Last week, I delivered some training to a group of Morning Star
colleagues at the California Sun harvesting facility in College City,
California (an oddly named town, since there is currently no college in or
near College City). There are about twenty-two self-managed colleagues
working there, performing the vital work of repairing and maintaining tomato
harvesting equipment and training equipment drivers.
After the training (which went very well thanks to a fantastic
Spanish translator and educator named Georgina), my location contact, Celia,
asked me if I would like a tour of the facilities.
Having a bit of time available, I enthusiastically accepted her
offer. We walked to the equipment receiving area and saw where mechanics
disassemble the harvesters. We then looked around the building where talented
mechanics repair and rebuild the giant machines. Finally, we walked to the
large covered warehouse where the machines are stored and readied for use.
The building swarmed with mechanics putting the finishing touches on their
work prior to the busy harvest season.
As I was admiring one particular harvester machine, a gigantic
John Deere tractor-harvester combination, Celia asked if I would like to see
the machine up close. I agreed. She called over her colleague Robert, who
proceeded to give me an extremely detailed tour of the harvester, pointing
out all its features and options. I made an effort to understand the
technology, but possessing barely enough mechanical understanding to operate
a toaster, I was at a bit of a disadvantage.
Celia then asked me: “Would you like to get in the cab?” Having no
reason to object, I clambered up the short but steep ladder to the cab and
poked my head inside. Robert, who was seated at the controls, began to show
me how highly automated the harvester was, and how it was relatively simple
to operate in air-conditioned comfort. It was very impressive. Celia then
asked: “Would you like to see it run?” Again, having no reason not to see it
run, I nodded, and Robert started up the machine. The noise reverberated
throughout the building (we were still indoors). I gained an instant
appreciation for the power and capacity of these noisy sentinels of the
harvest.
After appreciating the giant green John Deere combo, I noticed
another nearby machine that consisted of one part instead of two. It was
painted red and white. Celia asked: “Would you like to see the red
harvester?” Knowing by now that objecting would be futile, I nodded, and
Robert clambered down from the John Deere and began comparing and contrasting
the combination Deere with the single-unit red machine. As before, he pointed
out all the bells and whistles on the unit. No museum docent could have done
a better job or taken more pride in the object on display. Celia again asked
him to start it up for my benefit, but this machine wasn’t quite ready for
firing on this day. I thanked Robert profusely for his generosity of
time and teaching.
Thinking I was released for the day, Celia asked if I would like
to see how they do the harvester and truck driver training in the field. By
this point, I was prepared to camp there overnight if that’s what it took to
gain a full appreciation of the operation. While Celia retrieved a
potted tomato plant for me (a gift for guests!) we drove our cars about a
quarter of a mile to the driver training area.
A note about Celia. She started working as a seasonal truck
dispatcher in 2006, and worked her way into a full-time administrative role
with Morning Star affiliate Cal Sun in 2012--a very important California
agricultural company. She now handles significant human resources and
administrative responsibilities with large financial consequences. Her story
is that of a bona fide successful businesswoman. The agility with which she
handles the resources and people at her location, and the respect others
accord her, is inspiring.
While watching a newly-hired driver practice moving a unitary
harvester up and down the furrows, Celia asked if I would like to see the
harvester practice with a truck and set of trailers (during real operations,
as harvesters pull fruit from the fields, a separate truck/trailer
combination moves slowly alongside, filling up the trailers for hauling to
the factory for processing). Glancing at my watch (I had to be in Clear
Lake for an early dinner that night), I agreed. Celia called over her
training colleague, Cano, and asked him to provide a demonstration. Cano
spoke briefly to the new harvester driver and another truck driver, and asked
them to show me how synchronicity happens in the field. Like a pair of
performance artists on “Dancing With The Stars”, the two drivers
choreographed the movements of their giant machines in perfect harmony,
thundering down the field in a powerful display of synchronized automation.
It was…breathtaking.
I wasn’t prepared for Celia’s next question: “Would you like to
ride on the harvester?” At this point, she probably couldn’t have stopped me
if she wanted to. I climbed the steep ladder of the red harvester cab. The
driver warned me, wisely, to watch my head in the short space available, and
to hang on tight. And away we went, the harvester charging up the field, the
truck rolling alongside, perfectly timed. It was a hot day, and windy, and
dusty. I was wearing a sport coat and nice shoes. But I didn’t care. As I
held onto the cab for dear life, the dust and wind rushing across my face, I
felt as alive and carefree as Leonardo DiCaprio on the bow of the Titanic.
