Essential role requirement: a bigger mind, please!

By Oxana Popkova, PhD researcher at the Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership, Cranfield School of Management

What is the problem?

When I ask experienced designers of executive education programmes what organisations should be doing less of to be more effective in developing top talent, the almost universal answer is “Competency models... especially at senior levels!” Indeed, competency models are overwhelming in number, often very generic, and typically a few steps behind the marketplace demands. But are they really the problem? I believe that they are not. The problem, in my opinion, is that organisations still have not recognised that in the 21^st century they will need to do two very different types of development simultaneously.

Lateral and vertical development: what is the difference?

When psychologists talk about adult development, they distinguish between lateral and vertical development. Both are important, but occur differently. Lateral growth and expansion happens through many channels, such as training, self-directed and life-long learning, as well as simply through exposure to life. The result is the development of new skills, knowledge and behaviours, in aggregate known as competencies. Vertical development in adults is much rarer. It refers to how we learn to see the world through new eyes, how we change our interpretations of experience and how we transform our views of reality. It describes increases in what we are aware of, or what we can pay attention to, and therefore what we can influence and integrate.

Most current training and development is geared towards expanding, deepening, and enriching a person’s current way of meaning-making, i.e. competence-based learning. Indeed, such learning can be very useful if a manager needs to close a very specific knowledge, behaviour or skill gap. Vertical development, on the other hand, refers to supporting people to transform their current way of making sense towards broader perspectives. Such development leads to “bigger” minds, and in general is more powerful than any amount of lateral development.

Learned mind or bigger mind?

Recent CEO surveys by thought leaders like McKinsey, IBM and Hay Group consistently return the same message over and over again: the top talent bench is not strong enough to deal with the growing complexity, interconnectedness and changeability of the marketplace. When asked about what is missing, the CEOs refer to “complex thinking abilities”, rather than isolated behavioural competencies. Digging deeper, these nebulous “complex thinking abilities” appear to consist of heightened strategic ability (i.e. pattern recognition, game simulation, boundary spanning, network thinking) and adaptability (i.e. ability to adapt to circumstances, self-awareness, collaboration, comfort with ambiguity, ability to change).

According to these surveys, not only such strategic-adaptive abilities are lacking, but the majority of developmental programmes fail to consistently accelerate, or even facilitate their development in top executives. Why? To me the answer is simple: because they are trying to fix the problem of vertical development with the toolkit of lateral development. They persist with more competency-based development where bigger minds are required.

Most developmental psychologists agree that what differentiates leaders is not so much their knowledge, philosophy of leadership, personality, or style of management. Rather it is their internal “action logic” or stage of vertical development, which impacts how they interpret their surroundings and react when their power or safety is challenged.

How does a mind become bigger?

Vertical human development is like a spiral of stages of lived human experience and how one makes sense of those experiences. Most human beings do not grow through the entire spiral, but rather settle in the level that is most familiar or most supported by the environment. Vertical development moves from simple to complex with a demonstrated increase in autonomy, flexibility, tolerance for differences and ambiguity, and a simultaneous decrease in defences.

Action logics are the steps of an individual’s journey of vertical development in adulthood; or how one makes meaning of themselves and the world. A person’s action logic is considered to be his or her dominant mindset, the place from where the person is most likely to reason and spontaneously respond and interpret their experiences.

Research has found that action logics evolve predictably throughout adulthood from the simplest form (termed “Opportunist”) to the most complex one (termed “Alchemist”), with the vast majority of the management population gravitating towards the middle.

Action logics	Characteristics	% of population*
Opportunist	Wins any way possible. Self-oriented; manipulative; "might makes right".	5%
Diplomat	Avoids overt conflict Wants to belong; obeys group norms; rarely rocks the boat.	12%
Expert	Rules by logic and expertise. Seeks rational efficiency.	38%
Achiever	Meets strategic goals. Effectively achieves goals through teams; juggles managerial duties and market demands.	30%
Individualist	Interweaves competing personal and company action logics. Creates unique structures to resolve gaps between strategy and performance.	10%
Strategist	Generates organizational and personal transformations. Exercises the power of mutual inquiry, vigilance, and vulnerability for both the short and long term.	4%
Alchemist	Generates social transformations. Integrates material, spiritual, and societal transformation.	1%

* Research sample of 497 professional managers (Rooke & Torbert, 2005)

Only 10-15% of management population ever reach later-stage action logics: Individualist, Strategist and Alchemist. These people would have typically achieved success for themselves and their organizations because of their capacity for more integrated and complex thinking, doing and feeling. They have a broader, more flexible and more imaginative perspective on the whole organization and its multiple contexts. They tend to cultivate relationships with many stakeholders, see promising connections and opportunities in novel places, and deal with problems in adaptive and proactive ways. Initial research with leaders who reach later-stage action logics shows that their companies do better than those run by their more conventional counterparts.

