Co-Founder and CEO of The Developmental Edge (formerly Way to Grow INC, LLC), Andy Fleming passionately believes in the self-perpetuating cycle of individual and organizational development. 

“When people can objectively view and improve themselves, they begin to objectively review and improve the processes, products and services that make up their organization. This spirit of continual innovation – of innovating both the self and the company itself – drives organizations to achieve more. More milestones. Higher revenue. Richer culture. This positive reinforcement, this mutual growth, is what we call a 21^st Century Growth Culture^®, and it is the goal pursued by progressive, responsible, striving organizations today,” shared Fleming.

Fleming co-founded The Developmental Edge, a unique organizational development firm that accelerates employee, team and company growth. His leadership and thinking drew the industries top luminaries, Dr. Robert Kegan and Dr. Lisa Lahey, to work with him, as well as Claire Lee, Dr. Matthew L. Miller, Dr. Allison Rowland and other associates. Today, it is the leading organization on adult development in the workplace.

Fleming has guided two clients to the top of Fortune’s coveted 100 Best Companies to Work For list. While proud of that feat, which involved building and implementing customized, purpose-driven leadership development initiatives that reached deep into their respective organizations and served business, cultural, and individual goals, Fleming has matured his thoughts on what makes a company “best.”

 “Today’s employee views compensation differently from their 20^th century counterparts. Before it was salary and healthcare that mostly defined compensation—income security, broadly speaking. Later in the 20^th century, benefits that could be tailored to support one’s particular lifestyle, like flexible hours, became increasingly important. Today, more and more employees are motivated by new incomes in addition to the established forms of compensation. The new incomes include: feeling a sense of purpose regarding their work, that what they do makes a difference in accord with their deeper values and their desire to make the world a better place; and experiencing their own personal growth in the context of their work, feeling like they are realizing more and more of their full potential. At TDE, we’re committed to furthering the idea of happiness as personal flourishing—people experiencing their own further unfolding as they realize more and more of their full potential on behalf of a larger purpose. The best organizations today realize that they gain higher and higher levels of creativity and commitment by helping their employees to flourish, by making the new incomes part of their overall compensation.

Co-author of An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization, Fleming champions workplaces where adult development is expressly intended. Fleming helps clients to develop the mindset and processes necessary to ensure that everyone witnesses, supports and, at times, provokes the best in their fellow employees. Fleming strongly believes that being a Deliberately Developmental Organization^® (DDO) is critical in today’s economy.

“Modern CEOs recognize that formal leadership development can be helpful, but that impacts 5% of the organization and trickles down to maybe another 10%. People development – across all levels of an organization, embedded in the everyday culture – impacts 100% of the organization. And who doesn’t want all of their employees working to more and more of their potential, getting better at their jobs everyday across the board?”

Fleming co-created The Developmental Sprint^®, a proprietary, 4-week process for immediately improving employee performance, driving documented, significant financial and cultural results for clients. Designed to be scalable and replicable for organizations and simple and repeatable for employees, The Developmental Sprint^® process is the foundation relied on by progressive, responsible CEOs to build their own 21^st Century Growth Culture^®. 

For more than 30 years, in both corporate and consulting roles with organizations such as Procter & Gamble, The Hay Group, Aetna, Frazier & Deeter, Synovus Financial Corporation, TSYS Payment Solutions, and others, Fleming has generated both people and business results.

Fleming views his own calling as helping people, individually and collectively, work from a deeper and more integrated sense of vocation, to experience their work as an expression of their core values and as a catalyst for their own and others’ growth on behalf of creating a better world. He attended seminary for two years at Emory’s Candler School of Theology and dedicated five years to Emory University’s Center for Ethics where he served as Director of Programming for Ethics & Servant Leadership. During his time there, he developed a widely-used “three circles” model for career discernment that has been taught in many universities, colleges, and corporations over the past 15 years and is reflected in the writing of authors such as Stephen Covey.

A graduate of Harvard Business School, Fleming also co-created the Growth Culture Indicator^® (TDE’s DDO Assessment^®), an organizational diagnostic tool, with Harvard’s Dr. Matthew Miller. For clients who desire an in-depth analysis (an “MRI”) of the “developmental richness” of their culture, TDE customizes and administers this proprietary, 28-item, Web-based assessment. Often given early in an engagement to create a baseline and then later to track ongoing progress, The Growth Culture Indicator^® provides leaders with a clear framework and actionable insight into their specific organization’s strengths, gaps, and high-leverage opportunities for creating and sustaining a more adaptable workforce within a 21st Century Growth Culture^®.

In addition to An Everyone Culture, Fleming is the author of two other books on work-life choices, Getting Ahead Without Losing Heart and Backing Down the Ladder. Getting Ahead Without Losing Heart is an insightful exploration of the career and lifestyle decisions of seven distinctive young adults—some on the fast track, others just off—who chronicle in their own voices their most significant educational and career choices. Backing Down the Ladder is a book of original poetry for those who want to want to find their own voice, even if it means backing down the ladder. 

A former Yale basketball captain and ex-corporate climber at three Fortune 500 companies, Fleming has devoted his life’s work to helping people and organizations flourish.

For The Developmental Edge… Fleming provides high-level consulting to clients, tailoring insights and programs to meet client needs. Drawing on his cross-industry expertise, Fleming conducts assessments through the Growth Culture Indicator^® , guides teams through The Developmental Sprint^® process and other proprietary programs, and utilizes Developmental Data to pinpoint opportunities for employee education and organizational development. Fleming often speaks internationally on Developmental Intelligence™, becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization^® and 21^st Century Growth Cultures^®.

Industry Highlights: Over the last 30+ years, Fleming has worked in nearly every industry you can think of… Entertainment to Accounting, Education/Nonprofits to Aerospace, Professional Services to Consumer Goods, Healthcare to Construction… the list goes on. He approaches each client individually and draws on the vast number of assessments, systems, and processes he has used and created to generate real, measurable, inspirational change.