Business Needs to Grow Up

“Slow down, kid. We don’t get paid by the pipe here!”

Those words were shouted at me by Bob, an older guy a few stops down the assembly line at the steel plant where I was working as a pipe inspector. I’d heard variations of this sentiment before, many times — but for some reason, that day it stopped me in my tracks.

As a high-energy eighteen-year-old with a serious aversion to school and schooling systems, university wasn’t in the cards for me, nor did I have any interest in formal education. After taking time off to travel, I had decided that the best thing to do was to get a job and start making money. With money, I reasoned, I would have more freedom, and more choices; from there, I could create a career. Plus, I found life-generating fulfillment in the act shaping things with my hands — even if those things were only steel gas transmission pipes.

Although I knew going in that there was nothing glamorous about the job (my dad had worked at this very plant for decades, so I had some insider details), I was actually excited to be there. My initial goal was to prove myself and become known as a valuable contributor. To that end, I worked way harder than what was expected. I finished jobs ahead of schedule, challenged myself to exceed my previous days’ targets, and offered to help others when I finished my own tasks.

My efforts worked. People did notice me — but not, as evidenced by Bob’s irritated comments, in a good way. In that moment, I felt my energy and motivation just … drain away. I wanted to excel, but apparently only a certain level and volume of excellence was tolerable to those around me. At the same time, I knew that if I didn’t do good work, I would be penalized, even fired. It was a very narrow path to walk. In fact, it reminded me a lot of being back in school.

And I hated school. In school, if you behaved and performed, you got rewarded with good grades. If you didn’t, you got bad grades, detention, or suspension. At the steel plant, if you behaved and performed, you got rewarded with a paycheck. If you didn’t, you got written up, got your pay docked, or got fired. Both were authoritarian environments. Both were designed around conformity — to keep people happy in their “lanes” and producing in a predictable way. However, the effect of this has been to limit their access to creativity and self-expression, and keep their growth to a manageable, non-threatening minimum.

The more I thought about it, the more my frustration mounted. I’d believed that, as an adult, I would be allowed a measure of autonomy at work — that I would be not only permitted but encouraged to work in a way that felt good and natural to me as long as I honored the greater needs of the company. Apparently, I’d been naïve. Work, I decided, was not a humane place.

My anger cooled, but the ideas stuck around. What, I wondered, would a better work environment — a work environment that treated people like functional adults — actually look like? I’d been tossing around the idea of starting my own business for a while. Bob’s offhand comments pushed me to set them in motion. Within a month, I had launched my first mobile phone install shop. Soon, we were able to get a reseller’s license and retail mobile phones and plans directly. Our mall locations were the first of their kind in my home province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Today, that company, now known as Jump.ca, is still thriving.

Those early days were challenging but invigorating. Before I turned nineteen, I had hired my first two employees. I didn’t know a thing about business, but I knew what kind of culture I wanted to create. So, when those first two hires came to me with questions, my reply was, “You guys figure it out.” And they did — better than I could have.

As the business grew, we broke with tradition in several key ways. For example, our managers didn’t adhere to traditional models. Work was always distributed; managers simply supported people in a greater way. A lot of it was trial and error, but at the end of the day, we were a place where people felt happy to work.

For the first five years, I continued to work my four-days-on, four-days-off shifts at the steel plant. As confining as it was, it paid well, and I needed the money. Not only was the business consuming all of my free hours, it was also eating up most of my paychecks. Then, one day, as I dragged myself out of my car for yet another twelve-hour shift, it hit me. It was time to close the business. After all this time, the company still wasn’t making money. I had no savings, although I lived on very little. And, after years of working eighty-plus hour weeks, I was, quite simply, exhausted.

I checked in with the guy I was relieving, got the update on projects and equipment, and began to prep for the day. I felt totally tuned out, like I was moving through a fog. I watched my colleague, who was about my father’s age at the time, gather his lunchbox and coat and open the door to leave. The sun was just rising, and he was silhouetted against the orange sky in the doorframe. His shoulders were stooped; he looked as exhausted and defeated as I felt. Yet another thankless all-night shift was complete, but there were innumerable others to come, with no end in sight. If I closed my business, I realized with a growing sense of foreboding, this would be my life.

