The Best Business Is Personal

culled from:steverrobbins.com

What’s the biggest cause of wasted resources in nearly every company today? The answer might surprise you.

According to the Harvard Business Review, most people spend countless hours at work doing a job that no one hired them to do: managing their reputations and hiding their inadequacies from others.

What would happen if people stopped trying to hide their weaknesses and focused all their attention on producing high-quality work? What if companies actively fostered a culture in which mistakes are viewed as opportunities for personal growth?

The authors of the article sought to find companies that it terms “deliberately developmental organizations” and examine how these companies weave personal growth into day-to-day business operations.

The investigation focused on two companies that agreed to be studied in depth. Bridgewater Associates manages billions in global investments for institutional clients. Decurion manages a portfolio of companies, including Robertson Properties Group. Both companies have received countless awards for their high-quality performance.

The major takeaway from the study was that these companies operate under the not-so-obvious assumption that personal growth has a direct impact on the bottom line. Both profitability and individual development rely on foundational structures of the company.

By encouraging employees to acknowledge their blind spots and make personal changes, these companies cultivated cultures that allowed them to more effectively respond to challenges. Here are some of the practices that were implemented:
Celebrate mistakes

In most offices, people will only talk about their vulnerabilities behind closed doors. Bridgewater, however, encourages its employees to overcome the fight-or-flight response when confronted with criticism.

In a company-wide “issues log,” employees are applauded when they admit their errors and reprimanded when they fail to record their mistakes. The company also encourages its employees to use their “pain button” app to share experiences of negative emotions at work. These tools prompt employees to take responsibility for their weaknesses and address the underlying issues that contributed to failures.
Have the hard conversations

We all do it. In order to protect our reputations, we allow gaps to form between ourselves and others, between plans and actions and between our work selves and our true selves. Often these gaps are the result of what is being left unsaid. By choosing not to have a conversation, we are engaging in a form of self-preservation that has the potential to derail our efforts at work.

To close these gaps, Decurion conducts what it calls a fishbowl conversation, in which a few employees sit at the center of a larger circle and are questioned about potential weaknesses that might be hindering their progress. Because these kinds of conversations are routine at Decurion, they are viewed as a healthy exercise in being vulnerable rather than a threatening experience.
Stretch employees

One aspect of employee growth that doesn’t receive much attention is finding a good fit between the person and the role. Both Bridgewater and Decurion acknowledge that the best kind of employee is one who is regularly, but manageably, in over his or her head.

Deliberately developmental organizations embrace what is called constructive destabilization, the idea that employees should experience a healthy level of stress in order to perform at their best. Once you are in a position where you feel you are performing all your duties at a high level, you are probably no longer in the right job.

At Decurion, managers facilitate constructive destabilization by matching employees with weekly assignments that match his or her development goals. As employees master these “stretch jobs,” their progress is recorded on a competency board that shows how their work contributes to the organization. One-on-one meetings with managers also help employees express their personal goals.

When people first hear these success stories, their gut reaction is usually shock that the companies would spend so much time on employee development. These companies believe, however, that better communication and growth opportunities impact the organization’s bottom line.

Business needs to be more than just an office – it needs to be personal. When employees feel comfortable talking about their weaknesses and areas for growth, everyone wins.