The 21st Century Workforce — Idea Meritocracy

“A group of office workers conducting a meeting.” by rawpixel on Unsplash

I love rushing off to tell people about the amazing new stuff I learn whenever I read a book. It makes me feel good to have something new to say to people and it even makes me feel better when what I have to tell them sounds very important and deep. I was on one of my usual rolls, telling my boss about a term I saw in a book — Believability Weighted Idea Meritocracy. I could feel his eyes roll — Osita! You have come again.

At the beginning of the year, I resolved to read a book every two months as part of my personal development efforts. I have read only two books this year and I already feel myself falling short of this resolve — I just finished reading the second one and we’re almost in June! Well as you know, the spirit is willing but the body is weak.

I’m writing this in article in a bid to share some of the things I learnt from the book I just finished reading. Principles, a book by Ray Dalio gives insight to how you can use principles as tool to make the right decisions towards achieving set goals. The book is divided into three parts. In the first part of the book titled — Where I’m coming from, the author tells us about his life’s journey and how he built Bridgewaters. The second part of the book talks about life principles while the third part talks about work principles. This article will focus on work principles and how creating the right culture can affect the outcomes of an organisation.

In his book, Ray looks at an organisation as a machine that consists of two main parts — the people and the culture. A great organisation has both great people and a great culture. Great people have great character and great capabilities. He lays emphasis on the importance of getting both the culture and the people right and how anything short of that will have very catastrophic effects. I’ll try as much as possible to focus on how the right culture can ensure that the goals of the organisation are achieved — We will talk about the people in another article.

Source — Principles By Ray Dalio

Great cultures bring problems and disagreements to the surface and solve them well, and they love imagining and building great things that haven’t been built before — Ray Dalio

Companies in the 21st century have to rapidly rediscover themselves and innovate because of the rapid rate of change in industries of today. To ensure that companies don’t die out, they have to ensure that they have people who are committed to achieving the goals of the company and that they have a culture that let’s them. Having an idea meritocracy that leverages on radical truth, radical transparency and believability-weighted decision making, is one of the ways to ensure that the right decisions are made since making the right decisions always lead to the right outcomes.

An idea meritocracy is a system where the best ideas win. Decisions are made from strong and objective data driven debates where opinions are believability weighted. In autocracies, decisions are enforced by a leader or a dictator and such decisions are not up for debates. In democracies, the opinions of everyone counts when decisions are up for debate. But in idea meritocracies, the best idea wins and the best ideas are determined by the quantity and quality of data they are backed by.

Radical Truth & Radical Transparency

By practicing radical truth and radical transparency, companies can ensure that people state their opinions bluntly and without bias. Radical truth is when people can speak about issues openly without hiding how they truly feel. It is important that companies and organisations promote a culture people can speak freely without the fear of getting reprimanded. This will ensure that people say their honest opinions. Radical transparency is when everyone has access to all the information. In a system that is radically transparent, people have enough information about issues to ensure that they look at problems the right way.

Believability Weighted Decision Making

To ensure that the right decisions are made it is important to seek the opinions of competent & capable decision makers. This is called believability weighted decision making. In believability weighted decision making, more weight is given to the opinions of capable decision-makers compared to those of less capable ones.

The most believable opinions are those of people who:

1. Have repeatedly and successfully accomplished the thing in question (at least three times);
2. Have demonstrated well that they can logically explain the cause-effect relationships behind their conclusion.

Idea Meritocracy = Radical Truth + Radical Transparency + Believability-Weighted Decision Making

An Idea Meritocracy is designed to produce the best possible decision under the circumstances by enabling the best thinking by all team members. It does this by creating a culture that promotes psychological safety, radical truth, radical transparency and permission to do rapid, small, low-risk experiments. That culture enables and drives iterative learning behaviors.

An Idea Meritocracy values collaboration, not competition; teams, not individuals; research rooted in curiosity and constructive data-driven debate, not “telling”; and learning more than “knowing.” Organizations with Idea Meritocracies recognize that the best ideas come from psychologically safe team environments that encourage transparency, open-mindedness, speaking up regardless of position, reflective listening and a belief in the power of collective intelligence.

For an Idea Meritocracy to thrive, an organization’s people must change what they attach their egos to and how they define themselves. They must redefine what “being smart” means because in a world of smart technology no human will know more facts than a smart machine. An Idea Meritocracy is dependent upon human beings being willing to continuously both update their mental models with better data and look for data that disagrees with what they believe. That is made much easier if individuals adopt a new definition of what it means to be smart .

The Takeaway

As a culture and practice, an Idea Meritocracy can lead to the highest levels of human learning, thinking, listening, relating and collaborating by requiring candor, data-driven decision-making, open-mindedness, and managing one’s thinking and emotions. And it will reduce the big inhibitors of high-quality learning, thinking and effective collaboration by mitigating big egos, emotional defensiveness, closed-mindedness, and fears — of making learning mistakes, being penalized for speaking up or disagreeing with higher-ups, or being fearful of ambiguity and uncertainty. That is the power and beauty of an Idea Meritocracy.