Merit can be challenging to define but at a high level, the concept of meritocracy suggests that individuals should rise or fall in a given system based on their abilities and efforts. It is often used in the context of education, employment, and other social institutions to advocate for a system where individuals are judged and rewarded based on their merits rather than factors beyond their control.
However, critics argue that achieving a true meritocracy can be challenging due to various barriers that may prevent equal access to opportunities. They suggest that meritocracy can inadvertently perpetuate existing inequalities if certain groups face systemic disadvantages or discrimination. While there are legitimate reasons to consider the pitfalls of meritocracy, there is a way to apply its core proposition to creating a more level and interesting playing field for all.
What if we focus on building organisations where decisions are taken based on the strength of the ideas and not popularity, positional power, and short-term hacks? Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio calls it an idea meritocracy where we shift the spotlight from individual egos to the collective pursuit of the best possible decisions under given circumstances.
This is, of course, easier said than done. When organisations are small, it is easier to let the best ideas prevail. However, when they grow in size, they run the risk of becoming bureaucratic and losing sight of what matters. Hiring decisions, promotions, and strategic priorities are rigged to optimise for personal interests rather than the collective good. This inevitably kills innovation as most people want to survive such a system and not figure out ways to thrive in it. After all, why should they? If they are convinced that no matter what they do, their ideas and inputs won’t be rewarded, they opt out of doing anything consequential.
This has resulted in ‘Quiet Quitting’, which refers to situations when employees disengage from their organisations without overtly expressing dissatisfaction. They don’t put in their papers but subtly withdraw from the system. They do the bare minimum to show they are doing some work while in reality, they are cruising along.
To transform quiet quitting into active and collective engagement, organisations need to demonstrate their sincerity. Simply putting up nice-sounding mission statements and plastering offices with motivational quotes are not enough. People can see through the charade.
Building an idea meritocracy requires clarity on the long-term goals. Disagreements should be welcome as long as the ground rules on how people will disagree are clear. This implies that relatively junior people must have the psychological safety to voice their concerns, share their ideas and be rewarded for their initiatives if they lead to something tangible. Ultimately, it comes down to having systems and processes; checks and balances; nudges and incentives; for people to believe that the system is working for them, not against them.
The scientific community has long operated on a system that values idea meritocracy. The peer-review process, in which research is evaluated by independent experts before publication, is an embodiment of this concept. Similarly, open-source software development communities welcome contributions from developers based on the merit of their code. Decisions are often made through consensus-building and meritocratic evaluations of proposed changes.
There are challenges in the peer-review process and the open source development model may not be perfect, but there are ways in which they aim to create a framework where the best ideas prevail. We can pick elements of such examples and aim to contextualise them for our organisations.
Dalio, reflecting on the success of Bridgewater Associates, wrote, “Our idea-meritocratic system evolved over the decades. At first, we just argued like hell with each other about what was best and by thrashing through our disagreements came up with better paths than if we had made our decisions individually. But as Bridgewater grew and our range of disagreements and needs to resolve them changed, we became more explicit in how this idea meritocracy would work. We needed a system that could both effectively weigh the believability of different people to come to the best decisions and do that in a way that was so obviously fair everyone would recognise it as such.”
There is no standard formula or a step-by-step plan for building an idea meritocracy but as organisations, managers, and employees try and define the new normal for work in the 21st century, building a fairer system that provides equality of opportunity for all ideas is the need of the hour. It goes without saying that the more disruptive the idea, the harder we must be open to work for them. Remember a simple rule: Your ideas and your position within the organisation should have nothing to do with each other. A good idea is worth considering, no matter where it comes from.
Utkarsh Amitabh
CEO, Network Capital; Chevening Fellow, University of Oxford
Posts on X (formerly Twitter): @utkarsh_amitabh