Say “Self-Management” and almost everyone gets the wrong idea.
Self-managing structures are appearing everywhere and get increasing attention in the media. They seem to be much more adaptative, agile, motivating than traditional pyramidal organizations, and they appear to achieve spectacular results. But is this a simple fad, or a new phenomenon destined to spread? And why are most people dismissive when you mention the possibility to run organizations “without a boss”?
Even though we are only now starting to get our heads around it, Self-Management is not a startling new invention by any means. It is the way life has operated in the world for billions of years, bringing forth creatures and ecosystems so magnificent and complex we can hardly comprehend them. Self-organization is the life force of the world, thriving on the edge of chaos with just enough order to funnel its energy, but not so much as to slow down adaptation and learning.
Leading scientists believe that the principal science of the next century will be the study of complex, autocatalytic, self-organizing, non-linear, and adaptive systems. This is usually referred to as “complexity” or “chaos theory”. For a long time, we thought the world operated based on Newtonian principles. We didn’t know better and thought we needed to interfere with the life’s self-organizing urge and try to control one another.
It seems we are ready now to move beyond rigid structures and let organizations truly come to life. And yet self-management is still such a new concept that many people frequently misunderstand what it is about and what it takes to make it work.
People who are new to the idea of Self-Management sometimes mistakenly assume that it simply means taking the hierarchy out of an organization and running everything democratically based on consensus. There is, of course, much more to it. Self-Management, just like the traditional pyramidal model it replaces, works with an interlocking set of structures, processes, and practices; these inform how teams are set up, how decisions get made, how roles are defined and distributed, how salaries are set, how people are recruited or dismissed, and so on.
What often puzzles us at first about self-managing organizations is that they are not structured along the control-minded hierarchical templates of Newtonian science. They are complex, participatory, interconnected, interdependent, and continually evolving systems, like ecosystems in nature. Form follows need. Roles are picked up, discarded, and
exchanged fluidly. Power is distributed. Decisions are made at the point of origin. Innovations can spring up from all quarters. Meetings are held when they are needed. Temporary task forces are created spontaneously and quickly disbanded again. Here is how Chris Rufer, the founder and president of Morning Star, talks about the structure of self-managing organizations:
Clouds form and then go away because atmospheric conditions, temperatures, and humidity cause molecules of water to either condense or vaporize. Organizations should be the same; structures need to appear and disappear based on the forces that are acting in the organization. When people are free to act, they’re able to sense those forces and act in ways that fit best with reality.
The tasks of management―setting direction and objectives, planning, directing, controlling, and evaluating―haven’t disappeared. They are simply no longer concentrated in dedicated management roles. Because they are spread widely, not narrowly, it can be argued that there is more management and leadership happening at any time in self-managing organizations despite, or rather precisely because of, the absence of fulltime managers.
For as long as human memory goes back, the problem of power inequality has plagued life in organizations. Much of the pervasive fear that runs silently through organizations―and much of the politics, the silos, the greed, blaming, and resentment that feed on fear―stem from the unequal distribution of power.
Interestingly, the interlocking structures and processes allowing for self-organization do not resolve the question of power inequality; they transcend it. Attempting to resolve the problem of power inequality would call for everyone to be given the same power. Cooperatives, for instance, have sought in equal ownership a method to divide power equally. Interestingly, none of the organizations I have researched for the book Reinventing Organizations are employee-owned; the question of employee ownership doesn’t seem to matter very much when power is truly distributed.
The right question is not: how can everyone have equal power? Itis rather: how can everyone be powerful? Power is not viewed as a zero-sumgame, where the power I have is necessarily power taken away from you.Instead, if we acknowledge that we are all interconnected, the more powerfulyou are, the more powerful I can become. The more powerfully you advance theorganization’s purpose, the more opportunities will open up for me to makecontributions of my own.
Here we stumble upon a beautiful paradox: people can holddifferent levels of power, and yet everyone can be powerful. If I’m a machineoperator―if my background, education, interests, and talents predispose mefor such work―my scope of concern will be more limited than yours, if yourroles involve coordinating the design of a whole new factory. And yet, ifwithin what matters to me, I can take all necessary actions using the adviceprocess, I have all the power I need.
This paradox cannot be understood with the unspoken metaphor wehold today of organizations as machines. In a machine, a small turn of thebig cog at the top can send lots of little cogs spinning. The reverse isn’ttrue―the little cog at the bottom can try as hard as it pleases, but it haslittle power to move the bigger cog. The metaphor of nature as acomplex, self-organizing system can much better accommodate this paradox. Inan ecosystem, interconnected organisms thrive without one holding power overanother. A fern or a mushroom can express its full selfhood without everreaching out as far into the sky as the tree next to which it grows. Througha complex collaboration involving exchanges of nutrients, moisture, andshade, the mushroom, fern, and tree don’t compete but cooperate to grow into thebiggest and healthiest version of themselves.
