Brave New Work

by Aaron Dignan

  Just the Beginning

  These innovations are not solutions. They are the start of a renaissance in the form and function of organizations. Our job isn’t simply to adopt them blindly but to push them, advocate for them, and evolve them into serious alternatives that can stand on their own merit. Today less than 1 percent of all organizations are experimenting with these new possibilities. The tipping point is far off in the distance. It is people like you who will draw this future closer and make the impossible possible for the next generation of founders and teams.

  Into the Great Wide Open

  Many unanswered questions remain when it comes to the future of work. So many possibilities lie before us, we may find ourselves breathlessly optimistic one moment and bitterly cynical the next. To conclude our journey together, I want to address a few of the questions that provoke me the most. No easy answers exist. Just strong opinions loosely held. My hope is that by raising these topics now, I can set you on a path to answering them more deeply for yourself in the months and years to come.

  Can everyone work this way? What about people who lack the requisite intelligence or maturity? It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that self-management requires a certain level of intellect and sophistication. But I think that’s a mistake. It requires emotional maturity and competence, both of which can be nurtured in anyone in the right environment. Not everyone can be a rocket scientist, but not everyone can cook pit barbecue, either. Our natural talents, education, and socialization create diversity, which in the right context can be a source of power. I’ve seen self-management positively flourish in places where workers historically have been treated as disposable—in factories, in fast food, in retail—and these cases give me hope that the future of work can include everyone. An old Henry Ford quote best sums up my feelings on this question: “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

  Will there be enough work for everyone? If organizations get smaller and technology grows ever more capable, what will we all do all day? Artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation are reshaping the workforce as we speak. When Marc Andreessen said that “software is eating the world,” he wasn’t kidding. Everywhere you look, the complicated work is becoming the domain of technology. The bots in my company already do the work of a couple people—handling everything from collecting feedback to scheduling meetings. Self-driving trucks such as the one Tesla is developing threaten the livelihoods of many more. Some 3.5 million people make their living driving trucks in the United States alone. A staggering 39 percent of the jobs in the legal sector could be gone in the next ten years. What happens next depends on us. If we continue to take Milton Friedman’s advice, that the purpose of business is solely to generate returns for shareholders, we’re going to preside over a spectacular and unintentional recession, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Because, to put it bluntly, guess what happens when a significant chunk of the population is unemployed? They can’t buy your stuff. And on and on.

  But here’s the good news. Even as complicated work goes away, there’s a whole world of complex work yet to be done. Researchers have concluded that nonroutine work—anything that does not conform to checklists and rules—is far less likely to be automated in the years to come. Drones can water the vines, but they can’t run the winery. An app can help you meditate, but it can’t do couples counseling. An AI can design a good workout, but it’s a lot easier to blow off your iPhone than a real trainer waiting for you at the gym. Technology cannot invent the future, because that is the domain of people. It will augment us. It will change the shape of our teams. It will change the paths of our careers. But we will still have work to do. And that work will be more creative, more complex, and more challenging than anything we’ve ever faced.

  What about education? Do we have to change how we develop young minds in order to prepare for this new world of work? Absolutely. After all, Taylorism didn’t stop with the workplace. It also completely infected education in order to prepare generations of workers for the industrial jobs they would one day inherit. The values and structures present in education today are mirror images of the Legacy OS we’re trying to overthrow. Teachers (bosses) have authority; students don’t. High school seniors whom we trust to drive on our streets need a bathroom pass to use the toilet. The curriculum (the work) is fixed, not fluid or self-directed, and often woefully outdated. A million books are published every year and kids are still reading The Scarlet Letter. Learning happens through lecture (instruction) rather than curiosity and experience. Subjects (functions) are isolated rather than integrated. Math is pure math. Science is pure science. Use math to create something? Forget about it. The measure of mastery is a test (training and certification), not practice or the ability to deliver outcomes. Failure is punished. Compliance is rewarded. It’s staggeringly similar to the modern workplace, isn’t it? Similar and equally irrelevant. The educational revolutionary Sugata Mitra said as much in his 2013 TED Prize acceptance speech: “[We] engineered a system so robust that it’s still with us today, continually producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists.” But there is hope on the horizon. Several schools, including Sugata Mitra’s School in the Cloud, the Evangelical School Berlin Centre (ESBC) in Germany, and Ricardo Semler’s Lumiar in Brazil are radically reinventing education for the twenty-first century. Gone are traditional grades, lectures, and subjects, replaced with an integrated approach that honors active participation and curiosity. Everyone—students, parents, and faculty—is expected to participate in the creation of the curriculum. These institutions are cracking the code on education. The question is, can enough schools unlearn the habits of the past to produce a generation ready to take us into the future?

