This series captures emerging insights into the question: How can we fundamentally reinvent the management principles and practices of existing organizations? It builds on the book "Reinventing Organizations" that has inspired countless organizations around the world to adopt radically more powerful, soulful and purposeful management practices.
I'm surprised how some coaches and consultants want to work in this space and feel they can just wing it. What your clients are embarking on is truly daring and the way to honor that is to offer them superb support.
Are you hoping to make an organization "teal"? Or to help an organization become self-management? Here are a few thoughts for you if you are attached to making an organization you work with become a certain way.
I often get the question: what's the best way to convince the CEO I'm working with to adopt the kind of management described in your book?Here is my answer. You might not like it at first, but I believe it will bring you to a deeper and more beautiful relationship with your client.
Many coaches and consultants have asked me how they could find clients who "get this" and with whom they could work. In this episode, I'll share a few thoughts of how how you could find them... or rather how they could find you.
Do organizations moving to "teal" still work with consultants? Or do they just need coaches and figure the rest out by themselves? Interestingly, the kind of support I've seen various organizations need seems to be quite similar across the board.
When you try to "sense and respond" in your team but the rest of the organization is stuck in "predict and control", you'll essentially have to navigate two parallel worlds.
Inviting people to show up more whole in your part of the organization is well within your control and shouldn't stir up much trouble with the rest of the organization.
Here are some key practices related to self-management you could bring to your team even if the rest of the organization stays put with traditional management.Can you guess which they are?
Obviously what you set out to do will rub against the grain of the rest of the organization and you can expect some resistance. How much resistance you get can vary tremendously though. There is much you can do to minimize resistance and make your life a whole lot easier. And it hasn't so much to do with what you say or do but with how you show up.
This is option 2 out of 2 for how to go about reinventing the management of your unit: you simply get going and do it below the radar screen.(For option 1, "negotiating a protected space" see the previous episode). Doing it below the radar screen boils down - pardon my french - to opening the shit umbrella. The idea is to insulate your unit or team from corporate ... well, you guessed, shit ... raining down on it from higher up in the organization.
I know of a unit leader who successfully negotiated a special status for his unit that gives him freedom to experiment.Here a few thoughts on how you might create such a contract with top management and how you might make so appealing that they actually agree to it!
Before you start your adventure, this question more than any other might help you chart the course: how far are you willing to go, what risks are you willing to take?
Remember the two conditions for a company-wide transformation: the CEO must get it and want it, and so must the board. If the CEO is not on board, a wholesale transformation is off the table, but you might still bring about beautiful changes within your own sphere of influence.
This episode is about what might look like a point of detail... but a revealing one!I'm not a big fan of the word "vision". Rather than developing a vision for the organization, can we hear a call for where the organization wants to go? The difference, as subtle as it might sound, is fundamental to me.
Indicators and targets are central to the old ways of trying to predict and control the future. Can and should we do without them?
Budgets are often the central backbone of organizations. Let's think through if budgets still make sense in a world where "sense and respond" replaces "predict and control". And if so, how.
Today we often plan much more that we need to. From it's not far to the typical misunderstanding: planning is bad!It's not. There are simply two pitfalls to avoid: planning too much and believing our plans.
A deep dive into how we can do strategic thinking when we no longer want to "predict and control", but instead want to listen to where the living system of the organization wants to go.
What about the strategic plans we used to do: is some form of that still helpful in a world of "sense and respond"? Very often, I believe the answer is no. But here are four reasons it might make sense to do "strategic thinking"
Often we simply wrap nice sounding words around the products and services we offer... and ta-da, there is our purpose. Most likely, though, this is simply a "fake" purpose. Remember: purpose is not something we design or declare, it's a voice that whispers if we know how to listen and calls us to a better future. It's time we stop the BS and face the fact that a true so much of what organizations do is destructive and that a true purpose is antithetical to continued destruction.In this episode, I offer a simple but powerful test to see if your purpose is true or fake. Prepare for a possibly uncomfortable but absolutely worthy conversation about your organizations purpose!
What ways can help you discern the organization's purpose? And who gets to participate?
Many work places today have a purpose that is destructive, wholly or in part. Are you willing to face this reality for your organization?
Purpose is too often understood as some sort of slogan that can be helpful for marketing purposes or as a way to motivate employees.And yet It's the simple realization that the organizations wants to manifest something in the world and that by listening to the purpose, things can unfold with surprising ease and grace.
What passes for "purpose" today in organizations is almost always a fig leaf.The true purpose for almost every work place I know is maximization (of profits, market share, ...) and self-preservation.Listening to a deeper purpose is a radical departure from the world we know.
"Evolutionary purpose" is not about having a clear purpose statement.It is a much more profound shift in perspective. It asks us to truly see the organization as a living entity with its own energy and sense of direction. And it invites us, therefore, to stop trying to predict and control the future, but instead continuously listen and respond to the organization's purpose.
Not everyone will feel comfortable with the invitation to show up more fully.There might be valuable information hidden in their resistance to your invitation. Could it be that your invitation is more than an invitation? Or that your invitation is disconnected from the work in the organization?
Ground rules are values made practical. A number of organizations choose to put these guidelines in writing. And then embed them in all the daily practices at work.
You can accelerate the movement by inviting the whole organization to reflect on wholeness and how to have more of it. What could such a conversation look like?
