In his groundbreaking book "Brave New Work," Aaron Dignan presents a compelling case for revolutionizing the way we work and organize our businesses. Drawing on insights from complexity science, systems thinking, and real-world examples, Dignan challenges the outdated assumptions of traditional management and offers a fresh perspective on creating more adaptive, human-centered organizations.
Introduction: The Need for Change
Dignan begins by highlighting the crisis facing traditional organizations today. Despite technological advancements, many companies are struggling with declining productivity, shorter lifespans, and diminishing returns on assets. The root cause? An outdated operating system that no longer serves the needs of modern businesses and workers.
The author argues that most organizations are still running on what he calls "Legacy OS" - a set of management practices and assumptions inherited from the industrial age. This system, characterized by rigid hierarchies, excessive bureaucracy, and a lack of trust in employees, is holding companies back from reaching their full potential.
Dignan's solution is to transition to a new "Evolutionary OS" that embraces complexity, empowers people, and allows for greater flexibility and adaptability. Throughout the book, he provides insights and practical strategies for making this shift, drawing on examples from innovative companies that have successfully reimagined their approach to work.
The Crisis in Traditional Organizations
To illustrate the dire state of many traditional organizations, Dignan shares a surprising anecdote. During World War II, the precursor to the CIA created a field manual for sabotage. The manual included guidelines for destabilizing enemy organizations, such as:
- Making it difficult to access work resources through complicated bureaucratic systems
- Never allowing shortcuts to speed up processes or decisions
- Adhering strictly to all regulations, no matter how inefficient
Shockingly, many of these "sabotage" tactics are commonplace in modern offices. This realization highlights how deeply entrenched counterproductive practices have become in our work culture.
The author points to several alarming trends that demonstrate the crisis facing traditional organizations:
- Shortened company lifespans: Companies on the S&P 500 used to last an average of 60 years; now, it's down to about 10 years.
- Declining return on assets: Since 1965, the return on assets for US companies has dropped from nearly 5% to just above 1%.
- Stagnant productivity growth: Despite technological advancements, overall productivity growth has leveled off in recent decades.
When asked about these challenges, economists often struggle to provide clear answers. However, workers on the ground consistently point to one culprit: bureaucracy.
The Burden of Organizational Debt
Dignan introduces the concept of "organizational debt" to explain why so many companies are struggling. This term refers to the accumulation of outdated procedures, policies, and structures that no longer serve the organization's needs but continue to drag it down.
To illustrate this concept, the author shares the story of FAVI, a European auto parts manufacturer that managed to thrive in the face of Chinese competition. Before its transformation, FAVI was bogged down by bureaucratic processes that significantly hindered productivity.
For example, a worker who needed a new pair of gloves had to go through a lengthy, 30-minute process involving multiple approvals and paperwork. The cost of the gloves? Five euros. The cost of leaving a machine unmanned for 30 minutes? Five thousand euros.
This example highlights how organizational debt often arises from well-intentioned attempts to solve problems or prevent issues. Over time, these solutions become outdated or create new problems, but they remain in place due to inertia or a lack of critical evaluation.
The Legacy Operating System: Managers Think, Workers Do
To understand why organizations struggle with bureaucracy and inefficiency, Dignan delves into the history of modern management practices. He traces the roots of what he calls "Legacy OS" back to the early 20th century and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Taylor, an efficiency expert, revolutionized factory work by introducing scientific management principles. His approach involved breaking down tasks into their smallest components, measuring the time required for each step, and then prescribing the "one best way" to perform the work.
While Taylor's methods led to significant productivity gains in manufacturing, they also established a fundamental assumption that has persisted in management thinking for over a century: managers should do the thinking, and workers should simply execute.
This assumption underlies many of the structures and practices we take for granted in modern organizations, such as:
- Hierarchical management structures
- Detailed job descriptions and role definitions
- Standardized processes and procedures
- Performance reviews and incentive systems based on compliance
Dignan argues that while this approach may have been effective for simple, repetitive tasks in factories, it is ill-suited to the complex, knowledge-based work that dominates today's economy.
Complexity vs. Complicatedness: A Crucial Distinction
One of the key insights Dignan offers is the distinction between complicated systems and complex systems. Understanding this difference is crucial for developing more effective organizational strategies.
Complicated systems, like automobile engines or mechanical watches, are causal systems with predictable outcomes. They can be understood through careful analysis and controlled through precise interventions. If you remove a part from a watch, it will stop working; put it back, and it will start again.
Complex systems, on the other hand, are dispositional. They include things like weather patterns, traffic flows, and human organizations. These systems are characterized by:
- Unpredictability: Outcomes are not always proportional to inputs
- Emergent behavior: The system as a whole exhibits properties that can't be reduced to its individual components
- Adaptability: The system can change and evolve in response to its environment
The problem, Dignan argues, is that Legacy OS treats organizations as if they were complicated systems rather than complex ones. It assumes that with enough analysis and control, we can create perfect, predictable outcomes. This leads to an overreliance on rules, procedures, and hierarchical decision-making, which ultimately stifles innovation and adaptability.
The Evolutionary Organization: Flowing Like a Roundabout
To illustrate the difference between Legacy Organizations and what he calls "Evolutionary Organizations," Dignan uses the analogy of traffic signals versus roundabouts.
Traffic signals, like Legacy Organizations, operate on the assumption that people need to be told exactly what to do at all times. They use a top-down, command-and-control approach to manage complexity. Roundabouts, on the other hand, provide a framework for self-organization. They have minimal rules (yield to cars already in the circle) and rely on drivers to use their judgment to navigate the intersection safely.
