Becoming a Practitioner

Like the Wright brothers and their glider from the summer of 1900, we were thrilled with the possibilities the competing values framework (CVF) presented. It turned out to be even more useful than we thought it would be. It improved our understanding of organizational effectiveness, but it also helped us to clarify our understanding of leadership, organizational life cycles, culture, presentations, innovation, value creation, and management skills. We also discovered that other scholars with no knowledge of the CVF were developing frameworks that were very similar to it. For example, Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria later found that humans have four biologically determined drives (for bonding, learning, acquiring, and defending) that map perfectly onto the quadrants of the CVF. Shalom Schwartz found that cultural values across societies can be mapped onto two dimensions that are nearly identical to the two dimensions of the CVF. Katherine Benziger identified four thinking styles that are similar to the CVF quadrants and mapped them onto activation in the four quadrants of the human brain. Alan Fiske identified four models that people use for relating to others in his review of the anthropological literature of cultures across the earth that are similar to the quadrants of the CVF. And philosopher Ken Wilbur's A Theory of Everything posits that the whole universe can be summarized in a four-quadrant framework that maps nicely into the CVF. We are not so ambitious in our own claims, but we do believe that this converging evidence suggests that there is something fundamental about the CVF.

Social scientists were not the only people who got excited about the competing values framework. Laypeople often come to us as well; they tell us their problems, tell us what they think the solution should be, and express frustration over the fact that their solution is not working. When this happens we often draw a picture of the CVF and show them how the solutions they are proposing fall into only two or three of its quadrants; we then suggest that they try a solution that incorporates values from one of the missing quadrants. More often than not, people understand their omission, see new solutions, and return to work feeling energized about the possibilities.

Bob: I was thrilled with the opportunities that the CVF gave me to help people and organizations change their cultures, develop their leaders, or make strategic decisions. I learned how to help people do this along the way. One of the things I learned was that in order to help people change, I often had to change myself as well. Similarly, I learned that if people wanted their organizations, communities, or families to change they would also need to change themselves. I developed a number of insights into this phenomenon, and eventually decided that I should write a book about it. When I tried to write the book, though, I could not; every time I sat down to write I failed.

At this point I felt like the Wright brothers after the failure of their glider in the summer of 1901. In contrast to the Wright brothers, however, my personal transformation had to occur in the opposite direction: rather than transform from a practitioner to a scientist, I had to transform from a scientist to a practitioner. As I struggled to write a book about the things I was learning, I realized that I was writing a book to help others change, but I was not changing myself. I was trying to write this book academically and scientifically, which was not likely to be interesting or accessible to the people for whom I was writing. I was afraid to write in a way that would be interesting and accessible for practitioners because I was worried about what my academic colleagues would think of me. Eventually I realized my problem, gathered the courage, and wrote the book in the way that I knew it should be written.

The result for me, as for the Wright brothers, was profound. I named the book Deep Change. After it was published I was humbled by how well the book was received; I became flooded with requests from people asking me to help them with their lives and organizations. What was even more meaningful to me was the letters I received from people telling me how the book had changed their lives. That would not have happened if I had given in to my fears. The lessons I had been learning since the day I decided to study change as my college major were beginning to come together.