A Radical New Model for Unleashing Your Company's Potential
In most organizations nearly everyone is doing a second job no one is
paying them for--namely, covering their weaknesses, trying to look their
best, and managing other people's impressions of them. There may be no
greater waste of a company's resources. The ultimate cost: neither the
organization nor its people are able to realize their full potential.
What if a company did everything in its power to create a culture in
which everyone--not just select "high potentials"--could overcome
their own internal barriers to change and use errors and vulnerabilities
as prime opportunities for personal and company growth?
Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (and their collaborators) have found and
studied such companies--Deliberately Developmental Organizations. A DDO
is organized around the simple but radical conviction that organizations
will best prosper when they are more deeply aligned with people's
strongest motive, which is to grow. This means going beyond consigning
"people development" to high-potential programs, executive coaching, or
once-a-year off-sites. It means fashioning an organizational culture in
which support of people's development is woven into the daily fabric of
working life and the company's regular operations, daily routines, and
conversations.
An Everyone Culture dives deep into the worlds of three leading
companies that embody this breakthrough approach. It reveals the design
principles, concrete practices, and underlying science at the heart of
DDOs--from their disciplined approach to giving feedback, to how they
use meetings, to the distinctive way that managers and leaders define
their roles. The authors then show readers how to build this
developmental culture in their own organizations.
This book demonstrates a whole new way of being at work. It suggests
that the culture you create is your strategy--and that the key to
success is developing everyone.
