Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan

Questions About How You Relate to Others How do you coach people to do their best work and develop their talents? What’s the best way to communicate with you? What’s the best way to convince you to do something? How do you like to give feedback? How do you like to get feedback?

Research shows that making time and space for gratitude improves well-being, reduces impatience, and boosts brain function. Here’s an easy way to get started: At the beginning or end of your next meeting, ask everyone to stop what they’re doing and think for a moment about something or someone they’re grateful for and wish to recognize within the team. Then go around one by one and share. No fanfare, just an honest acknowledgment that says, “Hey, I love the energy you bring” or “You were there for me when I needed support” or “You’re the best designer in the building and we’re lucky to have you.” A little touchy feely? Sure. But you won’t believe the effect it has on morale. We forget to do this. We avoid it because it’s uncomfortable.

When you believe that your choices and attitude matter, you show up in your own life. You strive to make things better. You reach for your dreams. You never give up. This leads to more practice, more failure, more learning. Everything about the future of work calls us to connect with our deeper sense of self—our empathy, our vulnerability, our bravery, our humility, and our humanity. Ironically, it’s the organizations that create the space to be imperfect that end up with the most stunning teams.

Here’s an approach to balancing both that puts the person seeking feedback in control: Set a time frame for deeper feedback that makes sense in your context. I recommend 120 days. On that interval, using software (e.g. Slackbot or Google Forms) or a team willing to facilitate, reach out to each member of your team, and ask them if they’d like feedback. If they say no, let it go. They’ll get another chance in a few months.

If they say yes, ask them whether they’d like to use standard questions (start/stop/continue or similar) or write their own. Ask participants which three to five colleagues they’d like to receive feedback from. If you’re using software to automate this process, you may even be able to recommend the people they communicate with most frequently. Send the questions to their suggested colleagues with a time limit for contribution. Make this a ritual that is prioritized and celebrated in the culture. Compile and share the responses with each participant. Let them choose who to share it with, including their manager (if they have one). Invite participants to convene their respondents for an in-person sensemaking session led by them. The question on the table is “Based on the feedback you received, what questions do you have for your colleagues?” This is chance to zero in on things that they want to work on and make real breakthroughs and commitments. Finally, don’t let this feedback rhythm become an excuse to avoid real-time conversations and retrospectives. The end of every interaction, sprint, and project is an opportunity for feedback. Teams at The Ready try to take a moment for feedback after any key event. Leaving a new business meeting, I might ask a colleague, “What did you notice? What happened? What surprised you? And what feedback do you have for me?”

Recognize that developing personal and professional mastery is a basic human need. If you can create an environment where people grow quickly, you’ll never lack for stunning colleagues. People are the architects of their own growth. Let them solicit and guide their own feedback and progression.

Accept that competence is complex and contextual. Don’t try to reduce talents and skills to a matrix. Remember that reverence for expertise can lead to arrested development or missed opportunities. Learning agility is a far better bet. A great learner can figure it out on the fly. The world’s best hammer can only hit nails.

Motivators included job characteristics such as recognition for achievement, meaningful and interesting work, involvement in decision making, and advancement or personal growth. Addressing these factors increased satisfaction by improving the nature of the work itself. Hygiene factors, on the other hand, included company policies, job status and security, supervisory practices, and—you guessed it—salary and benefits. Addressing these factors reduced dissatisfaction by improving the job environment. What does this mean for the world of compensation? It means that increasing salaries that are too low can reduce job dissatisfaction, but increasing salaries that are already generous won’t increase job satisfaction in any meaningful or lasting way.

Netflix famously takes this approach to the next level by paying top of market for the person in question. This is an individualized approach also known as “paying the person.” It uses three questions to determine the top-of-market value for a member of their team: (1) What could this person get elsewhere? (2) What would we pay for their replacement? (3) What would we pay to keep this person, if they had a bigger offer elsewhere? The goal is to consistently keep each employee at the top of their own market value. Sometimes that means large or frequent raises.

