The Challenge Culture: Why the Most Successful Organizations Run on Pushback by Nigel Travis.

What originally attracted me to this book was its clever design intended to mirror the essential color-way and other staples that are always immediately attributed to Dunkin’ Donuts. I also was feeling extremely stifled at my old job and was hoping that somehow, my reading of this book’s principles would seep into my old director’s brain and make her aware that she didn’t know just as much as she thought she knew. Which was a lot.

Anyway, this book is extremely useful — and should almost be mandatory — for those in leadership or management positions. It discusses the positives and successes that can only become of what Mr. Travis has called the “challenge culture.” This is a culture within a working environment that fosters, allows, and encourages the following: purposeful questioning, positive pushback, and civil debate. The author implores those in management positions to listen more than they direct, and to invite their top-down, hierarchal commands and principles to be challenged from everyone within the workspace, as long as that challenge is proposed on the behalf of a shared goal and its ultimate accomplishment. Mr. Travis delves deep into his working history, and at times, this can get boring (or maybe I conceded to my creeping realization that I was just jealous of his success by the time he mentioned his boat in the ninth chapter) as much of his stories and recollections involve business-y jargon and principles that are just out of my reach. Even so, he does do an outstanding job of breaking down that jargon into easily-consumable take-aways that can be applied to almost every situation involving dialogue with others, not just in the workplace.

He details how he has created this challenge culture within Dunkin’ Donuts, from the board, to the corporate offices, to the franchises, and those working within. He also includes a bit of psychology in some chapters, discussing the role that biases play in the restriction of a challenge culture and why those who have adapted to power are less likely to invite questioning from others. Those chapters made my heart flutter.

This book is great. It gets dry at times if you don’t have immediate plans to scam your way to the top of a Fortune 500 company (That is not what Nigel Travis did, by the way. I don’t think he did, anyway.), but it is still incredibly useful. I agree with many of Mr. Travis’s principles in that the status quo of any company, for profit or non-for-profit, must be challenged in order to keep growing. A constant homeostasis is comfortable, but it does not produce the fruits of success and expansion. In all aspects of our lives, we should welcome challenge, civil debate, respectful pushback, and questioning about why things are being conducted the way they are and how the intended actions are assisting in the accomplishment of a common goal.

Towards the end of the book, Mr. Travis discusses how important inclusion and diversity are in the implementation of a challenge culture. He says, “The challenge culture is always strengthened by the inclusion of diverse voices and multiple viewpoints.” I agree with him. He goes on to detail his efforts to put a face to his belief, so to say, by promoting an internal management staff member to acting CFO when the existing CFO resigned in favor of a different job opportunity. The new CFO was a woman. Points for you, Nigel. Still, Mr. Travis was worried about whether Kate, the new CFO, would be able to handle the duties of the position since “there was a risk involved.” He says, “The central challenge was not a matter of Kate’s competence or expertise but her own capacity to see herself in such an important leadership role, especially in a challenge culture where she would be expected to question and be questioned, engage in dialogue, and offer challenge when she felt it was required.” So you just gon’ call her weak in a mass-produced book, Nigel?!

To back up his assumption that Kate’s identity was not developed enough, leading him to believe that she was too soft to function in a challenge culture, he called on “a group of researchers.” He states: “As a group of researchers put it, for many women, coming to ‘see oneself, and to be seen by others, as a leader’ is a ‘fragile process.’ The threats do not come from the mere act of promotion, the acquisition of new skills, or adapting your behaviors to the new role. ‘It involves a fundamental identity shift,’ they wrote. The problem then is that the companies ‘inadvertently undermine this process when they advise women to proactively seek leadership roles without also addressing policies and practices that communicate a mismatch between how women are seen and the qualities and experiences people tend to associate with leaders.’”

There is more.

Direct quote from the book: “We knew that we could not simply thrust Kate into such a key position without a good deal of support.” 😳 “Two board members with relevant experience stepped up to act as her mentors, and we secured a third mentor from outside the company. I also worked with some of Kate’s colleagues to identify ways they could work with her as she moved into the role, by helping her think through tough decisions…” 😳😳😳 “… as needed, and providing encouragement and support.”

He goes on to say that it would have been easy to avoid taking a risk on Kate and make her an interim CFO instead while they searched for “candidates outside the company.” But he didn’t! Thank goodness Nigel saw the potential competency of a woman and gave her a chance even though she was already more than qualified! Three cheers for you, Nigel!

This was a major no-no for me, and good for the author to tuck it in the back of the book because had I read it towards the beginning, I would have sold it back to Barnes and Noble. Did they — Nigel and his bright brain — create this emotional support group for the male CFO who Kate succeeded? Did any of the men occupying management roles have to have mentors groom them into their leadership positions to make sure they were capable and emotionally fortified enough to handle their title? Whew, I could be wrong, but I’m gonna bet on NO. It was outrageous of him to discuss the importance of inclusion and diversity and how he champions such factors, only to follow up that claim with an incredibly detailed story of how he had to take extra steps to make sure that the prospective woman CFO was able to handle her duties. Because, you know, she’s a woman. And women are not used to being leaders, so reinforcement must be summoned to help bridge the chasm of womanhood and leadership (Presumably male reinforcement, because he did not allude to the opposite. If they were women mentors, I get the feeling the author would have been too happy to include that detail.). Thank you, Nigel. Don’t know what we, women, would do without you.

I was able to get through the book in about three weeks, but the last couple pages made me wish I hadn’t.

It’s available at Barnes and Noble, girl.