An Everyone Culture:
Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization
Built on These Beliefs
The organizations profiled in An Everyone Culture built their cultures on a different set of beliefs about human potential. These aren’t talking points; they’re the operating assumptions that shape how people work and grow.
“Do you worry about how good you are or how fast you are learning?”
Ray Dalio, CEO, Bridgewater
“Feast on your weakness or starve on your ego.”
Bryan Ungard, Chief Purpose Officer, Decurion
“Better me + Better You = Better Us”
Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
The Developmental Edge exists to make beliefs like these actionable across your whole organization, faster than you thought possible.
An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization
By: Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Andy Fleming, Matthew L. Miller, and Deborah Helsing
- Introduces the Deliberately Developmental Organization®. The book presents a groundbreaking model in which organizations embed human development into their daily operating systems rather than treat it as an occasional leadership program.
- Shows how growth and performance can reinforce each other. The authors demonstrate that when organizations intentionally support their people's growth, they unlock higher performance, stronger collaboration, and greater innovation.
- Reimagines leadership development for everyone. Instead of focusing only on high-potential leaders, a DDO creates the conditions for continuous learning, reflection, and feedback across the entire organization.
- Lays the foundation for modern developmental practices. The ideas in An Everyone Culture inspired practical tools and processes, such as the Developmental Sprint®, The Developmental Workout®, and the Growth Culture Indicator®, that help organizations embed developmental habits into the rhythm of real work.
Built on These Beliefs
About
The book, co-authored by The Developmental Edge® founder Andy Fleming and by Harvard faculty Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Matthew L. Miller, and Deborah Helsing, describes a new organizational model: the Deliberately Developmental Organization® (DDO®). These are companies that make human growth a central operating system, not a side initiative.
Rather than limiting “leadership development” to a few high-potential leaders, a DDO builds the conditions for everyone to evolve, embedding learning, reflection, and feedback into the rhythm of daily work. The result is not only faster individual growth but also measurable business acceleration:
- Higher performance and innovation
- Stronger trust and collaboration across functions
- Greater adaptability under complexity
- Reduced turnover and higher engagement
An Everyone Culture became the intellectual foundation for The Developmental Edge’s differential frameworks, including the Developmental Sprint®, Developmental Workout®, and Growth Culture Indicator®, which make the principles of the DDO practical, scalable, and measurable inside today’s complex organizations. These tools help clients embed developmental habits into daily routines, turning leadership growth into a system-wide capability that drives transformation at speed and scale.
Published by Harvard Business Review Press, the book continues to inspire CEOs and leadership teams worldwide to see culture not as a backdrop for performance, but as the engine that powers it.
Regularly quoted in such publications as The New York Times and Forbes, Harvard University’s Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development has been as comfortable in the boardroom as the classroom. CEOs worldwide have asked him to assist them personally, their teams, and their organizations, to define and implement high-value improvement processes. His insight into individual and collective ”immunities to change” has resulted in significant and sustainable improvements due to generative shifts in underlying mindsets.
Reviews
“An Everyone Culture is the most provocative recasting of human and organizational potential since the advent of the ‘learning organization.’ It will transform how you think about work and workplace culture in the twenty-first century.”
Gary Hamel, London Business School
“Our work environments are the perfect learning laboratories. Our focus needs to not just be on individual learning, but also on building the processes, tools, and organizational systems for learning to take place—and stick.”
Melissa Daimler, Chief Learning Officer, Udemy
“Could it be that workplaces can become the ultimate forum to help people become greater than they think possible? Read this book to find out.”
Conscious Company Magazine
Bring These Ideas Into Action
If the ideas in this book resonate with your interest in leadership, development, human potential, and organizational culture, there are three ways to go deeper.
Download the Introductory Chapter. Gain an introduction to the ideas reshaping how organizations think about growth and performance. Download the First Chapter.
Purchase the Book. Fully explore the authors’ ground-breaking ideas. Buy on Amazon.
Contact TDE. Bring these ideas to your organization through keynotes, workshops, and leadership development experiences. Speak with a Leadership Expert.
Bridgewater Associates
“Do you worry about how good you are or how fast you are learning?”
– Ray Dalio, CEO
Idea Meritocracy Pursuing Radical Truth and Transparency
Bridgewater is the single most successful investment group in the world. “Our unique success is the direct result of our unique way of being. We want an idea of meritocracy in which meaningful work and meaningful relationships are pursued through radical truth and radical transparency.” What happens, though, when employees receive radical truths, but don’t know how to act on them? This is some of the current work we do at Bridgewater.
At Bridgewater:
PAIN + REFLECTION = PROGRESS
If you don’t do things that make you uncomfortable, that are hard, that involve difficult-to-hear feedback, and if you don’t then reflect on those things, then you will not grow. And without growth, according to Dalio, there is no progress.
Do you have or want a high-performing culture? Learn how our Live360+Developmental Sprint® can help turn personal insights into action.
The Decurion Corporation
“Feast on your weakness or starve on your ego.”
– Bryan Ungard, Chief Purpose Officer
Providing Places for People To Flourish
“We have come to see that profitability and human development are part of a single whole.” This governing philosophy guides the work of The Decurion Corporation, one of the largest revenue-
generating property owners, movie theater and real estate development companies on the West Coast. A privately held corporation, Decurion operates Robertson Properties Group, Pacific Theaters, ArcLight Cinemas, and Hollybrook Senior Living, among other concerns. Here’s a sampling of their operating philosophy that they deeply embed in the structures, systems, and practices of their businesses:
“Decurion’s purpose, the fundamental reason it exists, is to provide places for people to flourish.
By ‘flourish’ we mean to become fully oneself, which includes living an undivided life and growing into what one is meant to be.
We believe that every human being has something unique to express (perhaps several unique things over the course of a lifetime).
While building each of our businesses to world-class standards, we seek to create the conditions for that expression to emerge.
Flourishing is the process of living into one’s unique contribution. We expect to do this through our work.”
Do you have or want a high-performing culture? Learn how our Live360+Developmental Sprint® can help turn personal insights into action.
NextJump
“There is no way to ‘get better’ other than to first do it, however poorly you do. So get started; go out and fail! We have become good at getting better because we are so good at failing.”
– Charlie Kim, CEO
NextJump’s primary business is called Perks at Work, an e-commerce marketplace for the employees of most Fortune 1000 companies. Its underlying purpose, and one that unites the company and its people, is to change the world by changing workplace culture. While Perks at Work focuses on sharing a corporation’s tangible benefits with its workforce, NextJump’s mission is to focus on the intangibles that make a business great: teamwork, transparency, belonging, improvement, freedom to fail, and more.
Their axiom:
Better Me + Better You = Better Us
We believe in filling your own cup so you can pour into others and help everyone rise together.
It’s about doing the little things that allow others to do the great things they’re meant to do.
Do you have or want a high-performing culture? Learn how our Live360+Developmental Sprint® can help turn personal insights into action.