  What about cultures that still value hierarchy, compliance, or other legacy traits? Do entire countries and peoples have to change to be successful? Isn’t that colonialism? I routinely encounter this line of questioning when I deliver a speech outside the United States. And it’s totally fair. Ideas such as autonomy, inclusion, transparency, and radical candor are perceived very differently by different cultures. To generalize for a moment based on the research of INSEAD professor Erin Meyer, cultures vary wildly on a whole host of styles, from how they lead to how they communicate. Japanese business culture, for example, is very hierarchical. And yet it employs a more consensual approach to decision making, in which proposals are circulated for support at the lower levels before being presented to leadership. When it comes to negative feedback, Israelis might be perceived as more direct, while Indonesians prefer an indirect approach. It would be inaccurate to say that some cultures are ahead and others are behind. Rather, every culture has ingrained strengths and weaknesses when it comes to work. What is incumbent on every business leader, regardless of cultural context, is to ask, What about our way of working is serving us and what isn’t? We can celebrate our cultures and diversity, and we can rise above them. What is critical is that we not cling to traditions or norms without a conscious choice to accept the trade-offs they contain.

  If every organization is People Positive and Complexity Conscious, how will they differentiate themselves? If purpose, sustainability, and human centricity are pervasive, what does that mean for competition? This is, to me, the most interesting question of all. These things are differentiators today, but tomorrow they could be table stakes. If every grocery store chain were as progressive as Whole Foods, how would I decide where to shop? If every clothing company were as conscious as Patagonia or Everlane, how would I decide what to wear? If every workplace were a “best place to work,” how would I choose where to apply? It’s an interesting thought experiment, and I think it’s the shadow hope of every participant in this movement—that the world will catch up. But here’s the thing: human beings are limited only by their imagination. Before Tony Hawk successfully landed the first 900—a two-and-a-half-revolution aerial spin on a skateboard—the move was thought impossible. Thirteen years later,
twelve-year-old Tom Schaar completed a 1080. We raise the bar by seeing what is possible. That’s why I think the answer to this question is that organizations will differentiate themselves by doing more. You think you’re customer obsessed? Look at Amazon. You think you’re sustainable? Just wait until you see what Patagonia does next. The point is this: what a good problem to have. As the team at B Lab says, if everyone were competing not to be the best in the world, but to be the best for the world, how incredible that would be. The promise of capitalist competition, but with a new scoreboard. Instead of just one winner, everybody wins.

  As we learned at the beginning, all models are wrong, but some are useful. So let me say this before we depart: this book is not perfect. Mistakes were made. Perhaps I portrayed an organization differently from how you (or the organization) would. Perhaps I failed to describe a concept or distinction as well as another expert might. It’s even possible that something big is missing—something that will reveal itself to us in years to come and irrevocably transform how we organize. I can live with that. Because what I’ve presented here is enough. It’s enough to stoke that disenchantment that you feel. That this can’t be our best. That we’re capable of more. It’s enough to get started. Enough to go on. And that’s all that matters. Progress over perfection. Courage over caution. This isn’t business as usual. This is brave new work.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you to my amazing wife and best friend, Britt. Somehow she managed to move us across the country (in the midst of this project) so flawlessly that we never missed a beat. She is the very definition of grace. In related news, five-year-olds are not often patient, but I’m grateful to my son, Huxley, for being so understanding and supportive throughout this process. The funny thing is, we all ended up spending more time together than we usually do, and I loved every minute of it.

  I come from a family of people who are passionate about their work. My dad, Pete, is my original thought partner, so I’m lucky that he cares as much about this subject as I do. He and his wife, Kelly, helped me break through mental barriers more than once. My mother, Barb, is the source of my confidence and dedication. Watching her buck the bureaucracy of the school system for years was early inspiration. Hats off to my brother, Ben, for having the courage to stop doing work he didn’t love. And a sincere thanks to the rest of my clan, including my wife’s wonderfully eccentric family, my indefatigable grandmother, and the most interesting collection of aunts, uncles, and cousins you could possibly imagine.

  I’ve never met a group that so epitomizes “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” as the team at Portfolio. An animated unicorn GIF goes to my editor, Leah Trouwborst, without whom this book would not exist. She saw the potential before anyone else did. Adrian Zackheim and Will Weisser deciphered the book’s message like literary code breakers. Their commitment to getting it right meant everything to me. And to the rest of our intrepid crew, Tara Gilbride, Alie Coolidge, Helen Healey, Ryan Boyle, Daniel Lagin, Chris Sergio, Eric White, Matthew Boezi, and Hilary Roberts goes a windmill high five. Without you this is just the world’s longest blog post.

  Unending gratitude goes out to my team—the most stunning colleagues anyone could ever ask for. You have helped me grow in so many directions. Sharan Bal, Michelle Beatty, Larke Brost, Tim Casasola, Larissa Conte, Sarah Davis, Kate Earle, Rodney Evans, Mack Fogelson, Laine Forman, Lisa Gill, Oday Kamal, Jurriaan Kamer, MJ Kaplan, Christine Lai, Kate Leto, Lisa Lewin, Kate MacAleavey, Kathryn Maloney, Yehudi Meshchaninov, Tom Nixon, Spencer Pitman, Ali Randel, Jon Roth, Gary Shaw, Sam Spurlin, and Will Watson are The Ready. To quote Hamilton, “Tomorrow there’ll be more of us.”

