commerce marketplace company attributes multi-year growth to systematic practice of its people exposing—and then working on– skill weaknesses (“your tennis backhand”). In monthly “10-x” meetings, employees take turns presenting to the whole company how they have individually contributed to revenue or organizational culture. Tough love about “how to do better” pours forth from the audience, for all to hear; in the future you’ll detail your progress, or explain what held you back. Teams regularly convene to provide cross-member coaching to strengthen each individual’s performance.
Not Just Fun And Games
Decurion, the third researched DDO, is a high-growth holding company, with businesses in movie exhibition (e.g. ArcLight Cinemas), real estate, and senior living. Its hierarchical structure is leavened by semi-formal (but regular) groupings of its people into problem-solving “learning communities.”
These communities tackle specific business issues through “fishbowl conversations” where chief actors openly work through assumptions and root causes, while other employees observe and comment. Hierarchy goes out the window; radical transparency and anyone-anywhere criticism for the greater good are expected.
Members of Decurion are told to “feast on their imperfections,” and follow axioms linking company profitability and individual professional growth. Nora Dashwood, Chief Operating Officer, is unambiguous about the interdependence: “We’ve seen a big difference in our revenues, [with] breakthrough results in every category. This is not just fun and games.”
Peering Into The Researchers’ Lab Notebook
These and other colorfully detailed examples make astonishing reading. For conceptual substance, Kegan and Lahey analyze the cases with a three-part framework (“Edge-Home-Groove”) which heroically assembles several organizational and behavioral theories into an overall psycho-dynamic model. Here, predictably, the pace slows, and the tone becomes more academic. But things perk up towards the end of the book, when the authors become more assertive about the business specifics of DDOs.
No one would accuse The Everyone Culture of over-simplification–but readers making the 292 page journey will find plenty of thought-provoking value. In fact, some of the challenge of the book is also its appeal: the array of charts and frameworks, coupled with vividly-told human accounts, of people grappling with business-driven mutual improvement, sometimes reads like the lab notebook of two excited researchers. Their jottings and anecdotes draw you in, to join them in peering over the edge of what might just be a management revolution.
I spoke recently with Kegan and Lahey to learn more.
Plenty of Companies Thrive Without A DDO Approach: Why?
Lisa: “There are some businesses today whose strategic challenges are more ‘technical’ than ‘adaptive’ (i.e. more clearly known, not requiring continuous learning). Some companies—Amazon, perhaps—can also attract great people, chew them up, but keep finding more to keep going.”
Kegan countered that such organizational models are not long-term sustainable. “Though the forms may vary, the basic DDO approach is a harbinger of the future. More companies will to have to build this kind of capability to deal with the growing uncertainty of VUCA.”
“Most leaders today haven’t caught up with what neuroscience has discovered about humans working together and improving. Current DDOs are further along. Management science will increasingly leverage all the new cognitive and behavioral research.”
So If This Is A Revolution, Why Isn’t It Happening Faster?
“Doesn’t every hedge want to make as much money as Bridgewater? Why isn’t there a flood of new DDOs in every industry now?”
Kegan answered my challenge bluntly.
“These are hard places to work. It may be exhilarating for some people. But they’ll all tell you, ‘It’s not for the faint of heart.’ It’s very tough to face your own ego, deal with a brain inheritance guarding against psychological threat. I remember a cartoon: two guys selling different products, side by side in little booths. One guy’s offering ‘Comforting Lies,’ the other ‘Disturbing Truths.’ Guess who has all the customers?”
Does DDO Also Apply To the Emerging World Of Networks And Cross-Boundary Ecosystems?
The question at first surprised the authors—but after a pause, both reflected how the studied DDOs are all making conscious efforts to share— even extend—their special cultures to other stakeholders.
Lisa noted that Bridgewater employees actually “develop relationships with their clients quite consistent with what they do in their own organization: bold discussions, feedback given, no ‘second jobs’, etc.” Bob remembered that “Next Jump has an explicit goal of not just bringing services to their customers, but also intriguing them with a culture of ‘Better Us.’ And Decurion talks about acting out their beliefs in the ecology in which they operate. When they were developing a new assisted living business, they used their philosophy of managing conflict to overcome difficult permitting challenges with California regulators—in record time.”
If A Leader Wants To Build A DDO Culture, How To Get Started?
Lahey answered quickly. “The leader first needs to ask, ‘Why do I want to do this? What’s the problem that can’t be solved by some other means? Next: ‘Can I work in this very different way—be intentional in growing my performance edge? Be open to feedback—from anywhere?’”
Kegan added more. “The leader has to be an exemplar, a player, not just watch with hands folded. And he or she can’t just do this to feel good. They need fire in the belly, and commit to making the company better by making the people better. It calls for advancing a vision, and giving up some power– and also expecting the same of other senior people. They also have to be willing to be criticized by associates half their age.”
He widened the aperture further. “It also entails reconstructing all your metrics and assumptions. What it means to do a job, time you spend on other people, whether you see a fire burning as a problem or an opportunity to learn. It requires an open mindset: ‘I’m undertaking an experiment to work in a new way that’s could make a big performance difference. Can I bear the cost and risk of making the change?’”
Looking Ahead
Lisa and Bob explained that the book is just a first phase of research: “We had to begin by identifying a few pioneering beast in the wild, and understand their unique ways of using this DDO culture as strategy.”
“OK,” I said. “What questions would a Phase 2 pursue?”
The authors finished with a flourish:
“How best to build the practices of the core framework? Can organizations develop a DDO without first experiencing failure? What’s the psychological safety needed to support the personal transformations?”
“Can this model be scaled, for larger and more impersonal corporations?”
“Other sectors: can DDO improve public schools? Health care, non-profit and government organizations?”
“How can we expand the practice everywhere–so everybody can stop doing their ‘second job’?”
Originally published on Forbes.com