Becoming A Deliberately Developmental Organisation (DDO)
Eduardo Nofuentes
In 2018 I had an offer to sell my consultancy to one of the big 4.
It was very early in my entrepreneurship days and I was very flattered by the option. Even though the offer wasn’t life-changing, I was leaning towards selling.
The day before I had to give a response, I had dinner with the two people in my leadership team plus our advisor Dr. Richard Harmer. During our conversation, we explored the pros and cons of the offer and what our future could look like as part of being in a big consultancy. At one point, Richard asked me, “What if the real project here is not to create the best ‘agile consultancy’ but instead to create the team with the most unwavering self-belief, would you still sell it?”
I had met Richard about a year before that; Richard is a Developmental Psychologist and one of the leading thinkers in Australia on the topic of Deliberately Developmental Organisations.
I didn’t know that when I met him, or I guess I didn’t fully understand it, but I loved having him in my corner in those early stages of starting my own business and I also loved the type of work that he was doing with us as a team.
In a very Mr. Miyagi way, almost without us even realising it, he introduced us to the fascinating journey of becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organisation.
The term was coined by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey in their book An Everyone Culture. Becoming a Deliberate Developmental Organisation; defining it as “an organisation that puts personal growth at the heart of its strategy”.
In summary, traditional organisations tend to separate professional duties from personal growth, often treating the latter as a ‘second job’ for employees to pursue in their own time. In contrast, a DDO embeds personal development into its team members’ day-to-day operations and responsibilities.
As I understood the concept better, I was all in. I loved the idea of making personal development and growth the key strategy of a business. If people in the business continue to grow and are able to deal with greater levels of complexity, in a way, your traditional strategy doesn’t matter as much, because people are able to react and pivot regardless of what the market throws at you. This was very true for us during the pandemic.
Over the following four or five years, we embarked on a journey of becoming a DDO. Led by Richard, we used the approach suggested by Keagan and Lahey of establishing the three building blocks:
Embracing one’s “edge”, which is about owning and sharing the “thing” that is stopping you from achieving full potential; it could be things like: need for control, lack of self-belief, impostor syndrome, etc…
Embedded practices for development, these are the practices and routines you build to make sure everyone is working on their personal growth, and finally
Supportive Environments, this is about making sure that the business and its leaders embrace and support the vulnerability and rawness that can come with an approach like this.
We developed and codified our own approach and being a DDO became part of who we are. Every time we added a new team member or we merged with another organisation, we made sure that they understood and signed up for this approach of “running a business”. We even productised it and helped some of our “bravest” clients to start in this journey.
After six years of running this experiment, I would not conceive of running a business in any other way. I believe it gives us increased productivity and innovation, enhanced job satisfaction and reduced turnover. Also, by harnessing human potential, we benefit from a more engaged, motivated, and competent team that can deliver more value for our clients.
By now you can probably guess what I responded to Richard when he asked me that question six years ago.
Do I believe that we are at the end of our journey if there is one?
No.
Do I believe that we are 100% a DDO?
Definitely not. But I do believe that it identifies who we are, it separates us from many of our competitors and has enormously increased our collective self-belief.
Thank you, Richard.