Eliminate Bonuses. Incentive compensation is counterproductive. At best, it rewards behavior that was already happening and, in the process, strips that activity of its intrinsic value. At worst, it actually promotes negative behavior in the form of sandbagging, unhealthy competition, and manipulation. To make matters worse, individual performance is a myth.

True performance—the kind we ultimately care about—is a team sport. So instead of taunting people with bonuses, pay above market for the best talent you can recruit, and get out of their way. If you really want to reward your team for business performance, do it in the form of profit sharing proportional to their percentage of the salary pool. That metric is harder to game, and it brings everyone together.

Recognize that compensation is a hygiene factor that should be fair and generous enough to not matter. Keep the focus on autonomy, mastery, and purpose—conditions that actually support motivation. If you can, move to profit sharing (or a similar construct) to connect everyone to the overall success of the organization.

Accept that no formula, leveling system, skills matrix, or series of job titles is going to sufficiently capture the complexity of a real workforce. Only transparency, dialogue, and judgment can make sense of what is fair, and even then you’ll be grappling with inherent issues of bias and privilege that will not be easily eliminated. Compensation can’t be solved, it must be tuned.

All decisions involve emotion. When you face a choice, subcortical structures in your brain fire and a range of emotions, instincts, and body sensations unfold, influencing or even arriving at a somatic decision before you’re fully aware of it. This is what is commonly known as a “gut feeling.” This interplay between our various thinking systems is so fast and embedded that we don’t even realize it’s happening. We may cling to the idea that we make most of our decisions objectively and rationally. But it simply isn’t so.82 Which is why, at this point in the book, I believe you’ve already made your choice. Somewhere in your mind or your body, you know. Either you believe that we need to change how we work, and you’re going to take that leap, or you don’t and you won’t. From here on out, I’m speaking to the believers. The catalysts. The visionaries. The risk takers. The readers who know in their gut that if we don’t change how we come together as human beings to build and shape the future, then the future won’t be a place we want to be. So where do we go from here? The answer is easy; the doing is hard. If you hold power over other people—in business, in philanthropy, in education, in public service, in your community, or even at home—it is your responsibility to increase the humanity, vitality, and adaptivity of that system. If you’re with me, here we go.

Everyone says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” More potent than strategy, and yet still so elusive. It’s the one word in business that means everything and nothing.

“People like us do things like this,” he says.1 It’s that simple, and that hard.

Culture can’t be controlled or designed. It emerges. It isn’t happening to people; it’s happening among people.

People are complex. We grow and change in our own way, in our own time. As Ben Franklin once said, “Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.”

We were three weeks into a project and our sponsor on the client side was looking for the plan. “I just don’t understand what’s going to happen,” he told me. “We’re meeting with teams and talking about their way of working, but when are we going to start doing the real work?” “Well,” I said, “this is the real work. We’re asking teams what’s slowing them down or standing in their way. We’re asking them what they’d change if they could. And we’re inviting them to design and run experiments around those tensions and scale the ones that work.” He looked at me quizzically and took a long pause. “Right … but what’s the plan?” His company, Control Inc., had reached out to us because they were seeking a partner to help with culture change. The leadership team was under pressure to turn the company around because growth had stalled and employee engagement was dwindling. They had rightly identified that culture was central to their predicament. However, the other partners they were considering—traditional consultants and Agile experts—made us think twice. Those were the kind of partners you chose if you wanted a concrete recommendation. A PowerPoint deck. A proven methodology. A structural reorganization. These sorts of solutions can feel comforting when you’re unsure, but over time they lead to dependence and fragility. When the one-size-fits-all answer doesn’t work (or stops working), what then? We made the case that what Control Inc. needed was bigger than Agile and more nuanced ...