Hoping, of course, for a somewhat better ending.
Alas, the demonstration eventually came to an end, and I had miles
to go before sleeping. I thanked my gracious hosts and bade the group
farewell.
As I thought about the day, a number of lessons came to
mind.
First, the machinery that this group handles is big and complex.
The cognitive content of their jobs is off the charts. They can see the
results of their work right away—instant feedback. A machine or part either
works properly, or it doesn’t. There are probably a lot of cubicle-dwellers
who would gladly trade places with them.
Second, everyone working there was HAPPY. REALLY, REALLY HAPPY.
It’s just cool to see so many people that love their work.
Third, the entire group is self-managed. There are no titles, no
bosses, and no command authority. There is only work, and people to perform
work. And teamwork. Beautiful teamwork.
Fourthly, everyone is really motivated to achieve EXCELLENCE. The
Gallup organization surveys employee engagement. At this workplace,
engagement could not possibly be any higher.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if every workplace were this
great?
Feel free to download the short movie ("Download
Document" button) below for a peek at self-managed teamwork in
action.
Download Document
Rod Collins’ Wiki
Management: A Revolutionary New Model for a Rapidly Changing and
Collaborative World shares a compelling model for
effective management in a dynamic and turbulent world.
As such, it is an indispensable read for anyone interested in
organizational self-management. And what, exactly, is a wiki? As Collins
explains, wiki is the Hawaiian word for “quick” or “fast”—a word that pretty
much sums up the today’s business environment.
Collins looks at multiple vanguard organizations (including
Morning Star and W.L. Gore) as exemplars of sustainable management practices
in a networked world where information moves at light speed and the
half-lives of business strategies approach zero. In the midst of this
anxiety-inducing change, however, there is hope. With the reader’s
apprehension of increasing complexity assured, the book outlines an
approachable model containing five crucial disciplines for surviving and
thriving in this new collaborative environment. Collins labels this cluster
of disciplines Wiki Management—his new management effectiveness paradigm for
a hyper-connected, quantum world where meaning depends on context and the
only constant is change.
After setting the table with a first course discussion of
complexity, technology and accelerating change, Collins serves the main
course: an in-depth discussion of Wiki Management’s five disciplines. The
disciplines incorporate myriad principles and useful practices regarding
customers, collective intelligence, shared understanding, critical
performance drivers and peer accountability. He peppers up the main course
with stories and examples of real organizations that complement the relevant
arguments. Deft and judicious servings of open-source business stories,
personal experiences, and powerful thought leadership lessons highlight the
main dish.
Practical, well-researched and persuasive, Wiki
Management is as fresh and contemporary as the latest issue of
Wired magazine and as inarguable as Moore’s Law (which
seems to be a key driver of the need for Wiki Management in the first place).
Savor it.
Work
Revolution co-founder Josh Allan Dykstra interviews Doug
Kirkpatrick from the Morning Star Self-Management Institute. The
discussion begins with a brief history of Morning Star and the development of
Self-Management, then covers a wide range of topics, including: CLOU,
Steppingstones, Gaining Agreement and the "Misperceptions
of Self-Management" outlined by Frederic Laloux in his article
on the SMI site.
In late 2013 our team met to review our progress as an
organization, and to identify unfulfilled needs and opportunities for us to
better achieve our Mission. We realized, as we reviewed our strategic
plan and identified focuses for 2014, that we’ve done a poor job of curating
content to serve our Community of Practice. Membership in our Community
has grown dramatically in the last few years, and our interactions with many
members confirmed that there’s a large contingent of people around the World
who share our vision, but are searching for answers.
Much to our chagrin we realized that, while we don’t have all of
the answers, over the years we’ve collected a body of our writings, videos
and a large library of books which, together, represent a comprehensive body
of media focused on self-management in organizations. But we’ve not
effectively presented it to our membership in an organized fashion.
We also realized that there’s a group of writers, business leaders
and thinkers whose wisdom and insight has proven beneficial to us, but that
we have not effectively leveraged that insight by disseminating it to you,
our Community of Practice members.
