by Aaron Dignan
salary you’d earn if you worked there: “Buffer’s Transparent Salary Calculator,” Buffer, accessed September 1, 2018, https://buffer.com/salary/software-engineer-mobile/average; “Calculate Your Salary,” Stack Overflow, accessed September 1, 2018, https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary.
“title ‘Director of Engineering’”: Reed Hastings, “Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility,” SlideShare, August 1, 2009, www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664.
deck to invent the future: Stacey Leasca, “These Are the Highest Paying Jobs in the Gig Economy,” Forbes, July 17, 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/sleasca/2017/07/17/highest-paying-jobs-gig-economy-lyft-taskrabbit-airbnb/#e2d9eeb7b644.
wage policy and productivity: MIT Press, summary of Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently? by Dale T. Mortensen, accessed September 1, 2018, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/wage-dispersion.
But it simply isn’t so: Joshua Isaac Smith, “The Myth of Rational Decisions—How Emotions Flavour Our Choices,” Adapt Faster, May 17, 2017, www.adaptfaster.com/the-myth-of-rational-decisions-how-emotions-flavour-our-choices.
PART THREE: THE CHANGE
“People like us do things”: Seth Godin, “People like us do things like this,” Seth’s Blog, July 26, 2013, https://seths.blog/2013/07/people-like-us-do-stuff-like-this.
“Culture is like a shadow”: Niels Pflaeging (@NielsPflaeging), “Org #culture is like a shadow: You cannot change it, but it changes all the time. Culture is read-only.” Twitter, March 25, 2015, 9:53 P.M., https://twitter.com/nielspflaeging/status/580955646415245312.
really be done concurrently and continuously: John P. Kotter, Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).
“Managing the present to actually create”: AcademiWales, “Dave Snowden - How leaders change culture through small actions,” Youtube video, 1:11:06, July 26, 2016, https://youtu.be/MsLmjoAp_Dg?t=2m56s.
“present can reinvent itself”: Steven Johnson, “The Genius of the Tinkerer,” The Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2010, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703989304575503730101860838?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read.
“we manage the emergence”: CognitiveEdge, “How to Organise a Children’s Party,” YouTube video, 2:58, October 27, 2009, https://youtu.be/Miwb92eZaJg?t=2m32s.
“milk in coffee”: Niels Pflaeging, “Change is more like adding milk to coffee,” Medium, March 6, 2018, https://medium.com/@NielsPflaeging/change-is-more-like-adding-milk-to-coffee-b6498a3aa708
“Do this again next year”: Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (New York: Random House, 2014), 174.
“the past and the future”: Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think (Brooklyn: Two Waves Books, 2016), xxi.
“What does tension seek?”: Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Currency, 1990), 140.
“gap between how things are”: Brian Robertson, Holacracy (New York: Macmillan, 2015), 5.
fifty-three words for snow: David Robson, “There Really Are 50 Eskimo Words for ‘Snow,’” The Washington Post, January 14, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/there-really-are-50-eskimo-words-for-snow/2013/01/14/e0e3f4e0-59a0-11e2-beee-6e38f5215402_story.html?utm_term=.506583668442.
network of eighteen coaches: “Buurtzorg’s Healthcare Revolution: 14,000 Employees, 0 Managers, Sky-High Engagement,” Corporate Rebels (blog), June 21, 2017, https://corporate-rebels.com/buurtzorg.
“shared belief held by members”: Amy Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 2 (June 1999): 350–383.
confide in one another: Alexandra Jamieson and Bob Gower, Getting to Hell Yes (self-published, 2018), gettingtohellyes.com.
“All managers at Handelsbanken”: Handelsbanken, “Anders Bouvin, new President and Group Chief Executive of Handelsbanken,” press release, August 16, 2016, http://news.cision.com/handelsbanken/r/anders-bouvin--new-president-and-group-chief-executive-of-handelsbanken,c2059556.
“do things that don’t scale”: Paul Graham, “Do Things That Don’t Scale,” Paul Graham, http://paulgraham.com/ds.html.
recent research by David DeSteno: David DeSteno, The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More (New York: Plume, 2014).
“Questions are places in your mind”: Jason Fried, “What are questions?,” Medium, August 1, 2016, https://m.signalvnoise.com/what-are-questions-51c20fde777d.
EPILOGUE: WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
“if you’re giving back, you took too much”: Ricardo Semler, “How to run a company with (almost no rules),” TED video, 21:43, October, 2014, www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules.
“Twentieth-century economics assured us”: Kate Raworth, “A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow,” TED video, 15:53, April 2018, www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow.
“Can anything more insane be imagined?”: Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness, and Other Essays (London: Routledge, 2004), 6, www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html.
known as the Rochdale Principles: “The Rochdale Principles,” Co-operative Heritage Trust, accessed September 1, 2018, www.rochdalepioneersmuseum.coop/about-us/the-rochdale-principles.
one study of cooperatives: Virginie Pérotin, “What Do We Really Know About Worker Co-operatives?” Co-operatives UK, no date, www.uk.coop/resources/what-do-we-really-know-about-worker-co-operatives.
