The game-changing power of speaking freely
Companies that welcome and value grassroots input in a systematic and thoughtful fashion achieve more than engendering honest debates. They create a better sense of employee buy-in and become more dynamic and successful down the road.
Kids messing about in a playground: That was the blueprint for Lego Group’s leadership team back in 2017 as it sought to reinvigorate its culture amid flatlining sales. Like children playing make-believe or scrambling up monkey bars, the Danish toy manufacturer wanted its teams to feel safe to take risks, speak up and experiment, a strategy it dubbed “the leadership playground.” This wasn’t some empty management rhetoric. Loren Shuster, the new-in-role chief people officer, established a cross-functional working group of 15 employees charged with articulating the new leadership principles and soliciting feedback from hundreds more employees. He then recruited volunteers from 1,200 teams to serve as “playground builders” and help embed the new culture they’d co-created. Eight years on and given Lego Group’s incredible return to growth – it achieved record results in 2024, with revenues up 13% to around $10 billion – it’s a testament to the power of opening up the corporate floor to grassroots contributors.
Die Strategie bekam den Namen „The Leadership Playground“. Das war keine hohle Management-Rhetorik: Loren Shuster, der neue Personalchef, gründete eine bereichsübergreifende Arbeitsgruppe aus 15 Leuten, die neue Führungsprinzipien entwickelte und Rückmeldungen von Hunderten Mitarbeitern einholte. Dann rekrutierte er Freiwillige aus 1.200 Teams als „Playground Builders“, sie sollten die gemeinsam erdachte Kultur im Unternehmen verwurzeln. Acht Jahre später der Erfolg: Lego erzielte im Jahr 2024 Rekordergebnisse mit 13 % Wachstum bei rund zehn Milliarden US-Dollar Umsatz. Ein starker Beleg dafür, welche Kraft entsteht, wenn Führungsetagen den Ideen ihrer Mitarbeiter Raum geben.
Lego aren’t the first to discover that. Former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has spoken openly about the culture of “vigorous debate” that set the US software firm apart when he joined in 2007, with engineers openly challenging leadership decisions in meetings without retribution. In 2009, Chief Talent Officer Patty McCord would sum up Netflix’s values in a well-known “culture deck” that led with “radical honesty” – the idea that every single person within the organization, no matter their role or place in the hierarchy, could speak frankly and directly about what needed to change. And at Airbnb, so-called “Elephant, Dead Fish, Vomit” sessions are designed to promote “fearless feedback,” encouraging teams to share issues (elephants), past mistakes (dead fish) and things they need to get off their chest (vomit).
But these examples remain the exception rather than the rule. At most workplaces, what Whitehurst dubbed “terminally nice” cultures persist where employees keep thoughts, ideas and criticisms to themselves. The bigger an organization gets, the more centralized all decisions become, says Karin Hurt, co-author of Courageous Cultures. “At the beginning, there’s this very entrepreneurial, cowboy attitude of ‘all ideas welcome,’” she explains. “But as organizations grow and they get clearer on their strategy, decision-making gets more centralized.” That’s a necessary evolution, according to Hurt. “You can’t grow and have 200 people all providing input on everything. But there’s a sweet spot where you get the clarity and the structure of decision-making and still tap into innovative ideas.”
So, how do you achieve that balance? Being told she sounded “stupid” by Sheryl Sandberg while working as a Google executive was what led Kim Scott, who has also taken on the role of a CEO coach at numerous tech firms including Dropbox and Twitter, to reevaluate the value of frank, honest feedback at work – and write a book about it entitled Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. For all that criticism can sting, Scott believes unequivocally that cultures that encourage “compassionate candor” make organizations more dynamic and successful. For one, that approach stops leadership from developing a blind spot. “Flattery will come at you like a thick dangerous fog, and the only way to burn through that fog and to find the lighthouse is to reward people when they tell you what they really think, even if it’s hard to hear,” she says. As Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, has pointed out, while leadership may sit at the center of an organization, “snow melts at the periphery.” Or as Scott puts it: “The big risk to leaders is ignorance. That they don’t know what’s really happening if people are afraid to tell them.”
