If you have had a mortgage in recent years, the sweetest thing is to be on a fixed rate. This is because while you know the honeymoon will eventually end, you have been able to sit back at BBQs while your friends sweat about what the RBA will do next — smug in the knowledge that your loan is several points below the current cash rate. Add in comparatively high inflation and you get a societal trend that is increasingly keen on keeping things fixed.
In the commercial world, fixed is seldom a good thing. Businesses crave growth and pretty much every seminar or training day pushes the benefits of having a 'growth' mindset. As an organisational philosopher this is a good thing, on the face of it, because it means scholarly ideas are being widely used. Sadly, as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. In the case of scholarly ideas, familiarity usually breeds misuse, and this has been the case with how people use and abuse the concepts of 'fixed' and 'growth' mindsets.
An 'Implicit Theories' Primer
The concept of 'implicit theories' is essentially synonymous with 'implicit beliefs' or 'mindsets' and was first introduced by Carol Dweck in her 1988 paper A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality, co-authored with Ellen Leggett. In a nutshell, implicit theories relate to 'core assumptions about the malleability of personal attributes' and place people on a continuum of understanding with 'fixed' at one end and 'growth' at the other:
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.
— Carol Dweck.
In an organisational context, when the prevailing cultural mindset is 'fixed', there will tend to be less psychological safety, strong hierarchies usually develop and there is a closed knowledge model (apparent whenever you hear phrases like "this matter is above your pay grade") — and there is heightened Machiavellianism in the workplace (theft, lying/deceit, sabotage, and cheating). The goal of this seemingly destructive behaviour is for those with capabilities to retain their perceived 'fixed' advantage. Throw in positional authority, which is assumed to be bestowed as a direct result of capabilities, and you have a truly toxic mix.
The toxicity of a 'fixed' mindset approach contrasts with predominantly 'growth' mindset environment where there will be a higher sense of empowerment among employees, greater commitment from staff, and increased psychological safety — which leads to more collaboration and innovation. This virtuous circle happens because capability is not seen as finite with its advantages preserved at all costs. Instead, capability is correctly understood as something that can be nurtured and developed.
Of course, simply understanding key differences between 'fixed' and 'growth' mindsets is not enough. If it were, enlightenment would be simple and there would be no need for this column. Returning to my opening observation that scholarly ideas are often misunderstood or misused in organisations reveals three common misconceptions.
The first is to confuse a growth mindset with positivity or a 'can do' attitude. This misappropriation manifests in sentiments such as "I'm very open-minded and embrace all outlooks", "I'm completely flexible as to our approach", or "I've always had a growth mindset". The outcomes of this are that people swallow hook, line, and sinker all ideas, policies, processes, and procedures that emanate from management, the board, or society more generally. Apart from the obvious problem, such overweening positivity is that it minimises or wishes away the reality of the human experience — that it is a continuum. Psychologically we are never exclusively 'one' thing — open/closed, growth/fixed, happy/sad, conservative/liberal. Rather, we are relatively complex and as a result beautiful combinations or traits. When a person does not grasp this more nuanced reality, they have a 'false growth mindset'. At a minimum this means they will fail to reap the maximal benefits of a true growth mindset. At most they will seek to enforce their own fixed views on others, resulting in an authoritarian approach to organisational behaviour and life more broadly.
The second misconception is to think a growth mindset is only about unequivocal praise, reward, equity, or equality. Whether it is a student sitting an exam or an employee tackling a project, inefficient or unproductive work is not going to achieve goals. Therefore, rewarding effort or existence alone will fail to achieve growth. Instead, it is important to reward progress and, perhaps most importantly, the process involved in achieving progress. If an employee is struggling to write a coherent report, simply resorting to AI to 'fix' the problem achieves progress at the expense of process and personal development because they are not becoming an improved version of themselves and thus a greater asset to the organisation. Good, and more importantly sustainable, outcomes will only ever flow from good and sustainable processes. Embracing these, even though they are more effortful, is key to developing a growth mindset.
The third misconception is "fake it until you make it". In an organisational context, this manifests when meetings and work more broadly pivots around mission and vision statements. Lofty words such as 'growth', 'transformation', 'empowerment', 'profitable', 'sustainable', but for which there is no effective plan or a process which is all energy with few or no outcomes. The most effective way to counteract this is to develop psychological safety in teams so people feel confident to take calculated risks and assured that they will not face sanction for failing to meet preset performance standards so long as there were lessons learned and change is effected in the future. Another key requirement is for people to engage in an open knowledge model, sharing information and experiences across departments and engaging in discretionary boundary spanning. This latter aspect can be monitored by assessing deeds rather than words — for example does a person just put forward ideas in meetings or do they actively take on and deliver action items?
Of course, addressing these three misconceptions is easier to theorise than to achieve. This is because we all inevitably camp out in a 'fixed' mindset — becoming defensive or even insecure — whenever we receive criticism rather than praise for our 'hard' work, miss out on a promotion we think was 'owed', or simply feel cut out of a process in which key decisions are happening 'offline' within the charmed circle.
The short, but deeply complex, answer is to work on our self-awareness, self-actualisation, and self-transcendence. This happens when we recognise our mindsets and, when tending toward being fixed, understand why the situation is making us feel defensive or threatened. By better understanding ourselves we are in the best possible position to counteract the worst aspects of our anti-collaborative traits and spend more time in the 'growth' end of our mindset spectrum. Something which enables us to live a much richer and more fulfilled life.
Good night, and good luck.