THE FOLLY OF THE CHANGE PLAN In the popular approach to change, the one you know and have probably experienced, we imagine the future we want and then we attempt to close the gap between how things are and how they should be. Because we are oriented around a specific vision of the future, we tend to view change as finite. It’s a journey from point A to point B, with a beginning, middle, and end. Once we achieve that goal, we are done. To that end, we manage change in a linear fashion, with a project plan, time line, milestones, and all the trappings of a controlled and ordered process. This is a compelling but ultimately incoherent theory of change. It’s compelling because it reflects what we want to believe about the world and our power to change it. Don’t forget, we’re carrying a hundred years of Taylorism around with us and the wiring is deep. Our entire career, we have been trained and drilled on the importance of planning, control, and finding the one best way. We want to do change by the book.

We need a new approach to organizational transformation. We can start by accepting that organizations are complex adaptive systems, not complicated mechanical ones. They are living systems, not machines. They are the sum total of the principles, practices, mindsets, assumptions, and behavior of hundreds or thousands of people.

How do you change a complex adaptive system? You live in the now.

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty. —Seneca

We have a name for what happens when everyone in an organization is engaged and empowered to shape and reshape its operating system. We call it continuous participatory change. Continuous because we need to break the habit of treating change as a rare and hallowed thing. The inertia of the status quo has made change a last resort. We can make small local changes routine and find that progress compounds. And participatory because we need to break the habit of centralized, top-down transformation. We can distribute authority and encourage everyone to steer the organization in service of its purpose.

worth encouraging: Commitment: When those with power or influence commit to moving beyond bureaucracy. Boundaries: When a liminal space is created and protected. Priming: When the invitation to think and work differently is offered. Looping: When change is decentralized and self-management begins. Criticality: When the system has tipped and there’s no going back. Continuity: When continuous participatory change is a way of life, and the organization is contributing to the broader community of practice. Do not mistake these for steps. They’re more akin to thresholds. The order can change. They can be revisited and renewed. They can interact. But when they happen, they help. If you squint, they feel almost like a plan … written in pencil.

Autonomy. All members and teams should be self-managing and self-organizing. Members have the freedom and responsibility to use their skills, judgment, and feedback loops to steer and serve the organization’s purpose.

Consent. All policy decisions—agreements, rules, roles, structures, and resources—should be made through the informed consent of those impacted by that decision. In the spirit of agility, members may consent to using other forms of decision making, including distributing authority to specific roles, teams, or elected representatives.

Transparency. All information should be made available and accessible to all members. Individuals and teams should “default to open” when it comes to sharing...

Lack of trust. It isn’t always clear who has the authority to make decisions. Bottlenecks in decision making. Too much consensus. People have to ask for permission to take action. Opinions matter more than data. We have meetings to prepare for meetings. Our meetings are theater. Meetings don’t lead to decisions or action. No time in the day for actual work. Only the loudest voices get heard. Too many meetings. Not enough transparency. Information is shared only on a need-to-know basis. Lack of honesty and candor. Lack of visibility between teams. Too much email. The “why” behind decisions isn’t always clear. Outdated tech tools. Our technology and tools are not maximizing our potential. Our processes get in the way of the work. We operate like everything is a crisis. We are addicted to planning. Work/life boundaries are not used or respected. We reflect infrequently. We plan and predict rather than test and learn. We change slower than the outside world. Rigid structures prevent experimentation. Failure is unacceptable. Good ideas get lost in bureaucracy. We don’t take risks. Lack of feedback. Learned helplessness. Our people don’t have the skills we need. We aren’t self-aware. Career paths are unclear. We work in silos. Cross-functional relationships are strained. Roles aren’t clear. Everyone needs to be involved in all things. Teams are not cross-functional or cross-disciplinary. Our structure inhibits collaboration. Too many layers. Misalignment between our strategy and...