It didn’t look like a life I wanted.

That day, my path shifted. I decided that, rather than close my business, I would quit the steel plant. I would go all in and make my ideas work — for myself, but also for the employees who had put their trust in me. I knew I was on to something; I just had to go for it.

Despite my initial lack of confidence (and some rocky weeks where I didn’t know if I’d make payroll) I was soon able to turn the company around. As it grew, I watched my initial, hazy vision of a humane workplace take shape and become real around me. By the time I was twenty-eight, Jump.ca was the leading retail provider in the province for wireless. The business was listed as the fifteenth-fastest-growing company in Canada, and I was awarded the Business Development Bank’s “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” award.

By far the most important thing to me, however, was that our people loved working with us. We had grown as a company — but we had also grown up.

Are Business Models Hindering Human Development?

Growing up — for both individuals and organizations — means, in large part, seeing and implementing according to a bigger picture and a more nuanced level of understanding. It means choosing intentional response over reactivity, possibilities over problems, and outcomes over operating manuals. More, it means creating and nurturing a culture of collaboration where ideas travel freely, and where “failure” is not only tolerated but embraced as an iterative learning tool.

School doesn’t prepare us for this way of being. And most workplaces don’t encourage it. Instead, both rely on inflexible rules, hierarchical structures, and outdated “carrot and stick” approaches. Both schools and workplaces have assumed the role of traditional parents. In such a top-down decision-making process, direction and innovation is expected and accepted only from above. People outside of leadership roles are assumed to be incapable of contributing beyond their current roles; in essence, they are regarded as cogs in a machine.

Humans are not machines. We are not meant to do only one thing well, and do it all the time. We are meant to ideate, contribute, and interact across a spectrum, at “plug in” with people and ideas in a holistic way.

While rigid metrics and operating processes might create desirable results in the short term, over time, they are poisonous to the organization because they don’t allow contributors to function in fully adult roles and therefore fulfill their greatest potential. People who don’t like being put in boxes will eventually give up or get out.

The necessity of creating work environments beyond the authoritarian norm is born out by decades of research in human development. While there are numerous models for human cognitive development out there, I find Robert Kegan’s Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) to be the most illustrative in this context.

CDF outlines five stages of human cognitive development:

Stage 1, “The Impulsive Mind” — driven by impulse/reflex; dependent (infancy/early childhood)

Stage 2, “The Instrumental Mind” — driven by perception/need/desire (childhood to adolescence)

Stage 3, “The Socialized Mind” — driven by social expectations/norms (real or imagined ) — 58% of the adult population

Stage 4, “The Self-Authoring Mind” — driven by self-authored values; independent — 35% of the adult population

Stage 5: “The Self-Transforming Mind” — driven by collaboration, no longer bound to an identity. — 1% of the adult population

Most people — about 58 percent of the adult population — land in Stage 3, “The Socialized Mind.” People in this Stage value relationships, follow the rules, and are generally “team players.” However, they also struggle to think outside the box, see untapped possibility, and solve problems creatively. They need and seek direction, and often distrust change. Critical or oppositional thinking, especially when it challenges social norms or constructs, feels like a threat.

Schools are perfectly designed to produce Stage 3 adults. Why? Because the jobs of the Industrial Revolution and much of the twentieth century required a compliant work force conditioned to repetitive tasks, accepting of authority, and unlikely to challenge established norms. Innovation, creativity, and self-direction were (and still are) considered a liability in these environments. This mentality has carried over seamlessly into non-factory dynamics and is pervasive across every industry.

Given this dynamic, you would expect leaders to naturally fall into the Stage 4 and Stage 5 levels — but, in fact, many leaders are actually Stage 2 individuals. People in this stage of development are often highly skilled and charismatic. However, their skills are cultivated purely in service to their personal desires. They seek power, and will do whatever it takes to get it. In fact, if asked to picture stereotypical business leader, it’s likely that you would envision precisely this person: astute, single-minded, power-driven, overbearing, prone to emotional outbursts, and oblivious to the needs and desires of others. This type of leadership is antithetical to a growth oriented work ecosystem.

