Part Three · Create Empowerment

Growth Infrastructure: Development by Design

The best development happens when someone designs for it.

In brief

The best development happens when someone designs for it. Experience accumulates. Development compounds, and the difference is reflection. The chapter covers four development levers and treats performance and development as one system.

What the chapter covers

How Capability Actually Develops
Why Accidental Development Is Not Enough
The Four Development Levers
Performance and Development as a Single System
What Adaeze Built

The difference between experience and development is reflection. Experience accumulates. Development compounds.

Questions for your team

Who on our team is performing well but not stretching?
What stretch assignment could close a specific capability gap this quarter?
After our last significant project, did we debrief what we learned or only what happened?
Does each person know what they are developing toward?

Field Guide Tool #16

The Capability Builder Conversation Guide

Structures three development conversation types: the stretch assignment conversation, the feedback conversation, and the debrief. Includes the stretch assignment map.

Best used as a standing reference for every significant development conversation.

Go deeper

An Everyone Culture by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
Radical Candor by Kim Scott