Craft a clear and compelling purpose for the organization. Craft a clear and compelling purpose for every team and every role. Ask teams to share their essential intent for the next six to twenty-four months. Clarify the metrics that matter and use them to steer. Recognize and celebrate noble failure. Replace “Is it perfect?” with “Is it safe to try?” Give everyone the freedom to choose when, where, and how they work. Clarify the decision rights held by teams and roles. Use the concept of a waterline to create guardrails around team and individual autonomy. Start distributing authority to the edge of the organization. Crowdsource and eliminate policies and processes that no longer make sense. Start by stopping a meeting, process, or habit that is holding us back. Leverage decision science to reduce bias and make objectively better choices. Use Integrative Decision Making for important collective decisions. Distinguish between reversible and irreversible decisions and treat them differently. Define spending thresholds below which no approval or advice is necessary. Replace the permission process with a robust advice process. Trade autocracy and consensus for governance by consent. Form SLAM teams—self-managing, lean, audacious, multidisciplinary—around critical initiatives. Decentralize some of the work of central functions to teams at the edge for greater context and speed. Abandon singular job titles and descriptions for modular roles and role mixes. Develop and define th...

Set aside funds every quarter to be allocated by the team using participatory budgeting. Invite everyone to spend 20 percent of their time (or more) working on whatever inspires them. Break the work into sprints to learn faster and reduce risk. Limit work in progress to a specific number of projects, initiatives, or tasks. Eliminate all status updates, project reviews, and other bureaucratic theater. Eliminate or repurpose one- on-ones that gravitate toward permission or politics. Hold regular governance meetings to update agreements, rules, policies, roles, and structures. Elect a facilitator and scribe on every team to keep meetings productive and documented. Use a meeting moratorium to rebuild our operating rhythm from scratch. Learn and leverage proven meeting structures that consistently move the work forward. Hold regular retrospectives to build learning into every team, project, and initiative. Begin meetings with a chance to get present and check in as human beings. End meetings by observing what we—as a team—can do

better next time. Take turns or speak in rounds to hear all voices during meetings and calls. Give up preplanned agendas and start building them on the fly. Create dashboards that make team activity and performance visible. Make org and team financials transparent and accessible. Make compensation transparent to everyone in the organization. Adopt a policy of “open by default” when it comes to information. Make all available information searchable and accessible. Work in public by making workflow and work in progress visible to other teams. Stop sharing files and switch to software that supports real-time collaboration. Ensure that all agreements, rules, policies, roles, and structures are transparent, documented, and governable. Phase out internal email and move to Slack, Teams, or Workplace. Institute a regular ask-me-anything meeting that’s open to everyone. Prioritize generative difference when hiring and forming teams. Stop hiring for culture fit and start hiring for what’s missing from the culture. Create a team charter for every team, project, or initiative. Create a “user manual to me” for every member of the team. Make time for gratitude, recognition, and celebration. R...

It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Experiment Worksheet Tension What is your tension? How does it manifest? Share a story that brings it to life. Practice What do you propose we try? What is your hypothesis? How does this practice support our commitment to a People Positive and Complexity Conscious OS? Participants Who will be involved? What are they committing to? Duration How long will the experiment last? When will you conduct a retrospective to collect perspectives and learning? Learning Metrics How will we know if it was beneficial or harmful? What kinds of stories do you hope to hear? Requirements What do you need in order to conduct the experiment, in terms of resources, space, supplies, funding, etc.? Safety What kind of support or consent do you need to make this safe to try?

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other. —Simon Sinek

The biggest barrier to change, believe it or not, is you.

Man has no greater enemy than himself. —Petrarch

Practicing continuous participatory change over and over has surfaced some valuable lessons about how to do it well. They’re not rules, mind you. In complexity, rules can become constraints that limit our ability to adapt. “Always” and “never” are words we try to avoid. Instead we attempt to develop principles or heuristics—guidelines that prove useful in certain situations without being overly rigid or restrictive. These somewhat counterintuitive aphorisms may help you avoid some common pitfalls. While you’re living in the now, managing the present, and revealing the adjacent possible, remember these ideas. When you feel stuck, they may help you find a path forward.