“pre-written into code”: “What Is DAO,” Cointelegraph, accessed July 31,2016, https://cointelegraph.com/ethereum-for-beginners/what-is-dao#how-daos-work.
becomes valuable when it moves: Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2011).
producer/philanthropist Jeff Skoll: “A New Global Impact Fund,” The Rise Fund, accessed September 1, 2018, http://therisefund.com.
$390 million Double Impact Fund: “Scaling Mission-Driven Companies,” Bain Capital Double Impact, accessed September 1, 2018, www.baincapitaldoubleimpact.com.
“If the answer is yes, then we wouldn’t invest”: Mary Ann Azevedo, “Growth with an Impact: The Rise of VCs Looking to Fund a (Profitable) Cause,” Crunchbase, February 2, 2018, https://news.crunchbase.com/news/growth-impact-rise-vcs-looking-fund-profitable-cause.
“real” businesses bleed black: Indie VC, “We Invest in Real Businesses,” accessed September 1, 2018, www.indie.vc.
The average number of companies: Adrian Wooldridge, “America can’t control the global flow of ideas,” The Economist, September 13, 2018, www.economist.com/business/2017/04/22/why-the-decline-in-the-number-of-listed-american-firms-matters.
value of just $438 million: Alex Wilhelm, “A Look Back in IPO: Amazon’s 1997 Move,” TechCrunch, June 28, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/28/a-look-back-at-amazons-1997-ipo.
“software is eating the world”: Marc Andreessen, “Why Software Is Eating the World,” The Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.
gone in the next ten years: Michael Grothaus, “Bet You Didn’t See This Coming: 10 Jobs That Will Be Replaced by Robots,” Fast Company, January 19, 2017, www.fastcompany.com/3067279/you-didnt-see-this-coming-10-jobs-that-will-be-replaced-by-robots.
“[We] engineered a system so robust”: Sugata Mitra, “Build a school in the cloud,” TED video, 22:25, February 2013, www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the begin
ning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
adjacent possible, 189, 201
Administration Industrielle et Générale (Fayol), 24
advice process, 70, 72–73
Afshar, Vala, 119
Agile Manifesto, 19, 89, 182
agility, 19, 20, 28–29
Airbnb, 140, 188, 254
al-Qaeda, 128
Amazon, 61, 86, 88, 89, 104–5, 254, 259, 268
Andreessen, Marc, 256
ants, 106
Apple, 86
Ask Me Anything sessions (AMAs), 135–36
authority, 14, 54, 63, 65–74
Automattic, 120
autonomy, 22, 42, 66–67, 74, 194, 258
Bain Capital, 253
Ballpoint, 199–200
banks, 94, 252
Handelsbanken, 13, 94, 227–28
barbell strategy, 86–87, 105–6
Barksdale, Jim, 59
Basecamp, 68, 69, 120
Bell, Alexander Graham, 103
Benchley, Robert, 39
Beyond Budgeting Institute, 97–98
Bezos, Jeff, 61
B Lab, 249, 259
Black Swan, The (Taleb), 86–87
Blank, Steve, 27
Boman, Pär, 227–28
bonuses, 171–72
boundaries, 193, 196–97
Box, George, 49
Boyd, John, 88
Braintrust, 119–20
Brandeis, Louis D., 22–23
Bridgewater Associates, 152, 153
Brin, Sergey, 136
Brookings Institution, 33
Bryant, Adam, 147
budgets, 25, 26, 27, 94–97, 99–100
Buffer, 130–31, 166, 170
bureaucracy, 26–27, 29, 68, 77, 112, 190, 193, 198, 212, 236
Burning Man, 139, 140
butterfly effect, 45
Buurtzorg, 13, 34–36, 38, 79, 105, 144, 218
Catmull, Ed, 120, 191, 192
centralization and decentralization, 77–79
CEOs, 80, 86, 223
change, 14, 28
authority in, 73–74
changing approach to, 187–91
compensation in, 172
continuous participatory, see continuous participatory change
information in, 136
innovation in, 108
mastery in, 161
meetings in, 125
membership in, 149
plan for, 185–87
purpose in, 63
resistance to, 233–34
resources in, 100
strategy in, 91, 92
structure in, 81
workflow in, 116
charity: water, 224–25
Chesky, Brian, 254
Christensen, Clayton, 91, 237
Cointelegraph, 251
Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU), 55
commitment, 69, 193–96, 212
communities of practice, 160
compensation, 14, 54, 163–73
competence, 42
competition, 144
complexity, 43–45, 68, 79
Complexity Conscious mindset, 13, 36–37, 43–47, 53, 55–57, 190, 195, 199, 244, 258–59, 267
authority and, 74
compensation and, 173
information and, 137
innovation and, 109
mastery and, 162
meetings and, 126
membership and, 150
purpose and, 64