  Cheers to all my former colleagues over the years, particularly those who were around when I was first tinkering with this stuff. You jumped in with me and I’ll never forget that. To those of you out there “changing how the world works” in your own way, I salute you.

  Such an expansive topic required a fairly unusual research process. Azy Groth and Tim Casasola dunked on it every day for months. Jared Lindzon and Aimee Groth also played their part in the early days. Champagne for my real friend Meg Thompson, longtime literary agent and publishing spirit guide. You stuck with me for years while this percolated. Now we dance! And a tip of the hat to James Robinson, my trusty speaking agent, who finds excuses to send me all around the world to tell this story. Couldn’t do it without you, old sport.

  The Ready wouldn’t exist without brave clients, past and present. Your commitment to an ever better future inspires me. And sometimes a leader comes along and changes us as much as we change them. Appreciation to Beth Comstock, Linda Boff, Sarah Wills, Raghu Krishnamoorthy, Russell Stokes, Susan Sobbott, Scott Roen, Frank Cooper, Simon Lowden, Massimo Portincaso, Scott Harrison, Lauren Letta, Marc Lien, John Polstein, and Lorin Thomas Tavel for those moments. A secret handshake goes out to all the catalysts, right-hand women and men, influencers, iconoclasts, and rebels who found a way to invite us into their organizations. Without you the world stands still.

  When you’re as passionate about work as I am, friends are hard to come by and harder to keep. That’s why I’m blown away by Ben Kaufman, Rachel Shechtman, Ricky Van Veen, Steve Roberts, Steve Holt, Eliot Drake, Brian Swibel, and Scott Belsky. You each inspire me with your commitment to saying and doing what matters.

  I can say with confidence that very few of the ideas in this book originated with me. I owe a debt to the many brave and brilliant people who have pioneered these ways of working and shaped my thinking about organizations. A complete list of influences would be far too long (you should see my Brave New Work library), so I’ll simply thank those who have taught me the most: Dennis Bakke, Steve Blank, Jos de Blok, Bjarte Bosgnes, Jacob Bøtter, Brian Carney, James Carse, W. Edwards Deming, David Dewane, Peter Drucker, Amy Edmondson, Charles Eisenstein, Gerard Endenburg, Robin Fraser, Jason Fried, Isaac Getz, James Gleick, Seth Godin, Deborah Gordon, Paul Graham, Adam Grant, Dave Gray, Gary Hamel, David Heinemeier Hansson, Tim Harford, Frederick Herzberg, Jeremy Hope, Steven Johnson, Daniel Kahneman, Kevin Kelly, David Kidder, Doug Kirkpatrick, Henrik Kniberg, Lars Kolind, John Kotter, Frederic Laloux, Jason Little, David Marquet, John E. Mayfield, Douglas McGregor, Greg McKeown, Melanie Mitchell, Taiichi Ohno, Tom Peters, Niels Pflaeging, Daniel Pink, Adam Pisoni, Eric Ries, Brian Robertson, Ricardo Semler, Peter Senge, Simon Sinek, Dave Snowden, Nassim Taleb, Ben Thompson, Geoffrey West, Meg Wheatley, Keith Yamashita, Jean-Francois Zobrist, and the few I forgot. Especially them, because their work has stuck with me but their names have not. I also owe a special thank-you to Tom Thomison, who introduced me to many of these ideas at just the right time, starting a fire that surprised us both. It’s funny how forty-eight hours with someone can be the start of so much. And of course, big thanks to Douglas Rushkoff for being my accountability buddy as we penned our most recent manifestos.

  Finally, I’d like to express my admiration for the countless teams out there where the sidewalk ends, inventing the future of work. May you inspire more people to join you there.

  Appendix

  EVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS

  In order to discover a diverse and proven collection of organizations working in new ways, I used the following criteria to guide my search:

  The organization must be larger than ten people. While this may seem arbitrary, I have found that the commitment to new ways of working is tested when an organization begins to scale and confronts its own complexity.

  The organization must be at least five years old. Longevity affords an organization time to develop an OS that is richer and more distinctive.

  The organization must have documented principles and practices that reflect a People Positive and Complexity Conscious way of working. These practices do not need to be evenly distributed across the entire culture, but they do need to be firmly established and flourishing where present.

  These criteria le
d me and my research team to consider hundreds of organizations from around the globe, both past and present (historical cases were considered and included). The organizations listed are the ones that inspired us most. While these firms operate with significantly more individual autonomy, they also utilize deeply thoughtful processes and social norms to guide behavior. Rather than top-down control, they leverage positive peer pressure and transparency to encourage responsible and coordinated behavior. They separate the complex from the complicated and leverage the forgotten art of dialogue to create empathy and learning in place of mindless execution. The absence of traditional bosses doesn’t make these organizations leaderless, it makes them leaderful.

  Let me save you the suspense, though: these organizations are not perfect. Every one of these cultures has its struggles and tensions. Some have found success in one function or location but not another. Some have issues around diversity and inclusion. Some are falling victim to their own scale and success, reverting to bureaucracy when deep down they know better. But here’s the thing: they’re working on it. The firms on this list ensure that the mechanisms to turn tension into change are present for every member every day.