Auch wenn Kritik schmerzen kann, ist Scott überzeugt, dass Kulturen „mitfühlender Offenheit“ Unternehmen dynamischer und erfolgreicher machen. Solche Ansätze verhindern, dass Führungskräfte blinde Flecken entwickeln. „Schmeicheleien kommen auf Sie zu wie dichter, gefährlicher Nebel. Der einzige Weg, ihn zu durchdringen und den Leuchtturm zu finden, ist, Menschen zu belohnen, die Ihnen sagen, was sie wirklich denken, auch wenn es unangenehm ist“, erklärt Scott. Wie der frühere Intel-CEO Andy Grove einst feststellte: Die Führung mag im Zentrum einer Organisation sitzen, doch „Schnee schmilzt an der Peripherie.“ Oder in Scotts Worten: „Das größte Risiko für Führungskräfte ist Unwissen: Sie erfahren nicht, was wirklich passiert, wenn Menschen Angst haben, es ihnen zu sagen.“
“there’s a sweet spOt where you Get the clarity Of Decision-makinG and still tap into innovative iDeas.”
“The goal is to make sure that as long as that employment relationship exists, the employee and employer are always very clear on why and what they’re working toward together, much like allies would when they sign a treaty of alliance.”
Cultures that value grassroots input also create a sense of employee buy-in, with the organization’s mission becoming a shared one. This proximity between the mission of an organization and that of its employees, or “purpose congruence,” creates “a very powerful force,” says Maryam Kouchaki, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management. “It gets people motivated, more satisfied with their job and less likely to leave.” She shares the metaphor of three bricklayers to illustrate the point. One says they’re laying a brick, the second that they’re building part of a wall and the third person: “when you ask them, they say we’re building a cathedral.” By imbuing an everyday endeavor with a bigger mission or purpose, the task itself may be the same, but the employee’s perspective is transformed.
Additionally, in today’s workplace, in which employees no longer stay at a single organization for life, developing less hierarchical, more reciprocal relationships reflects the reality of modern work and creates a win-win for employer and employee alike, believes Chris Yeh, co-author of The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age. “We work at a job for a reason beyond just the paycheck,” he says. “We want to accomplish something in our lives. We want to advance our careers. Being explicit about it means that employees are not drifting along, wondering where they’re going or wondering why they’re at the company. They always have a clear sense of purpose.”
Yeh likens this more open relationship to an “alliance” that’s been formed between an employee and a manager, at the center of which is a defined “tour of duty,” or an agreed mission over which an employee is given ownership. “Everyone agrees on what the success conditions are, and everyone agrees on what accomplishing that mission will do for the employee and their career – and for the manager, employer or business overall,” Yeh goes on to explain. “The goal is to make sure that as long as that employment relationship exists, the employee and employer are always very clear on why and what they’re working toward together, much like allies would when they sign a treaty of alliance.”
At LinkedIn, former Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations Kevin Scott would always open job interviews with the question: What job would you like to have after you leave LinkedIn? “The reason that question is so important is because it allows the manager to acknowledge the truth that normally we’re all conditioned to hide, that the employee will not be there forever,” says Yeh. It opens the relationship with honesty and encourages a job candidate to come back with the same.
Laying the foundations for a radically honest culture starts with psychological safety. First used by Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson in the late 1990s, the term refers to a shared belief within any team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, such as speaking up and sharing ideas, without retribution. That retribution needn’t be as extreme as being fired or being carted off to jail, points out Tom Geraghty, founder and CEO of UK-based Psych Safety, a firm dedicated to fostering safety cultures. “It may be as seemingly minor as your boss rolling their eyes or tutting when they’re brought an idea. That can affect us on a deep level.”
In sectors where employee silence costs lives, such as aviation and nuclear power, organizations have been quick to embrace the concept. After miscommunication contributed to the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster, in which two Boeing 747 aircraft collided on the runway, Crew Resource Management (CRM) procedures were quickly adopted by all major airlines. The shared training manual was designed to prevent communication breakdowns and ensure all crew and ground staff have the green light to share concerns. “One of the immediate realizations in aviation was the role of a steep power gradient, i.e. the difference in power between the highest-status and lowest-status person in the room,” says Geraghty. “The steeper the difference, the less likely people are to speak up.” By making small changes to micro-level interactions, leadership can effect a big psychological shift to create an open failure culture. That’s why pilots will now introduce themselves to crew with their first name.
