This session covers the Open Culture building block. Open cultures are described by a free flow of ideas, feedback and information, room for experimentation, a growth mindset, and active collaboration with partners outside the company.
Its central claim is that culture can be changed. Culture is not the DNA of the organization but a script, and scripts can be rewritten.
Key findings
- The two performance groups define themselves differently. Underperformers skew toward procedures, structure and quality, while overperformers index far higher on change, innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Diversity counts where it is hardest. Overperformers bring diversity to the strategic decision-making table, not only to the lower levels of the organization, including diversity of background, education, level and role.
- External connection separates the groups sharply. Employees at overperforming companies rate their external connectivity with current and potential business partners twice as high as those at underperformers.
- Cultural change is paid for in training. Overperformers invest up to 20 percent more in education and capability building, in programs that reach across the business rather than isolated modules.
The script you learn in two days
The argument that culture is a script rests on a familiar experience. Within two days of starting somewhere new you know when lunch is, where to sit, what to discuss and what not to, and how people behave.
The rewriting example is Microsoft, where a company that had been about technology under an earlier chief executive became completely about the customer.
The example of external connection is a partnership between a ride service and a music service, so that a passenger’s own playlist plays when they get into the car. It is not complicated, but it had to be pursued deliberately.
Capability building is illustrated by a family-owned confectionery manufacturer, whose chief executive doubled down on a marketing academy to create one way of marketing with one set of tools, one set of KPIs and one language across central, regional and local teams.
Growth mindset and the case for running more experiments
The growth mindset comes from Carol Dweck’s work on how students respond to failure, and the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset describe the underlying beliefs people hold about intelligence and learning.
At an organizational level the distinction is between those who strive to learn and develop new capabilities and those who are satisfied with their current level and avoid failure and risk above all.
The story used to teach it is a competitive eater who broke a world record by a wide margin. He ran nearly a hundred experiments in his apartment over six months, failing most of the time, before two of them changed the outcome.
The point of the story is stated explicitly. It is not the two breakthroughs that matter but the number of experiments needed to reach them.
Practices from other companies
The practices are listed by company: rewarding personal growth, celebrating failure, seeking feedback, participatory innovation, investing in capabilities, fostering serendipity, and diversity in strategic decision making.
The evaluation example explains the mechanism. Many employee evaluation systems create competition and low risk-taking because people have to prove they are better than colleagues. Aligning the talent program with a growth mindset shifted the focus to learning and improvement.
The effect was practical: a much larger talent pool, people who had not previously been noticed moving into leadership, and more flexible career paths that allowed lateral moves.
Radical candor
Open leadership is treated as a feedback skill. The model asks leaders to put themselves in their team’s shoes to care personally, and to deliver complete and honest feedback with empathy so they can challenge directly.
The reason it feels radical is social. We are conditioned not to say what we think, and most people are uncomfortable giving direct feedback for fear of offending or demotivating someone.
Six tips follow, starting with getting clear about how you intend to help. If you understand why your feedback is useful it comes across naturally, and if you do not, the person receiving it will not understand either.
The others are to state your intention to be helpful, show rather than tell, find help rather than always offering it yourself, treat feedback as a gift rather than a whip or a carrot, and share the context.
What participants take away
The three key learnings are that an open culture welcomes new perspectives and change and fosters innovation and connection, that a growth mindset at both organizational and individual level is a success factor, and that leading in an open culture means being radically candid.
The workbook questions ask where the participant’s own organization is leading and lagging on open culture, what is blocking or facilitating success, and what actions can be taken now, stated concretely with who, what and by when.
Source
This page summarises SESSION 8: Open Culture, by Marc de Swaan Arons, Christian Busch, James Diaz, Kim Scott, Eva Linderborg, David Arnoux, 2024.