Courtesy of this interview with Semco’s Ricardo Semler. If you don’t know the story of Semco, take a listen. And imagine if all organizations were similarly organized?
Tag: worldblu
Living the DaVita Way
On a chartered bus in Nashville, surrounded by colorfully-clad nurses and office administrators, I knew I was in for a different sort of experience when the woman next to me found out I was a newbie, leaned closer and assured me: “Everyone remembers their first.”
It’s not what you think.
In fact, it was the annual conference for the 41,000 employees of DaVita, a Fortune 500 company that specializes in renal care – and, as it turns out, in creating a transformational organizational culture.
The bus was part of an elaborate plan to ensure that every arrival to the conference felt welcomed and valued. Volunteers were scattered throughout the airport with signs leading us slowly to the bus, where we boarded amidst an expectant, cheerful din. An orientation video provided further clarity of what to expect, although nothing can really prepare you for arriving at a hotel and being greeted by hundreds of red-shirted DaVita employees, a house band playing Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and the company’s CEO, Kent Thiry, personally greeting – and hugging – each new arrival.
Veteran staffers refer to it as “the DaVita way”, and it was on display for the next three days. Yet DaVita’s story is not just remarkable for what it is, but what it was, and how it remade itself.
Headquartered in Denver, DaVita was, as recently as 1999, nearly bankrupt. That’s when Thiry took the top post and chose to embark on an organization-wide effort to craft a new set of core values and sense of mission, and a work culture of shared responsibility, democratic decision-making, and continuous learning and growth.
“About a third of the staff said, ‘OK, that’s the fad of the month,’ Thiry recalled for the Stanford Business Review. “A third of the room was literally insulted that I would be demeaning them by thinking that they’d fall for that sort of rhetorical flourish. And maybe a third were interested.”
But Thiry persisted, so certain was he that a healthy culture helps people “feel an emotional level of trust and mutual commitment” and frees them from the feelings of fear, confusion and mistrust that plague unhealthy work environments.
After years of working at it, DaVita now describes itself as a global village with a Trilogy of Care: “for our patients, our teammates and our world.” As DaVita Chief Wisdom Officer Steve Priest explains, “When we choose to become citizens of the DaVita community, we make a decision to engage our head, heart and hands for the greater good of those around us.”
That means employees are expected to watch out for each other and work toward the good of the community. It means DaVita’s business objectives are always designed to support the village first, and the bottom line second. And it means that what drives each employee has more to do with who they are than what they do. “We say we are a community first and a company second,” Thiry said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t care about profit, but it’s a means, not the end.”
The clarity of this vision is on ubiquitous display at a DaVita conference. Giant banners list the company’s mission and core values, alongside personal testimonials from staff, clients and patients that testify to the power of the DaVita way. Thiry also models the values by publicly sharing the results of his own 360-degree performance review – and publicly reflecting on the areas where he sees himself in need of the most improvement.
As one attendee told me, “What makes us special is that our goal is not just to create better workers. We value all aspects of a person – head, heart and hands – and we evaluate people that way as well. That’s why our culture is so strong – we share a mission to cultivate healthy, happy people – our patients, our clients, and ourselves – and that is the standard against which we measure our work each year.”
Thanks to this clarity of purpose, the dark days of 1999 have given way to annual revenue in excess of $6 billion, alongside a strong commitment to organizational democracy. “A company produces most what it honors most,” says Thiry. “And we want a community of citizens, not just employees. You can’t create citizens unless you ensure that everyone has a voice and an understanding of how to use it effectively. It really is that simple – and that difficult.”
My neighbor was right. Everyone really does remember their first.
Do Great Conferences Have a “Special Sauce”?
What makes for a transformational meeting?
I’m asking myself this question because I just attended the best conference of my life. I’m asking it because most conferences, well, suck. And I’m asking it because the people I just spent three days with were continually asking it of each other in order to identify the “special sauce” for themselves – and give us all a better chance of recreating it for more and more people.
The conference in question was WorldBlu live, an annual gathering that is “designed for individuals, for-profit and non-profit organizations who recognize the power of freedom and democracy as a tool for building thriving businesses, promoting innovation, attracting top talent and inspiring full engagement.”
I’ve already written about some of the specific highlights of the conference. Now I want to share the foundations of the WorldBlu “special sauce” that made it such a success – and that any conference planner can replicate, no matter what industry you represent.
1. The People (aka, Widen the Gene Pool) – WorldBlu Live is as heterogeneous a gathering of people as you’re likely to find. It is, most broadly defined, a business conference, and, true to type, there were many CEOs in attendance, in industries ranging from telecommunications to healthcare to online retail. But there were also human resource professionals. And programmers. And higher education administrators. And musicians. And students. And the people themselves were coming from all across the United States. And Canada. And Denmark. And New Zealand.