It’s the same in self-managing organizations: the point is not tomake everyone equal; it is to allow all employees to grow into the strongest,healthiest version of themselves. Gone is the dominator hierarchy (thestructure where bosses hold power over their subordinates). And precisely forthat reason, lots of natural, evolving, overlapping hierarchies canemerge―hierarchies of development, skill, talent, expertise, and recognition,for example. This is a point that management author Gary Hamel notedabout Morning Star:
Morning Star is a collection of naturally dynamichierarchies. There isn’t one formal hierarchy; there are many informal ones.On any issue some colleagues will have a bigger say than others will,depending on their expertise and willingness to help. These are hierarchiesof influence, not position, and they’re built from the bottom up. At MorningStar one accumulates authority by demonstrating expertise, helping peers, andadding value. Stop doing those things, and your influence wanes—as will yourpay.
So really, these organizations are anything but “flat,” a wordoften used for organizations with little or no hierarchy. On the contrary,they are alive and moving in all directions, allowing anyone to reach out foropportunities. How high you reach depends on your talents, your interests,your character, and the support you inspire from colleagues; it is no longerartificially constrained by the organization chart.
Many organizations today claim to be empowering. But note thepainful irony in that statement. If employees need to be empowered, it isbecause the system’s very design concentrates power at the top and makespeople at the lower rungs essentially powerless, unless leaders are generousenough to share some of their power. In self-managing organizations, peopleare not empowered by the good graces of other people. Empowerment is bakedinto the very fabric of the organization, into its structure, processes, andpractices. Individuals need not fight for power. They simply have it. Forpeople experiencing Self-Management for the first time, the ride can bebittersweet at first. With freedom comes responsibility: you can no longerthrow problems, harsh decisions, or difficult calls up the hierarchy and letyour bosses take care of it. You can’t take refuge in blame, apathy, orresentfulness. Everybody needs to grow up and take full responsibility fortheir thoughts and actions―a steep learning curve for some people. Formerleaders and managers sometimes find it is a huge relief not having to dealwith everybody else’s problems. But many also feel the phantom pain of notbeing able to wield their former positional power.
Many leading thinkers and practitioners in the field oforganizational design focus their energy today on the question of how leaderscan become more conscious. The thinking goes as follows: if only leaderscould be more caring, more humble, more empowering, better listeners, moreaware of the shadow they cast, they would wield their power more carefullyand would create healthier and more productive organizations. BrianRobertson, the founder of Holacracy, put it well in a blog post:
We see attempts for leaders to develop to be moreconscious, aware, awake, servant leaders that are empowering. … And yet, theirony: … If you need someone else to carefully wield their power and holdtheir space for you, then you are a victim. This is the irony of empowerment,and yet there is very little else we can do within our conventional operatingsystem other than try our best to be conscious, empoweringleaders.3
If we can’t think outside the pyramid, then indeed, as Robertsonnotes, the best we can do is try to patch up the unhealthy consequences ofpower inequality with more enlightened leadership. Pioneer self-managingorganizations show that it’s possible to transcend the problem of powerinequality and not just patch it up. We can reinvent the basic structures andpractices of organizations to make everyone powerful and no one powerless.
Another common misconception is that Self-Management might stillbe an experimental form of management. That is no longer true:Self-Management has proven its worth time and again, on both small and largescales and in various types of industry. W. L. Gore, a chemical manufacturingcompany best known for its Gore-Tex fabrics, has been operating onself-organizing principles since its founding in the late 1950s. Whole Foods,with its 60,000 employees and $9 billion in revenue, operates its more than300 stores with self-governing units (the rest of the organization has moretraditional hierarchical structures). Each store consists of roughly eightself-managing units, such as produce, seafood, and check-out (centralservices are run with a traditional, albeit empoweredhierarchy).
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has operated since its foundingin 1972 on entirely self-managing principles. The orchestra, with residencein New York’s Carnegie Hall, has earned rave reviews and is widely regardedas one of the world’s great orchestras. It operates without a conductor.Musicians from the orchestra make all artistic decisions, from choosing therepertoire to deciding how a piece ought to be played. They decide who torecruit, where to play, and with whom to collaborate.
Virtual and volunteer-driven organizations practiceSelf-Management on staggering scales. In 2012, Wikipedia had 100,000active contributors. It is estimated that around the same number―100,000people―have contributed to Linux. If these numbers sound large, they aredwarfed by other volunteer organizations. Alcoholics Anonymous currentlyhas 1.8 million members participating in over 100,000 groups worldwide―eachof them operating entirely on self-managing principles, structures, andpractices.
I believe it is because we have grown up with traditional hierarchicalorganizations that we find it so hard to get our heads aroundSelf-Management. Young people, on the other hand, who have grown up with theWeb (variously referred to as Millennials, Generation Y) “get”self-management instinctively. On the web, management writer GaryHamel notes:
Many organizational leaders and human resource managers complainthat Millennials are hard to manage. Indeed, this generation has grown up inthe disruptive world of the Internet, where people’s influence is based oncontribution and reputation, not position. Why would they want to put up withanything other than self-management in the workplace? Why would anyone else,for that matter?
1. Hamel, “First, Let’s Fire All the Managers.”
2. Ibid.
3. Brian Robertson, “The Irony of Empowerment,” Holacracy Blogs, October 28, 2010, https://www.holacracy.org/blog,
accessed November 2, 2011.
4. Gary Hamel, What Matters Now (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 176-177.
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