The future doesn’t favor this approach. As the world grows more complex, we need adults who are intrinsically motivated, emotionally intelligent, values-driven, and capable of collaborating with others to solve problems at scale. Therefore, we need to create the conditions for more people to evolve into their unique expression of Stage 4, “The Self-Authoring Mind,” where they can access the gifts inherent to this level of growth. More, we need more leaders capable of operating at a Stage 5 level, “The Self-Transforming Mind” — those who can exist in the paradox of knowledge and possibility, mediate between ideologies, and shed the yoke of unhealed ego to lead in service to a collective.

Inspire agency, not adherence

Work should be where we learn and grow. It should feed us — not just in the sense of meeting basic needs, but also creatively, socially, and emotionally. Work should be what inspires us — and requires us — to evolve.

Current trends show that people are craving this level of fulfillment. The Great Resignation (a term that should shake employers more than it has) and the subsequent expansion of a more autonomous “gig economy” are clear indicators of a move toward self-management among workers. Studies show that only 16 percent of the workforce is “highly engaged” at work. Combine that with the fact that 78 percent of people who worked from home full-time during the pandemic want to continue that arrangement, and the bigger picture becomes clear: our current business models are simply not capable of supporting the growth, fulfillment, and expansion that people desire.

Why? Because they are set up to support and enforce Stage 3 skills, needs, and limitations.

Currently, about 35 percent of the population exists in Stage 4, with a high number of them being creatives, entrepreneurs, and innovators. Like me, many of them struggle to thrive in “normal” work settings because those environments feel confining, outdated, and quite frankly, infantile. When presented with the choice to conform or move on … well, the writing is on the wall.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many companies struggle to stay relevant and innovative, and to retain top talent?

Now, I’ve heard the argument that it’s not the responsibility of businesses to initiate or foster individual development — and I agree, to an extent. Each individual contributor must, in their own way and at their own pace, be willing to grow and expand their tangible and intangible capabilities. We can’t force anyone to evolve.

However, just like in nature, when ideal conditions are present, maximum growth is much more likely to occur — and, as leaders, setting that stage is our responsibility.

Without clear and intentional structures in place to support growth into the upper levels of human development — including a clear vision, ownership and agency, positive collaboration, and exploration without expectation of success — one of two things will happen. Either individual development and drive toward betterment will be stymied (resulting in minimal participation, disengagement, and even outright hostility), or Stage 4 and 5 people will exit the organization, and take their creativity, innovation, and problem-solving abilities with them.

So how can businesses — and their teams — start “adulting”?

The key difference between a Stage 3 business model and a Stage 4–5 model is individual agency. When adults have agency, they have room to explore. When they aren’t punished for mistakes or deviation, they are more likely to make discoveries. When they have control over how they use their time, they are more likely to show up energized when it matters. On the flip side, once you take away people’s agency, the desire to improve vanishes with it.

With that in mind, the first step for many businesses becomes clear: Kill the office. I’ve written about this in detail here — but for now, understand that forcing people to work in environments and within time and location parameters over which they have no agency is counterproductive to their growth. Adults who embody or are embracing Stage 4 characteristics don’t want or need to be babysat while they fulfill the obligations to which they’ve agreed.

There are other concrete steps that will radically improve the work experience and help create room for individual growth and agency — but the most powerful shifts occur when individuals and teams transcend the illusion of separateness and begin to see themselves as part of a living, breathing whole. This shift is only possible when a critical mass of individuals within a company are equipped to embrace their own development and move from Stage 3 into Stages 4 and 5. Those individuals, seeing themselves as an integral part of the whole, can then implicitly and explicitly facilitate the development of others.

When I was twenty-eight, I put my most senior leader in charge of Jump.ca and stepped away to focus on other visions. I’ve since gone on to create several more companies — starting with the software company iQmetrix and what later emerged was our meta company, Chrysalis — but I’ve never forgotten the lessons I learned in the steel plant. Using the latest insights from science and practical experience, we create conditions within our companies for people to develop and thrive. We want people to bring their whole selves to what they do, and to engage creatively and constructively for the betterment of all. We want to scale not just sales and profit, but also collaboration and trust.

We believe that the most important “work” of work is expanding the concept of what it means to be human.