This olio of professions, places and perspectives made for conference exchanges where no one could ever safely rely on their own linguistic industry shorthand, or even on an assumption about what one’s training did (or did not) include. As a result, the conversations formed a powerful double helix of ideas and questions – quite the contrast from the more typical industry-specific meeting, in which the capacity to exchange new ideas – the genetic building blocks that lead to new ways of seeing both the world and our work – is so inward-focused it produces the equivalent of an inbreeding reproductive loop. In short, WorldBlu starts with the assumption that our capacity for innovation grows exponentially when we inquire into core questions with people inside and outside of our chosen fields. And any other conference would be wise to do the same.
2. The Purpose (aka, Start with the “Why”) – As Simon Sinek makes clear in his must-watch TED talk, successful businesses and individuals don’t get better solely by perfecting what they do and how they do it; they get better by understanding why they do what they do, and where that source of intrinsic motivation originates.
The same is true of WorldBlu live. Despite being such an eclectic group, each of us was clearly and powerfully united by the most unlikely of common denominators – a shared commitment to organizational democracy, and, by extension, to create spaces where people could bring their full selves to life and work. It was, put another way, a conference that was designed to reconnect the Me (individual capacity) with the We (collective capacity). And as a result, it was infused with great personal and professional relevance for every attendee.
By contrast, most conferences myopically focus not just on the professional, but also the “what” of what we do. This is what leaves us feeling half-filled, as, indeed, we are. It also prevents us from inquiring deeper into our own sources of passion, strength, and joy – a feeling anyone who attended WorldBlu live will tell you was at the heart of the experience.
3. The Pace (aka, Balance Passive & Active Learning) – Unlike many conferences, in which the majority of people have but one role to play – passive consumer of someone else’s learning experience – WorldBlu Live was designed to strike a dynamic balance between absorbing and co-creating solutions and ideas. Each morning, different people gave short, TED-talk style speeches to the entire conference – and each in response to one of WorldBlu’s ten design principles of an organizational democracy. Afterwards, someone else, from an entirely different organization or industry, spoke briefly about a tool they had used to apply that principle in their work. Then the group transitioned into long unstructured coffee breaks, then box lunches, and then short 45-minute breakout sessions.
I have never seen a shorter time for breakout sessions at a conference, and initially I assumed they would be too brief to yield anything meaningful. What I experienced was the opposite – the brevity encouraged folks to jump right in, and the design assumption was that breakouts were merely a way to help people identify affinity groups, and enable a more useful sorting of the participants so people could have the conversations they were most eager to have with the other people most eager to have them. Consequently, I witnessed something I rarely see in a conference: the complete absence of “drive-by speakers” – the folks who simply show up to dispense their wisdom and then leave as soon as they’re done. As one person put it, “At WorldBlu Live, the speakers were the conference, and the conference was the speakers.”
Imagine if more of our professional conference experiences were characterized by these design principles of people, purpose and pace? Imagine if we started to expect actual learning and fulfillment from these sorts of exchanges, instead of the reluctant knowledge that we will miss yet another opportunity to learn something valuable? And imagine if in the course of our own professional advancement, we made new connections that were equally valuable to our ongoing journeys of personal fulfillment?
It’s possible. I’ve seen it. So let’s stop accepting – and expecting – anything less.
WorldBlu Live – What Would You Do If You Were Not Afraid?
In the early afternoon of the first day of WorldBlu live — a remarkable global gathering of people who share a commitment to organizational democracy — Menlo Innovations CEO Rich Sheridan shared the moment when he knew he was in trouble. “It was Take Your Daughter to Work Day,” he began, “and over dinner, I asked my daughter Sarah what she thought of the experience.
“You must be really important, Dad.”
“Why do you say that, Sarah?”
“Because no one can make a decision without you first giving the OK.”
For Sheridan, his daughter’s candor helped him realize two essential, uncomfortable truths: First, he had created a team that could only move as fast as he could. And second, although he was doing important work, he was also robbing his colleagues of something essential.
Sheridan’s (and Menlo’s) story since then is characteristic of the people and companies that make the annual trek to participate in WorldBlu Live. And at this year’s conference, which is being held at the posh St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, a sold-out crowd of the most eclectic community you could imagine — from cable company executives to college administrators to online retailers to students and software developers — is actively plotting the biggest and most audacious of goals: seeding a global movement that results in one billion people working in freedom.
WorldBlu founder and CEO Traci Fenton explains: “The shift we are witnessing worldwide is a shift from the Industrial and Information Ages to the Democratic Age. To get there, we must put into practice a fundamental assumption of democracy — that each person has inherent worth and dignity. Currently, most people live and work in environments that are still bound to the command-and-control model, that still govern by fear, and that still deny us the space to be our most creative and fulfilled selves. But we who are here know something powerful: that when we, consciously and deliberately, choose to design our workplaces based on the design principles of freedom — and not fear — we help people and organizations develop the collective capacity to change the world.”