So we placed a specific focus on re-shaping our website to be more
than a site about the Institute. Visitors to our redesigned site will
now be accessing a streamlined and focused collection of content, organized
intuitively to allow visitors to quickly identify the “path” that they’re
looking to traverse (or the nature of the question they’re trying to answer
or the problem they’re trying to resolve), and to move down that path,
accessing content relevant specifically to the visitor’s general challenge.
Some of the content that is now easily accessible on the new
site:
Of equal importance is the broadening source of this content.
We’ve begun leveraging the most innovative, insightful and radical
management thinkers and practitioners that we’ve encountered as sources of
material. We approach this cautiously; we recognize that the value this
new content portal brings is its focus and relevance, so we invite new
contributors to share their wisdom and knowledge with you through our site
only after ensuring that they represent our Mission, values and Vision.
So we invite you to take a moment now to visit the new site.
Explore a bit, and if you like what you find (or if you find nothing of
interest) drop
us a note and tell us what you think. And come back often (or
if you use an RSS reader, add our homepage to your list of news feeds); we
want to make sure you don’t miss a thing.
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.
Misperception 1: There is no structure, no management, no leadership
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.
Misperception 2: Everyone is equal
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.
Misperception 3: It’s about empowerment
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.
Misperception 4: It’s still experimental
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:
- No one can kill a good idea
- Everyone can pitch in
- Anyone can lead
- No one can dictate
- You get to choose your cause
- You can easily build on top of what others have done
- You don’t have to put up with bullies and tyrants
- Agitators don’t get marginalized
- Excellence usually wins (and mediocrity doesn’t)
- Passion-killing policies get reversed
- Great contributions get recognized and celebrated
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.
Check out
Frederic's new book:
The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. The epidemic of organizational disillusionment goes way beyond Corporate America-teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their professions in record numbers because the way we run schools and hospitals kills their vocation. Government agencies and nonprofits have a noble purpose, but working for these entities often feels soulless and lifeless just the same. All these organizations suffer from power games played at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, from infighting and bureaucracy, from endless meetings and a seemingly never-ending succession of change and cost-cutting programs.
Deep inside, we long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose. The solution, according to many progressive scholars, lies with more enlightened management. But reality shows that this is not enough. In most cases, the system beats the individual-when managers or leaders go through an inner transformation, they end up leaving their organizations because they no longer feel like putting up with a place that is inhospitable to the deeper longings of their soul.
We need more enlightened leaders, but we need something more: enlightened organizational structures and practices. But is there even such a thing? Can we conceive of enlightened organizations?
In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness in the past, it has invented a whole new way to structure and run organizations, each time bringing extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a radically more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals?
The pioneering organizations researched for this book have already "cracked the code." Their founders have fundamentally questioned every aspect of management and have come up with entirely new organizational methods. Even though they operate in very different industries and geographies and did not know of each other's experiments, the structures and practices they have developed are remarkably similar. It's hard not to get excited about this finding: a new organizational model seems to be emerging, and it promises a soulful revolution in the workplace.
"Reinventing Organizations" describes in practical detail how organizations large and small can operate in this new paradigm. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories.
--Review from Amazon
Apple, Inc., the California-based designer, developer and
retailer of the absolute best computers and personal electronic devices
on the market (I'm not biased), has long been renowned for it's exceptional
design team. Apple's innovatively designed products have been the
company's competitive advantage for many years, and new products, when
released, are often trailblazers in their respective markets.
So it's logical that we might assume that at least part of Apple's
secret is some unique ability to find the best designers in the industry, or
a top-secret design school on the Apple campus that teaches new Apple
designers how to design truly exceptional products.
Not the case, according to a
new Fast Company article. The magazine recently interviewed
Mark Kawano, an Apple senior designer for seven years before leaving to found
his own company. In the article, Kawano opened up about working at
Apple, and helped to dispel a few myths about the company--including the myth
that "Apple has the best designers".
Kawano says:
“I think the biggest misconception is this belief that the reason
Apple products turn out to be designed better. . . is that they have the best
design team in the world, or the best process in the world. It’s not
this thing where you get some special wings or superpowers when you enter
Cupertino...It’s that you now have an organization where you can spend your
time designing products, instead of having to fight for your seat at the
table, or get frustrated when the better design is passed over by an
engineering manager who just wants to optimize for bug fixing. All of those
things are what other designers at other companies have to spend a majority
of their time doing. At Apple, it’s kind of expected that experience is
really important.”
