An Everyone Culture

In most organizations nearly everyone is doing a second job no one is paying them for—covering their weaknesses, trying to look their best, and managing other people’s impressions of them. What if a company did everything in its power to create a culture in which everyone could overcome their own internal barriers to change?

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (and their collaborators) have found and studied such companies—Deliberately Developmental Organizations. A DDO is organized around the conviction that organizations will best prosper when they are more deeply aligned with people’s strongest motive: growing. An Everyone Culturedives 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.