Imagine, then, a two-day program designed to equip people with the skills they need to bring about such shifts in their own communities and organizations. Imagine a mixture of storytelling, breakout sessions, and unstructured time for conversations. And imagine a ballroom filled with people who don’t just believe a vision like Traci’s is possible — but that it’s already underway.
There are many inspiring and illustrative examples worth sharing (and a number of others can be found via the conference Twitter feed — check the #worldblu hashtag). I want to share one with you here: the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, an internationally-renowned group of musicians that has been, for more than 40 years, making beautiful music — and doing it all without a conductor.
“Traditionally,” explains Executive Director Ayden Adler, “classical music has maintained a near militaristic attention to order and hierarchy. Back in 1972 Orpheus decided to accept the challenge of creating its order and beauty out of the multiplicity of voices and ideas that make up the group. We believe that process is directly responsible for the richness and the passion of our performances.”
See below to see for yourself. Stay tuned for further updates, Tweets, and blog posts about this remarkable group of people. And ask yourself, when thinking about your own profession or workspace, what would YOU do tomorrow if you were not afraid?
Democracy in the Workplace
I’m in Las Vegas this week, attending Worldblu’s 2010 conference, at which Worldblu CEO Traci Fenton will honor the world’s most democratic workplaces. It’s an eclectic group of people and industries, and although there will be a few other educators at the event, it’s primarily an opportunity to learn what some forward-thinking folks in the private sector have learned about how the use of democratic principles can help create an optimal learning environment. In particular, I’m looking forward to hearing more from Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos and the recent focus of an extended profile in the New Yorker.
I’m also preparing to test-drive my belief that the core challenge in any organization — whether it’s an elementary school or an online shoe retailer — is to strike the right balance between providing a few clearly-defined, goal-oriented shared structures, and reserving enough space for individuals to feel free to express themselves, ad lib, try new ideas, and find ways to improve the overall flow of the organization. I’ll be blogging about it all week, so please stay tuned and share with me any questions you think would be particularly worth considering.
To What Do We Owe Our Fidelity?
Today was one of those magical work days — not so much because it was chaotic and crowded (it was), but because it was jam packed with interesting people and conversations. It began with University of Gloucestershire professor Philip Woods (an expert on democratic leadership and school governance); it ended with the fabulous Traci Fenton of WorldBLU, an organization that is identifying, and helping to create, democratic business cultures around the globe; and it featured a remarkable mid-afternoon tea with Sir Ken Robinson — yes, that Sir Ken Robinson — who is writing a new book and imagining lots of new and powerful ways to connect people to their passions.
Through all these conversations and exchanges, I’ve been reflecting on a question I’d never thought of quite so explicitly before. It surfaced during my morning conversation with Professor Woods: “In the work that we do, to what do we owe our greatest fidelity?”
I think this question gets at the heart with the issue I have with both extremes of the current education reform landscape.
On one side is the old guard, for who I think the answer to the question would be either “the children” or “democratic learning.” I think both of these are the wrong answers, but for different reasons. Regarding the idea of our fidelity being owed to “the children” — well, of course, but what good does the answer do you except allow you to feel self-righteous, because the answer doesn’t tell you anything about where to start or how to go about the work itself. And I don’t think our primary fidelity is owed to “democratic learning” either — because although it’s hugely important, it’s also often (mis)interpreted primarily as a set of structures, and strategy should always precede structure if you want a finely tuned organization.
Conversely, I think the new guard would say they owe fidelity to the concepts of “achievement” and/or “accountability.” These, too, are the wrong words, and for more easily identifiable reasons. Achievement has come to basically mean basic-skills standardized reading and math scores. How could we owe our greatest loyalty to those, unless our sole purpose is to collect some personal bonus at the end of the year (hey, wait a minute). And the idea of accountability is a little too punitive and unimaginative as a superordinate goal. We can do better.
What was reaffirmed to me this morning, and throughout the day, is how I believe we must answer the question — we owe our greatest fidelity to learning, and to helping people create the optimal environments in which it can occur.
Being clear on what we’re most loyal to ensures that, strategically, operationally, organizationally, we will ask the question that gets to the heart of what matters most: Will ______ help our students learn how to use their minds well? If yes, do it. If not, don’t. Best of all, a fidelity to learning doesn’t preclude other priorities. Our focus will still be on the children. Our community will still create multiple opportunities for democratic decision-making (it’s a great way to help people learn, after all). Our efforts will still be on measuring how well or poorly we’re helping students achieve (in the fullest sense of that word). And our intentions will still be to hold ourselves and each other accountable to what we aim to do together. But it’s only by setting our narrowest focus on the true bulls’ eye — on learning, and on the core conditions required to support and nurture it — that we can create the greatest likelihood of success.
Recent Comments