resources and, 101
strategy and, 90, 92
structure and, 82
workflow and, 117
complex systems, 45
adaptive, 129, 187–88
relationships and interactions in, 45, 140
compliance, 27, 46, 66, 122, 258
Cone, Sarah, 253
confidence, 236
consensus, 70
consent, 70–73, 195
continuity, 193, 218–19
continuous participatory change, 191–219
boundaries in, 193, 196–97
commitment in, 193–96
continuity in, 193, 218–19
criticality in, 193, 216–18
learning by doing in, 230–31
looping in, see looping
participation in, 228–29
priming in, 193, 197–201, 236
principles for, 228–34
resistance and, 233–34
scaling of, 234–39
sensing and responding in, 231–32
starting by stopping in, 232–33
starting small in, 229–30
constraints, 46
contribution-based pay, 167
control, locus of, 154, 155
Control Inc., 181–83, 185, 196–97, 219, 220, 222
cooperatives, 250
Cornell University, 42
Corner Office, 147
Corning Inc., 103
corporations:
new forms of incorporation, 248–51, 252
see also organizations
Creativity, Inc. (Catmull), 191
criticality, 193, 216–18
Crunchbase, 253
cultural differences, 258
culture, company, 180–81, 190
hiring and, 142–43
Dalio, Ray, 152, 153–54
David, Joshua, 188
de Blok, Jos, 34–36, 105, 144
debt, 27
organizational, 27–29, 91
decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), 250–51
Deci, Edward, 41–42
decision making, 67, 121, 132, 152
advice process in, 70, 72–73
consent in, 70–73, 195
decision stack in, 72–73
discipline about, 69
emotion in, 174–75
information and, 136
Integrative Decision Making, 71–73
waterline principle and, 69–70, 72
defaults vs. standards, 106–7
degradation, graceful, 29–34
Deming, W. Edwards, 53, 87, 165
DeSteno, David, 236
DevOps, 104
Doerr, John, 87
Donovan, William J., 6–7
Dunbar’s number, 197
Dweck, Carol, 154
dynamic networks, 77–78
dynamic teaming, 81
economy, economics, 27, 246–47, 248
Edmondson, Amy, 221
education, 257–58
Einstein, Albert, 247
email, 131, 133–35
Emergent Inc., 183–85, 195–96, 199, 206, 212, 222, 234–35, 237–38, 239
Emerson, Harrington, 20, 25
emotions, 174–75
empowerment, 136
enabling constraints, 46
Endenburg, Gerard, 70–71
Enspiral, 99–100, 133
Ernst & Young, 35
essential intent, 62
Essentialism (McKeown), 62
Etsy, 157
eudaemonic purpose, 59
even over statements, 88–90
Everlane, 130–31, 259
Everyone Culture, An (Kegan and Lahey), 153
Evolutionary Organizations, 13, 14, 16, 21, 34–37, 48, 53, 244, 248
Complexity Conscious mindset in, see Complexity Conscious mindset
list of, 267–70
operating system for, see Operating System Canvas
> People Positive mindset in, see People Positive mindset
exaptation, 103, 104
experiments, conducting, 213–16
Facebook, 62–63, 84, 88, 235, 252, 268
facilitators, 122–23
failure, 68, 74
FAVI, 16, 37–38, 42–43
Fayol, Henri, 24
fear, 141, 222
Federal Reserve System, 252
Fifth Discipline, The (Senge), 153, 202
Firms of Endearment (Sisodia, Sheth, and Wolfe), 60
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 56
Follett, Mary Parker, 25
Ford, Henry, 25, 61, 111, 256
Ford Motor Company, 96
formulaic pay, 166–67
Forrester Research, 135
Fosbury, Dick, 47
Foster, Richard, 29
fractal purpose, 60
Franklin, Benjamin, 181
freedom, 66–67, 68, 74
Fried, Jason, 68–69, 237
Friedman, Milton, 59, 256
Fuller, R. Buckminster, 247
functional division, 112
functions vs. integration, 79–80
Gantt, Henry, 24
GDP, 27
GE Appliances, 76
Getz, Isaac, 238–39
Gibson, William, 243
gig economy, 169
Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian, 25
Git, 132–33
GitLab, 120, 133
Gladwell, Malcolm, 216
Glassdoor, 170
Gloger, Boris, 199
Godin, Seth, 180
Goodhart’s law, 60, 87
Google, 87, 107, 135–36, 235, 252, 268
G Suite, 135
Project Aristotle, 221
Gordon, Deborah, 106
Gore, Bill, 142
Gore, W. L. and Associates, 16, 69–70, 79, 142
Gorilla Glass, 103
Gould, Stephen Jay, 103
governance meetings, 122
governing constraints, 46
Gower, Bob, 222
Graham, Benjamin, 30
Graham, Paul, 230
Grant, Adam, 142
gratitude, 148
Gray, Dave, 196
G Suite, 135
Haier, 76, 80
Hamel, Gary, 26
Hammond, Robert, 188
Handelsbanken, 13, 94, 227–28
Hansson, David Heinemeier, 68–69
Harrison, Scott, 224–25
Hawk, Tony, 259
healthcare industry, 34–35
