Dignan - Brave new work: are you ready to reinvent your organization?

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Copyright 2019 by Aaron Dignan

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Dignan, Aaron, author.

Title: Brave new work : are you ready to reinvent your organization? / Aaron Dignan.

Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018045611 (print) | LCCN 2018046614 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525536215 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525536208 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525542834 (international)

Subjects: LCSH: Organizational effectiveness. | Organizational change.

Classification: LCC HD58.9 (ebook) | LCC HD58.9 .D544 2019 (print) | DDC 658.4/06--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045611

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate internet addresses and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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For Huxley

May you inherit a world in which everyone finds fulfillment and prosperity at work. And if you dont, may you help build one.

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Artemus Ward

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

Andr Gide

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Plato

We were packed into the back of a black car, on our way to a celebratory dinner. The energy was electric. My clients and I had just spent the last eight hours talking about the things teams never get a chance to talk about, starting with the ultimate question, Whats stopping you from doing the best work of your life? Pent up for so long, the possibility of actually addressing what held them back had awakened something deep within this team. The banter from the room had continued into the hall, the elevator, and now the car. What about our monthly strategy review? one of them said. Does anybody actually get value out of that thing? Those words hung in the air for a few seconds before everyone snapped back, No! The team leader turned around from the front seat and looked everyone in the eye. If you dont need it... I guess I dont need it either.

Well, that did it. From what I could gather in the commotion, this leadership team and the people that reported to them spent an inordinate amount of time each month preparing for and attending what essentially amounted to a glorified update meeting. I took the bait. How much time, ballpark, would you say you spend on that meeting? They started doing the math. First they had the cost of the meeting itself, which was more than three hours long and included almost forty people. Then there was preparation time for those senior leadersthey had to be sure they knew what they were talking about when questions came up. Add to that the time their teams spent preparing the materialhundreds of pages of PowerPoint, many of which routinely didnt get used or seen. And so on. They rattled it off and I tallied it up. By the time we got to the restaurant we had a good back-of-the-napkin estimate. The annual cost of the meeting? Close to $3 million. Their minds were blown. We are spending $3 million to have this shitty meeting?! What should we do? Well, I said, why not just cancel it and see what happens? You could almost see the gears turning in their heads. If meetings could change, what else was up for grabsbudgets, approvals, structure? This was a team about to reinvent their way of working.

No matter where I go in the worldand my work has taken me to fifteen countries and five continentsI meet leaders and teams who are frustrated. We are all confronted with the fact that the scale and bureaucracy that once made our organizations strong are liabilities in this era of constant change. We are beset on all sides by pressureto grow, to deliver, to execute at all costs, and to do so with our arms tied behind our backs. We are being asked to invent the future, but to do so inside a culture of work that is deeply broken.

We dont have enough time to do our work, but we pack our days with endless meetings. We dont have the information we need, but we are buried in emails, documents, and data. We want speed and innovation, but we run from risk and inhibit our best people. We claim to work in teams, but we dont really trust one another. We know the way were working isnt working, but we cant imagine an alternative. We long for change, but we dont know how to get it.

Today we face an array of systemic challengesin our economy, our government, our environmentall stemming from our inability to change. We are addicted, in spite of ourselves, to the siren song of bureaucracy. Gratuitous hierarchies, plans, budgets, and controls abound. But they arent working like they used to. In the face of complexity, our Legacy Organizationsthe traditional institutions that make up much of the modern worldare failing us, and we know it. Yet we do nothing, paralyzed by the fear of losing whatever control we have left.

Think back on your career, whether thats a few years or a few decades. Think about the things that have frustrated you. What has held you back. What do you wish you could change. Now read the following instructions and see if you recognize them. Have you ever seen a colleague behave this way?

1. Insist on doing everything through channels. Never permit shortcuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

2. Make speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your points by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

3. When possible, refer all matters to committees for further study and consideration. Attempt to make the committees as large as possiblenever less than five.

4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

5. Haggle over the precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision.

7. Advocate caution. Be reasonable and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.