Team update: A lot has happened since this blog - all great things! We’re now in the United States and our new product launched in November 2021, helping teams in fast-growing organizations find and hire their best-fit junior and mid-level talent in Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Customer Success. Try it here for free. This means some of our articles before this date may have product shots that look a little different. That’s all from us, enjoy the blog.

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Deciding to be a DDO

Have you ever joined an entirely new field? I’m a leadership consultant by background, and joining Hatch - a start-up tech company - in early 2018 was equally terrifying and exciting. Fortunately, the first item on my contract was to lead the creation of a Deliberately Development Organisation (DDO). Our journey towards it hasn’t been linear - but more of that later.

A DDO is defined by the creators Kegan and Lahey as “an organisational culture in which the support of people’s development is woven into the daily fabric of working life; operations, routines, conversations”. What this means is that you don’t go to a leadership offsite to build your skills - it happens in daily meetings, coaching, and live feedback conversations.

There are hundreds of cultural models out there for businesses to choose from. We arrived at the initiative of a DDO from my work previously helping other companies adopt DDO elements, coupled with the immediate positive gut response from our co-founder Adam, who was familiar with the concept.

What I like about the DDO model is the bravery required. The focus on genuinely being your whole self at work (as opposed to just putting it on a t-shirt) and embodying vulnerability; it’s easier typed than done.

I am mindful of the potential danger zones in a DDO culture, though. While I’ve never worked in one, I worry that they may lead to a harsh culture where feedback is weaponised. So we’ve been purposeful about creating a culture that values kindness. Kindness that is being clear with one another and not just daily positive affirmations. And we want it to be authentic, team members building each other up because they genuinely want to, not because they feel as if they have to.

Understanding who we are

Hatch was a team of 7, including two co-founders when I joined. I arrived, all guns blazing with my development plan ready to take everyone on the DDO journey. After one year the plan remained unopened.

Why?

Firstly, priorities - we’re a start-up. Our success as a company isn’t guaranteed and we believe company performance is the essential ingredient for an engaged team. We couldn’t ask that people lean into team development if we’re still proving the business model is working.

The other reason was more of an existential question: who are we as a team and what do we care about? A DDO shouldn’t come from HR, it should be co-created and we needed to answer that burning question first.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

In April 2019, we kicked off our DDO project in earnest, having established a great team culture. The team is enormously fun and we value each other as humans; we move quickly and we hold opinions lightly. I would happily spend a 3-hour train ride with any of my colleagues - would you?

The catalyst for the kick-off, however, was our awareness that we weren’t great at appreciation or positive feedback, which we define as core ingredients for a successful team.

One example of the reality of this was as we built continuously on ideas; we’d repetitively shred draft designs in product sparring sessions. Feedback felt scary and we talked around issues until they bubbled over. Not knowing how to navigate hard conversations meant they came from a place of defensiveness. We didn’t like this, nor did it feel true to who we were as a company or individuals.

Here’s what we did

Workshops

We kicked off an initial workshop, focusing on listening to each other about what we as a culture were like at our best, and not at our best. We talked about what kind of culture would kill our company, and what on that list we were doing.

Outcome

We identified two initial behaviours to work on - discovery-oriented feedback and appreciation.

I then ran a series of workshops aimed at developing our capabilities of:

• Being in discovery rather than defensiveness
• Giving and receiving discovery-based feedback
• Trust
• Gratitude

Outcome

To keep these skills alive beyond the meeting room, we created social contracts, checklists, a meeting Yoda (yep, a Yoda!), and weekly gratitude practices. Discovery is part of our daily conversations, and gratitude and appreciation have become a norm. Feedback is still scary but we have the permission to give and receive it, even if it's clunky, because our intent is always kind.

Development Maps

Our most vulnerable project was creating what we’ve coined to be a ‘Development Map’. Our team underwent 360 feedback and several coaching sessions with me, as the resident org psychologist, to design a map that outlined a Personal Development Focus.

Outcome

Our development maps talk about behaviours we should "Do more or less of", what our defensive behaviour looks like and how the team can help us move that person into discovery. Most importantly, we name why that change will be hard. By calling out our gremlins, we get a hold of them and create actual behavioural change.

What’s been challenging for me

Before joining Hatch, I worked as a leadership consultant. There, you get to act as a mirror and guide for other people going through development. Here, not only was I leading the journey, I was also a part of it. This meant I had to confront my own gremlins and model the vulnerability and trust I wanted from my colleagues.

A development focus that came out of the 360 feedback for me, is that when I’m not feeling confident about something - for example about a project or design - the more I want to hide it from others. I want to wrap my arms around it and protect it from feedback or opinions. And if I do receive feedback when I’m in this state, I get defensive.

So… this was particularly hard as this whole DDO project is filled with uncertainty. I want to know all the answers, and importantly, be seen to know the answers. I talked a good game about my development background for a year before we kicked it off, and the gremlin that maybe I actually wasn’t as good as I remembered being, led  me to close off . I wasn’t regularly seeking feedback on my designs, and prioritised finding certain answers over exploring uncharted territory and asking hard questions.

Outcome

What I did (and am still doing) about it:

• First, identifying where my defensiveness happens most. For me this is project meetings where we're reporting on progress especially if I don't feel prepared or on track, or when I have early designs on something I care a lot about.
• Actively stating I don't know all the answers - get that on the table early - and invite feedback and challenges to my ideas.
• Creating puases in meetings to ask others for questions and feedback. Finally, I have my mantra for whenever I start to feel defensiveness or the gremlins bubble up: I care more about learning, than "looking good"
  [Repeat after me: I care more about learning, I care more about learning, I care more about learning]

What's next

Now that everyone in the team has a development map, it is time to live them. We’re aiming to revisit them in 1:1’s with managers and in monthly peer coaching sessions. We’re challenging ourselves to include them in our monthly team retro too; where we’ll sit together and share a sentence on what our development focus is for the month, why it will be hard and how others can help us.

Overall, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved so far. I believe the journey has made us more vulnerable, trusting, and resilient. By designing a home base of support, we’ve created an environment that allows us to grow and be uncomfortable. We don’t need all the answers as long as we’re asking the right questions.

I’m itching to co-design the next stage in our journey.

Learn more about designing DDO's:

‍Book: Kegan & Lahey, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization

Article: Kegan & Lahey, The Key to Adaptable Companies Is Relentlessly Developing People, Harvard Business Review

Article: 5 Questions With Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Forbes

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