This is where the real challenge lies: in the complex world where the majority of senior managers should be able to operate at the later-stage action logics, only a minority is capable of it. So, how can this problem be solved?

What are the conditions for vertical development?

Vertical development refers to transformations of consciousness. Because acquisition of knowledge is part of the lateral development toolkit, learning about developmental theories is not sufficient to help people to transform. Only specific long-term practices, self-reflection, action inquiry, and dialogue, as well as living in the company of others who are further along on the developmental path has been shown to be effective.

By and large, progression through action logics is driven by one’s environment, and the limitations of one’s current worldview to explain it. But several conditions are required for accelerating vertical development:

• Lasting and consistent challenge from the environment in which one operates, at a level higher than one’s current action logic.
• Becoming aware of different ways of making sense of the reality, as legitimate as one’s own; being willing to consider changing one’s meaning-making system, rather than going in denial.
• Surfacing, analysing and challenging one’s existing assumptions; defining, testing and experimenting with new assumptions; practicing the new assumptions in daily life over a prolonged period of time.

Even if developmental conditions are met, upward development is not irreversible. People tend to prefer to respond spontaneously with the most complex action logic they have mastered. Under pressure and rapid change conditions, however, people often “regress” to behaviour patterns from earlier action logics. In contrast, moments of perceiving life in ways associated with stages much later than one’s dominant action logics are rare. These can be glimpsed during peak moments or temporarily manifested under ideal support conditions. Creating these “ideal support conditions” is where the opportunity lies for executive developers.

How is it currently done?

Developmental programmes that target vertical development are still very rare. They are still viewed as highly experimental and risky endeavours, and are peripheral to the mainstream competency-based development, which is at best capable of achieving lateral development. Nonetheless, there is a growing recognition amongst developers that there is systematic bottleneck in the build-up of the senior management skillset in the middle-management pipelines. The need to safeguard senior leadership pipelines is increasingly pressing, which encourages developers to innovate.

New thinking in executive development currently revolves around experiential programmes that create “constructive adversity”. They simulate the client company’s challenges and create a space and conditions for participants’ “safe failure”. They are incubators of sorts that prepare executive for real-life challenges of higher complexity. 

For example, in one case, a global pharmaceutical company integrated its top managers into local communities of slum neighbourhoods of India.  For several weeks uninterrupted, the participants worked with the local chieftains to solve their real daily problems. Reportedly, that helped the participants relate to the needs of local communities and consequently facilitated better ways of serving bottom-of-the-pyramid communities with drugs. In another case, an oil & gas major brought its top executives from around the world in one room and facilitated an intense awareness-raising exchange that lasted virtually uninterrupted for several days. Reportedly, that helped towards a much better inter-personal and cross-cultural understanding and closer collaborative ties between participants subsequent to the programme. 

Examples of such programmes are increasingly common in blue chip companies. But most of them still have several serious caveats.

What is missing?

Most of these programmes still follow a trial-and-error approach. The knowledge of how to model a context- and strategy-specific “constructive adversity” at the appropriate action logics level is still largely missing. As a result, no reliable testing of vertical development has yet been widely adopted in corporations.

The buyers of such programmes often state that a one-off experience undoubtedly delivers a shake-up to the participants’ worldview, but it does not always lead to a sustained worldview transformation. In both of the forenamed cases, for example, the buyers expressed a need for a long-term in-house programme that can manage this “regression” effect. Such a programme should effectively combine elements of lateral and vertical development over a period of 1-2 years, simulate context- and strategy-specific constructive adversity that does not dissipate overtime, stay much closer to the real work-place challenges, and deliver measurable developmental outcomes.

What is next?

In conclusion, I submit that vertical developmental challenge still remains unresolved in organisations. However, the vertical development perspective offers a framework for understanding and assessing what is missing in the current approach to executive development. The challenges of the marketplace are such that “bigger mind” now takes priority over “learned mind”. Facilitating a transition to the more complex meaning-making action logic (vertical development) cannot be replaced with more competency training (lateral development), and we as development practitioners may as well stop trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. An ideal developmental programme would of course support both vertical and lateral development. And if we align an intervention with the clients level of preparedness for insight, self-reflection, and for modifying his or her behaviour based on their action logic, not just their “personality type”, “management style” and “competency gap”, both intervener and recipients will be better served.