Interestingly, despite being less common, roundabouts consistently outperform traffic signals in terms of:
- Reducing traffic delays (by 89%)
- Lowering maintenance costs
- Decreasing both fatal collisions (by 90%) and injury-causing collisions (by 75%)
- Functioning even during power outages
This analogy highlights the potential benefits of moving away from rigid, top-down management structures towards more flexible, self-organizing systems in our organizations.
Key Principles of Evolutionary Organizations
Dignan identifies two fundamental principles that characterize Evolutionary Organizations:
Complexity Conscious: These organizations recognize and embrace the complex nature of business environments, global markets, and human interactions.
People Positive: They believe in the capability of individuals to handle complexity when empowered and given the right tools and environment.
To illustrate these principles in action, the author shares the story of David Marquet, who took command of the underperforming USS Santa Fe submarine. Instead of issuing top-down orders, Marquet shared his vision and encouraged his crew to think for themselves and take ownership of their work.
Marquet's approach included:
- Decentralizing control to allow for quick problem-solving
- Creating an environment that encouraged experimentation and learning
- Empowering crew members to take responsibility for their actions
The result? The USS Santa Fe went from being the worst-performing submarine in the fleet to the best under Marquet's command.
Rethinking Organizational Domains
Dignan argues that to transition from a Legacy Organization to an Evolutionary one, companies need to reconsider various domains of their operations. He focuses on several key areas:
Structure
The author challenges traditional notions of organizational structure, citing examples like:
The Morning Star Company: This tomato processing company allows employees to write their own job descriptions and set their own salaries, subject to peer review.
Buurtzorg: A Dutch home-care provider that operates with a core team of just 50 people managing 14,000 nurses organized into self-managing teams of 12.
These examples demonstrate how flattening hierarchies and distributing decision-making power can lead to more engaged employees and better organizational outcomes.
Purpose
Dignan emphasizes the importance of having a clear, inspiring purpose that is both eudaemonic (conducive to human flourishing) and actionable. He cites Tesla's mission "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy" as an example of an inspirational purpose, but notes that it may be too vague for practical application.
The author suggests Facebook's approach as a potential solution: The company sets 30-year goals but also focuses on what can be achieved in the next six months, creating a balance between long-term vision and short-term action.
Meetings
Recognizing that meetings often serve as a microcosm of an organization's culture, Dignan proposes radical approaches to improving their effectiveness:
Meeting moratorium: Cancel all meetings for two weeks to identify which ones are truly necessary.
Purpose-driven design: Ensure that each meeting has a clear purpose and is structured to achieve that purpose.
By rethinking meetings, organizations can reclaim valuable time and energy while improving communication and decision-making.
Membership
The author encourages organizations to reconsider their approach to hiring and team composition. He suggests:
- Hiring for cultural contribution rather than just cultural fit
- Ensuring alignment between an individual's passions and the company's mission
- Fostering diversity of thought and experience to drive innovation
The Nature of Organizational Change
One of Dignan's most important insights is his perspective on the nature of change itself. He argues against the common metaphor of change as a journey with a clear destination, suggesting instead that change should be viewed as a continuous, transformative process.
The author proposes a technique called "looping" to facilitate ongoing, participatory change:
- Identifying tensions: Recognizing areas where current practices are not serving the organization well
- Proposing practices: Suggesting new approaches or solutions to address these tensions
- Conducting experiments: Testing proposed practices on a small scale to evaluate their effectiveness
This approach allows organizations to adapt and evolve continuously, rather than relying on large-scale, top-down change initiatives that often fail to achieve their goals.
Practical Strategies for Transformation
Throughout the book, Dignan offers numerous practical strategies and tools for organizations looking to make the shift from Legacy OS to Evolutionary OS. Some key recommendations include:
Embrace complexity: Recognize that organizations are complex systems that can't be controlled through rigid rules and procedures.
Empower employees: Trust people to make decisions and take ownership of their work.
Encourage experimentation: Create a culture that values learning and allows for small-scale tests of new ideas.
Simplify processes: Regularly review and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and outdated procedures.
Foster transparency: Share information widely to enable better decision-making at all levels of the organization.
Align purpose and practice: Ensure that day-to-day activities and decisions reflect the organization's broader mission and values.
Cultivate adaptability: Build systems and cultures that can respond quickly to changing circumstances and new challenges.
Conclusion: The Path Forward
In concluding "Brave New Work," Dignan emphasizes that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for organizational transformation. Each company must find its own path, guided by the principles of complexity consciousness and people-positivity.
The author encourages readers to start small, focusing on one domain or area of tension within their organization. By applying the looping technique and embracing a mindset of continuous experimentation and learning, companies can gradually evolve towards more adaptive, human-centered ways of working.
Ultimately, Dignan's vision is one of organizations that not only perform better in terms of traditional metrics but also contribute to the well-being and fulfillment of their employees and society at large. By reimagining our approach to work and management, we have the opportunity to create businesses that are more resilient, innovative, and aligned with human needs and potential.
As we face increasingly complex global challenges and rapidly changing markets, the ideas presented in "Brave New Work" offer a compelling roadmap for creating organizations that can thrive in the 21st century and beyond. By questioning long-held assumptions about management and embracing new ways of thinking about work, we can unlock the full potential of our people and our businesses, paving the way for a more prosperous and fulfilling future.