People sometimes wonder: what is a good setting to start introducing wholeness in the organization?The truth is any meeting or gathering can do, but here are some concrete ideas for where you might start.
How do you bring meetings to a deeper place? Won't it feel strange at first? A few thoughts for how to bring more wholeness to group spaces.
What if every interaction you had a work became a moment you try to do from a place of wholeness? One way to get there is simply to observe if you and the person you are talking to are coming to the conversation with an open heart.
The nature of power hierarchies is that all eyes are on the most senior person in the room, when it comes to wholeness.If that's you, it means that your colleagues will most likely see how far you go in dropping the mask before they take the risk to follow suit. Your role modeling is a critical, there is no way around it. Well wonderful, you get to live in wholeness before everyone else!But what does role modeling wholeness mean in practice? The way I think about it could be summarized like this: "lead and don't react".
nviting people to show up whole at work is unusual. So unusual, in fact, that it's not that easy to talk about it. Why is this something you'd want to do, in the first place? How can you talk about it with simplicity, in ways that are grounded in who you are, in who the organization is and in its purpose?
Most likely, your organization's culture comes with some barriers to wholeness.And your organization is exposed to a broader dominant culture that makes that some groups will feel quite at home, whereas other groups (woman, people of color, people from working class backgrounds...) have learnt to be on their toes and are careful to "code switch" to fit in. Can you create a culture where truly everyone can show up whole?
Before you get going, it's worthwhile clarifying what your invitation really is. What exactly does wholeness mean for you?
"CEOs" are paradoxically much less and much more important in self-managing organizations. So how do you deal with a "CEO" succession? Hint for the first step: if you haven't done it yet, stop talking about the "CEO" and name the various roles this person holds and that need to find successors. Once you do that, you might be surprised that things fall in place quite naturally.
If you are hit with a crisis, this moment will be revealing about how deep the roots of self-management have grown. Do you go back to old ways or do you double down on self-management?
Linking pay to roles seems to be a natural idea. It's also a bad one, because people go back to identifying with their roles and competing for them.This is one of several thoughts about pay in self-managing organizations I share in this episode.
Some people are disoriented when the career ladder disappears. They want to feel their are making progress in their careers.Here are a few things you can put in place to respect that need.
Self-management thrives on intrinsic motivation: people are motivated not because of carrots and sticks, but because their work is intrinsically fulfilling.And so it's easy to forget that many of us also have a need to be seen and recognized for the good work we do.And that many of us are interested in mentoring relationships with more experienced and senior people in the organization, especially now that they no longer are our hierarchical superiors.
Pent-up resentment can break out when teams switch to self-management.Perhaps there was a team member who has made life difficult for everyone else for a long time, but was protected by their manager. When that protection falls away, that person might suddenly be exposed to the team's ire and things can turn ugly. Teams need help to deal with such situations.
This seems to happen a lot. In newly self-managing teams, people avoid the difficult conversations. Problems fester because they don't get addressed.The obvious answer? Let's get everyone some feedback training, right? That's of course always a good thing, but if you've seen some of the previous episodes, you'll perhaps know that I believe there is something deeper at play that you need to address.
This happens regularly. Teams relish their new freedom, but don't seem to take up the corresponding responsibility.What might be happening?
I've heard this a few times from perplexed leaders: Are there people who like to powerless and told what to do? Perhaps "my people" aren't ready for self-management yet?Certainly, some people have suffered from being powerless for so long that they've found a certain refuge in that position. Here's what it takes to invite them to get out of that unhealthy place: take out the safety net!
When you find that working with self-management is really hard, I'm willing to bet it's for one of these two reason:- You haven't formalized the new practices enough.- Or that you have settled into being half-pregnant.
Teams that embrace self-management go through a lot of learning ... regular team check-in sessions are critical for that learning to be processed. In this episode, I'll share among other some powerful questions teams can reflect on.
The transition to self-management can be at times both exhilarating and painful. Spaces to explore the pain with colleagues can offer great relief. Oh, I'm not the only one having trouble with this. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with me after all! Similarly, when someone struggling hears a colleague share a breakthrough, it gives them inspiration and confidence. Creating such spaces has another benefit: when people don't have a place to express their pain, they often project it out. Self-management is a stupid idea, this will never work! You'll avoid much unnecessary struggle by simply offering a space where people can express how challenging this transformation can be.
Training can help in the massive shift that every team member needs to navigate on the journey from hierarchy to self-management. But there is no reason to do it the old-fashioned way.
Self-management works when healthy peer pressure makes people accountable to their commitments.But because we've all known situation where it's been harsh, peer pressure sometimes has a bad name.Let's talk about how we are wired for peer feedback, how peer pressure is the most natural way for a system to self-regulate and how we can make it as healthy as possible.
This is a question I've heard of few times and which seems to prevent some leaders from making the leap to self-management.In self-management, we want the team as a whole to feel accountable for its results... but people outside the team often want one person to speak on behalf of the team. How can you square these apparently conflicting demands?
So if there is no manager anymore, who is accountable for a team's results? Someone needs to be!This is an important episode: I'm struck that many people on the journey to self-management can't really answer this question.No wonder people in the organization are confused and that many people see self-management as some idealistic dream, when it's the most powerful mechanism we know.