Employees also need what Karin Hurt calls “strategic clarity,” or guidance where their ideas are welcomed and where they’re not. “If you have high psychological safety, but people don’t understand the strategy of where your business is headed, you’re going to get a lot of ideas, but you’re not going to necessarily get the remarkable ideas that you need,” she points out.
To facilitate this, create clear, open channels of communication, recommends Hurt. In their research for Courageous Cultures, she and co-author David Dye found 49% of employees say they’ve not been asked for ideas from management. Their advice is to tell people when you want their feedback and repeat this ask several times, ideally five times, in five different ways to get the message across. Managers should also be specific with the ask to avoid the unhelpful or esoteric, but also to make it easier for people to contribute.
Um das zu vermeiden, empfiehlt die Expertin offene und gezielte Kommunikationskanäle. In ihrer Forschungsarbeit zu Courageous Cultures fanden Hurt und ihr Co-Autor David Dye heraus, dass 49 % der Mitarbeiter angaben, von ihren Vorgesetzten noch nie nach Ideen gefragt worden zu sein. Ihr Rat: Sagen Sie ausdrücklich, wann Sie Feedback wünschen, und wiederholen Sie diese Einladung mindestens fünfmal auf fünf verschiedene Arten. Führungskräfte sollten außerdem konkret werden, um vage oder unbrauchbare Vorschläge zu vermeiden.
At UK-based infrastructure firm Balfour Beatty, for instance, the firm’s “My Contribution” initiative requests ideas through focused campaigns on strategic topics such as safety, “bouncing back” from the Covid-19 pandemic and sustainability. It says it has had more than 15,000 ideas shared by UK employees since it launched the initiative in 2015. In 2024 alone, it saved an estimated 53,800 hours and around $4 million in costs.
How leadership responds, however, is just as crucial. Listen, challenge, commit: These are the three pillars that Scott recommends that leaders deploy when framing their responses to employees to balance encouragement with the top-down needs of an organization. Leaders should also offer any challenges they may have via “respectful disagreement” when an idea in its current guise doesn’t work. “But before you disagree, think about what that person has told you,” she says. “Find the 5 or 10% that you do agree with and give voice to that to show you were listening.”
Hurt frames this as “responding with regard,” for which she also has a three-step framework. “First gratitude,” she says. “Now you’re not thanking them for that specific idea because it might be a really wacky idea. But say thank you so much for caring enough about our organization to be thinking creatively about this. Thank you for raising your hand when that might have felt awkward. Then, information. You provide information about why that idea won’t be used or if it’s halfway there, what else you would need to have in order to make that a great idea.” You need to ensure that you close the loop too, she explains, flagging when a grassroots contribution spearheaded meaningful change. “Fifty per cent of the people in our Courageous Cultures research said the reason they don’t contribute ideas is because they think nothing will happen as a result. Most of the time, it’s just that that loop is not getting closed.”
From the bottom up
Netflix
Airbnb
Lego
Bridgewater
Done right, a culture of “radical candor” isn’t about erasing hierarchy or interpersonal boundaries. When three years ago Netflix fired three marketing executives for what it termed “grousing about colleagues” on Slack, the company was accused of undermining the culture of “radical candor” it had so espoused. But an open, honest culture isn’t about giving employees free rein to act with “obnoxious aggression,” points out Scott. “Listening to one person talk badly about another behind their back is just stirring the political pot and norms like that won’t last if there are not consequences for violating them,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post shortly after the incident hit headlines.
Yeh adds that “hierarchy is essential” and goes on to explain: “The fact that you are an ally does not mean you’re not still a person’s manager. The way we view the relationship is, be honest and treat the person as an equal in terms of entering into the alliance but preserving that notion of hierarchy. A lot of that falls upon the manager because the manager is typically in the position of power. It’s up to the manager to create an environment where the employee is going to feel like they can thrive, where they feel like their objective is clear and where someone cares about their development.”
A healthy culture that values input regardless of rank or role means creating the space, safety and strategic clarity for employees to innovate, experiment and speak up, but with boundaries in place that ensure that nobody – including the wider organization – gets hurt. Just like a playground.
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