This is an intensely uncomfortable proposition to leaders. They immediately fear a variety of negative outcomes: that teams will unleash chaos, that candor and transparency will create panic or negativity, that they won’t be able to control what unfolds, and of course the shadow fear—that they aren’t really needed at all. They have to let these fears go. The more they trust, the faster the right change can occur.

Start Small Inside large organizations, moving the needle requires big moves—big programs, big campaigns, and big acquisitions. As a result, many leaders dismiss small moves as inconsequential. Projects and programs often end up with overly ambitious goals and time lines. Big wins delivered in the short term. Could anything be more challenging? Almost every idea for a new product, new process, or new tool is met with the same question: “How will that work at scale?” As if we were going to go from zero to one hundred on it. As if it were binary. And if it does seem promising at scale, then we default to a scaled implementation. Massive funding. Umpteen approvals. Project managers. Rollout plan. And on and on. In a simpler world, that might make sense. But in a complex world, things can change rapidly and unexpectedly. Focusing exclusively on scale slows us down, creates risk, and eliminates possibilities. The simple metaphor is a two-hundred-pound stone versus two hundred one-pound stones. Which is easier to move? Which is riskier to move? Which one can best leverage many hands? Instead, start small. Involve fewer people. Change one part of a process rather than the whole thing, or change it for one group but not another. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to scale something that has been validated and improved by the people who have to use it every day. When your team is taking smaller bites, there’s a feeling of momentum, and the electricity of that is palpable. Other tea...

The vast majority of rules and process are created because we don’t trust people to do the right thing.

look at resistance as information. People are telling you something when they resist change. Your job is to find out what. Resistance is an invitation to talk, listen, and learn.

In my future of work … › Every business, nonprofit, government, and social institution practices Continuous Participatory Change and aspires to get better every day, not just for its customers but for all stakeholders, including the community. › Purpose and human flourishing are the objectives that drive organizations. Growth is a result, not a goal. › Self-management is the dominant organizing construct, and most individuals go to work in an environment that promotes freedom and responsibility. › Employee ownership and participation are expected and supported. Not every business is a true cooperative, but rewards are far more distributed. Many organizations become employee- or community-owned over time as founders and investors realize sufficient returns. › New forms of incorporation allow organizations to include public benefit as a counterbalance to their fiduciary duty. Making money is no longer the sole function of

business. › More companies stay private and resist outside investment to remain free of outside influence and pressure. Those that need funding increasingly get it from their community or investors with a broader definition of return. Those that need to go public do so via new platforms that allow them to optimize for the long term rather than the short term. › Diversity, equity, and inclusion are considered fundamental to success, both because they improve performance and because they reflect our values. Organizations make trade-offs in order to excel in these areas. › Innovation and experimentation are far more pervasive and distributed. It’s not uncommon to encounter a trial or test, even in well-optimized environments. › Due to technological augmentation and reduced bureaucracy, people are more creative and productive. As a result, organizations are smaller in terms of head count and generate more profit per head. › Sustainability and environmental stewardship are recognized as a fundamental part of the economic equation. Carbon neutrality is table stakes. Regenerative design and operations are increasingly where the action is. › Regulation is more Complexity Conscious—driven less by rules and compliance and more by experimentation and outcomes. Instead of “What fuel efficiency target must all automobiles meet by 2020,” the question might be “What conditions or enabling constraints lead auto manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency continuously?” › While volatility an...

part of a high-performing team. Entrepreneurial skills are prized above Ivy League admission. › New forms of universal basic income are being tested for their ability to provide for our basic human needs while also encouraging us to use and share our gifts—through entrepreneurship, service, and community. › New forms of currency and means of exchange provide alternatives to the current model of borrowing money lent at interest. › Blockchain and cryptocurrencies enable massively distribut...

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. —Albert Einstein

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. —Niccolò Machiavelli

An old Henry Ford quote best sums up my feelings on this question: “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”