There is no alternative to learning through experimentation. Benchmarking and studying “best practices” will not suffice—because the prototyping process does not involve just incremental changes in established ways of doing things, but radical new ideas and practices that together create a new way of managing.

In contrast, feedback in a DDO is considered incomplete or superficial unless it penetrates (“probes,” in Bridgewater language) beneath behavior to the assumptions and mind-sets that underlie it. Admitting people’s interior life into the realm of what can be improved, acted on, and managed is what makes a DDO’s culture truly developmental—namely,

La deuxième stratégie permet de penser qu’il est plus facile de changer le peuple que les dirigeants. Là également les demandes de formation pour des niveaux opérationnels sont bien plus nombreuses que des actions qui concernent les échelons fonctionnels. Par exemple, il semble plus facile d’envisager de former pour la énième fois des commerciaux à

For the already overscheduled manager, the trickier issue may be who should do the training. Most managers seem to feel that training employees is a job that should be left to others, perhaps to training specialists. I, on the other hand, strongly believe that the manager should do it himself.