Brave New Work
by Aaron Dignan
Book Review by Ed Ladd
Like many of you, I was inspired to look at learning differently thanks to the insights of Sir Ken Robinson. My favorite YouTube video was the wonderful animation on a white board of Robinson’s ideas about the “old” factory model of education and how it needed to change so we could encourage creativity and innovation in children. To me, Robinson captured the essence of the need to change from an older and well-established model of education to one that is culturally different. Aaron Dignan, in his newest book, “Brave New Work,” does the same for organizations and their “operating systems” in a dense and provocative challenge to how we currently work. Our “legacy organizations” are based on the work of Frederick Taylor’s “The Principle of Scientific Management” published in 1909 and born on the factory floor to create a efficient and controlled system that separated the “thinking” – management- from the “doing” – workers , and is the foundation for all of our organizational work flow charts! Dignan demonstrates forcibly the flaws of this system and presents us with an alternative he tabs as “evolutionary organizations.”
The book is divided into three sections: The Future of Work, The Operating System, and The Change. In this review, I am going to focus on the first section, but I think this a book worthy of any leader reading. While it is hard to imagine some of the changes envisioned by Dignan, the philosophy, rationale, and the fact that some organizations are already doing this successfully makes his assertions hard to dismiss or ignore.
The foundational question for this treatise is “What’s stopping you from doing the best work of your life?” For Dignan, this is rhetorical. He asserts that we are using an operating system that is archaic and based on faulty thinking. Legacy systems are based on a top to bottom flow chart for authority and making decisions; they are addicted to predictability; ironclad in their chain of command; and bureaucratic labyrinths of policies and processes. On the other hand, evolutionary organizations are characterized by being “people positive’ and complexity conscious.” He defines “people positive” organizations as ones that assume the best from everyone in terms of self-motivation, the ability to make decisions, and an ability to be sensitive to the nature of a complex system. The bedrock of this philosophy espoused by Dignan is that we need to understand the difference between complicated and complexity. The “factory system” that all of us inherited is based on the belief that our organizations are complicated. A complicated system, according to Dignan, is casual in nature – it is subject to cause and effect and therefore can be controlled. In such a system, the belief is that problems can be solved and by finding resolutions one can control the system. But, Dignan argues, organizations are not complicated; they are complex and complex systems are not causal; instead they are about relationships and interactions among the components of the system and these are neither predictable nor controllable; such a system can only be managed. This distinction between complicated and complex is key to understanding and accepted Dignan’s assertions. To simplify: the legacy leader sees everything like a factory and all problems can be fixed if we work long and hard enough. The evolutionary leader believes if we create the right conditions everyone will continually find ways to achieve our goals.
Although this summary may sound obtuse or overwhelming, I promise you that Dignan makes a case for change in the way we operate schools that is worth your consideration and is worth the time to read this book. Dignan envisions a work place where everyone is self-motivated, self-fulfilled, and has the freedom to both make decisions and to innovate. His vision is an extraordinary one and he writes elegantly about it based on his extensive research and personal practice about the changes that are possible and how to make them. Similar to Sir Ken Robinson, Dignan wants us to create a work place where everyone can learn, grow, and adapt continuously. “Brave New Work” is a first step in achieving this goal.