I recently watched Ray Dalio's TED Talk on his concept of an Idea Meritocracy... I loved it so wanted to share it with you.
An Idea Meritocracy is an environment in which the best idea wins. The best idea is determined by the quantity and quality of the data, not by positional power. For many of us, and the organisations we've worked in, this is kinda mind-blowing....
Based on an increasingly held belief in the corporate world that most organisations, as operated today, will be unsustainable in a world of ever-advancing smart technology. To remain viable, most will have to achieve not only higher-level technological capabilities, but also higher-level human cognitive and emotional performance. This is all music to my ears but for many this may just seem too much, or completely unrealistic.
To flourish in the innovation age, companies must change how decisions are made and change how leaders lead.
The concept wards off complacency and groupthink by empowering employees to have the curiosity and courage to challenge, to explore like scientists by asking the three W’s: Why? What if? Why not? (How nice would that be?)
Intuit’s co-founder and executive committee chair, Scott Cook, explained an Idea Meritocracy this way: "An Idea Meritocracy is designed to produce the best possible decision under the circumstances by enabling the best thinking by all team members. It does this by creating a culture that promotes psychological safety, candor, confronting the brutal facts, permission to speak freely and permission to do rapid, small, low-risk experiments. That culture enables and drives iterative learning behaviours."
An Idea Meritocracy values collaboration, not competition; teams, not individuals; inquiry exploration and constructive data-driven debate, not “telling”; and learning more than “knowing.”
This all sounds amazing, but a massive step-change from the cultures of many corporates today. There is significant change that is needed for an Idea Meritocracy to take hold and grow. Everyone will need to change what they attach their egos to and how they define themselves. This is sorely needed, but will take time, determination, consistency and a lot of courage to bring into existing companies with long legacy cultures. But if they want to survive and grow it may be what makes all the difference.
“Meritocracies yield better decisions and create an environment where all employees feel valued and empowered. They demolish the culture of fear, the murky, muddy environment in which hippos [the highest paid persons] prefer to wallow.” - Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg in Why Google Works.
The Smart Change
The whole change is dependent upon people being willing, capable and supported to continuously update their mental models with better data and look for data that disagrees with what they believe. That is made much easier if individuals adopt a new definition of what it means to be smart.
I simply love this concept of "New Smart". It is just so in line with many of the blogs i've written about growth mindset, being willing to change your mind and many others. Here are the five beliefs that can enable a NewSmart mindset and behaviors:
I’m defined not by what I know or how much I know, but by the quality of my thinking, listening, learning, relating and collaborating.
My mental models are not reality — they are only my generalised stories of how my world works.
I’m not my ideas, and I must decouple my beliefs (not values) from my ego
I must be open-minded and treat my beliefs (not values) as hypotheses to be constantly tested and subject to modification by better data.
My mistakes and failures are opportunities to learn.
The power of an Idea Meritocracy is in both what it can produce — mindsets and behaviors — and in what it can reduce, mitigate and eliminate: namely the big inhibitors of high-quality learning, thinking and effective collaboration.
big egos
emotional defensiveness
closed-mindedness
inability to listen
hierarchical snobbery
fear of making mistakes,
fear of being penalised for speaking
fear of disagreeing with higher-ups
fear of ambiguity and uncertainty.
“When it comes to the quality of decision-making, pay level is intrinsically irrelevant and experience is valuable only if it is used to frame a winning argument. Unfortunately, in most companies experience is the winning argument. We call these places ‘tenurocracies,’ because power derives from tenure, not merit.” - Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg in Why Google Works.
That is the power of an Idea Meritocracy. Is there a way that we can really transform our organisations into this? I really hope so....
Until next time...
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