There's certainly more to Apple's success than just this, but it's
striking that the critical differentiator, as experienced by a senior
designer, is that designers at Apple aren't bogged down with bureaucratic
nonsense or political maneuvering. We all have an intuitive sense that
bureaucracy causes a drop in productivity, but there's this sense that it's a
necessary evil--because bureacracy is what's required to ensure we're doing
the right things in the right way. Kawano's story says the exact
opposite: the absence of bureaucracy is the method that Apple uses to ensure
they're doing the right things in the right way.
I hope you caught that, because it's big.
While there are many competencies that enable effective
self-management (excellent communication skills, solid teamwork, good
judgment), there are many other, less obvious competencies that impact one’s
ability to navigate and perform at a high level in a self-managed
ecosystem. Here are five candidates for consideration.
1) Taking Initiative. This characteristic is expressly
called for in the Morning Star Colleague Principles. It’s very hard to
deliver constructive feedback to colleagues or cause positive change in
processes without a willingness to take the initiative to do so. Taking
initiative includes the willingness and ability to speak up when
necessary.
2) Tolerance for Ambiguity. Self-management can be messy as
new colleagues meet new people, engage with new processes, and learn a new
way of working. Negotiating a Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU)
that clearly communicates one’s mission, process stewardships and performance
metrics with affected stakeholders takes time and effort. Choices must
be made regarding what requests to make of other colleagues and the timing
and scope of those requests. Self-management is never as clear-cut as
just going up to the boss with a comment or complaint.
3) Consciousness. It takes real effort to locate the energy
needed to pursue one’s personal commercial mission consistently, every
day. It is akin to the energy that entrepreneurs use to create entirely
new enterprises out of ideas. Consciousness gives rise to awareness and
presence, and is the source of confidence in one’s ability to get things
done—even in the face of adversity. Awareness goes right to the heart
of the Morning Star Colleague Principles—understanding one’s Rings of
Responsibility requires a clear scope of awareness, especially in the primary
ring.
4) Contribution Mindset. Peter Drucker talked about a
contribution mindset in his 1966 book, The Effective
Executive. A half-century later, that mindset applies to
everyone who wants to be an effective self-manager in a self-managed
enterprise. This competency is referenced in the Morning Star Colleague
Principles, which create an affirmative obligation for individuals to share
relevant information with colleagues even when not expressly
requested.
5) Low Power Distance Sensitivity. Power distance refers to
the concept of deferring to individuals perceived to have more power than
oneself. In a self-managed environment (where collaboration is highly
valued), there is an unofficial hierarchy of
credibility, which springs from experience, trust,
communication, and a host of other factors. This is not the same thing as a
hierarchy of power based on command authority or control
of others. Effective self-managers will find ways to express themselves
to anyone in the organization, and will listen to anyone and everyone who
wishes to talk with them. To cut off colleagues based on perceived status is
to cut off information, the lifeblood of a self-managed organization.
Communication is everything.
What other competencies does effective self-management
require?
Paul Zak, author of The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity, presents his method for applying the insights of his research to organizations at the 2013 Symposium.
At SMI's 2013 Symposium, Fabio Betti Salgado and Maurício Goldstein of Pulsus Consulting, presented their experience working to decrease bureaucracy and increase engagement in a client organization.
At the 2014 SMI Symposium, Professor Rajshree Agarwal brings her expertise to the problem statements in the case studies presented over the course of the event.
Dr. Debra France drives leadership development and learning for scientists and engineers at W. L. Gore & Associates.
If you lead a command-and-control organization, stick with traditional one-way communication. If you hope to build engagement, excite millenials, and profit from the ideas of customers, staff and suppliers, then learn to host conversations, which include CLOUs [Colleague Letters of Understanding]. Ken's session tells why it is hard to give up the podium and Powerpoint, what new skills are needed, and how conversations, of even up to a hundred people, can transform levels of engagement.
Call it what you will--Self-Management, Holarchy, ROWE--but we are
definitely seeing a rise in the number of workplaces that are ditching
traditional management. