I recommend this enriching book and I hold concerns about it.I am a longtime devotee the authors’ work. ‘An Everyone Culture’ extends 40 years of groundbreaking work pioneered by Bob Kegan and joined Lisa Lahey and their colleagues. The book researches companies (Deliberately Developmental Organizations, or DDO’s) that commit to meaningful human growth by designing growth experiences into their work. It describes them, synthesizes from them an elegant model of how they work, further offers readers a personal experience of “developmental growth” and finally shares works-in-progress to give those interested ideas about getting underway. The book is rich in content, generous in gifts, and groundbreaking in the field of organizational development.Equally the companies and individuals involved are both brave and generous for sharing. As well congratulations to them for their pioneering work.I hold two concerns about the book, one about the book itself and another about what a perceive as a marked shift in the authors’ stance from their past work.1. First, I see a central contradiction in that the book describes companies that prize exposing weakness and seeking truth and yet the book describes only the strengths of these companies. That’s not true of the people within the company, mind you. The book richly describes means by which individuals can discover and engage their weaknesses, their growing edge, and does so wonderfully and abundantly. However, what about the company’s growing edge – if growth and truth are core to these company’s, and central to the authors’ stance, why are we not shown the companies’ growing edge? Why are we not shown their growing pains? Why are we not shown the protections that they put in place to ensure that their ambitious approaches do not unduly endanger people or product?The authors liken the experiences of the employees in these companies to personal and professional growth experiences that people often engage in offsite, and to specialized developmental retreat and learning meetings sometimes held at many companies. Having participated in many of these types of meetings I have observed and experienced the intensity, the occasional breakdowns, and the supports that are put in place to both protect people and to encourage good results. When the tape recorders are turned off at Bridgewater is the hallway conversation something very different from usual? In efforts to help me ‘probe for some deeper meaning’, as another DDO practices, do we have a mechanism for me to call a time out if I feel unsafe or otherwise unable to effectively participate? What other promising experiments lay on the cutting room floor?One specific instance of this opacity gives me particular pause. At one point in the book the authors rather brusquely assert, paraphrased here: ‘we five authors are knowledgeable about cults and these DDO’s are not cults.’ That they would raise this, quite abruptly in fact, belies some underlying concern that readers might see things in these organizations that seem cult-like. Indeed I was wondering about that very question as this denial emerged. That the authors summarily dismiss the idea without explanation felt fishy. I did a little research. First a definition from Wikipedia: “In the sociological classifications of religious movements in English a cult is a religious or social group with socially deviant or novel beliefs and practices.” It seems to me that the DDO’s are social groups with novel beliefs and practices; that seems to be distinctive of their organizational success. Then I took one more step by making two sets of web searches for ‘[company name] + cult’. The first set of companies I did this with, as a control, were five biotech/higher-ed organizations with which I’ve had extensive work experience; none of those produced a link suggesting the company-elicited concerns of having cult likenesses. The second set of searches was the three DDO’s described in the book: all three elicited links in which people perceived cult like aspects. I am not troubled by this connection for I would imagine that good lessons, both positive and negative, to extract from understanding cults and why people might perceive a place as cult-like. That the authors seemed to sweep it under the rug bothered me.A worthy aside: I recently read the fiction book “The Circle”, by Dave Eggers, that describes a company much like these DDO’s and provides an unsettling journey led under the flag of transparency. May these DDO’s take note.This contradiction prevented me from hearing a real true ring as I listened to the authors. However, amidst the book’s riches I do not reject the authors’ findings but rather want to learn more.2. This thought is not a criticism of the book or authors but a note of surprise, and concern, at the big shift of tone I experienced in An Everyone Culture compared to the authors' earlier work.In his groundbreaking book “Evolving Self” Bob exuded a fascination and reverence for this process of human development that he so advanced in describing the journey into the experiences of transformations that is our lives.In his next book, “In Over Our Heads”, he sounded a gong, yet a beautifully toned, Buddhist gong, in pointing out that this wonderful unfolding of our humanity may be happening at a rate too slow for the demands of the modern world. In specific he suggested that as many as half of us who are old enough to be adults may be “in over our heads” in that not yet come to see and act in the world in a way that can help us master our means and avoid its wiles. That was the bad news; the good news was that whether parenting, partnering, counseling, being counseled or working – across the spectrum of our activities – the very same perspective is being called for by our life’s challenges; therefore our efforts in any one of these arenas helps us master all the others.His tone in that book and his subsequent work with Lisa Lahey seemed still to champion understanding and honoring each of us regardless of stage, for encouraging us to embrace ourselves and each other for where we are as much as where we may need to go.In An Everyone Culture the tone turns decidedly more harsh, as if Bob lost his patience (I don’t think so) or rather decided that our rate of development is lagging dangerously so. The book meets us with exhortations to get over ourselves and acknowledge our being inadequate and being incomplete (their words). As I read I could hear the church bells back home calling me into confession!If a more urgent, tough love is what these astute authors deem necessary they’ve got my attention. To me, still, this remains a startling shift of tone that gives me pause.As I return to re-read this book, and set our to explore these new possibilities in my work, I carry these questions:Have these organizations dangerously tipped the learning scale onto the organization/environment side at the expense of the individual such that safety, individuality and even learning, might be at risk?Related, how does the focus on weakness affect the fire in each of us for discovering, developing and expressing our strengths and passion?In gratitude to these companies and the authors.Jim Dezieck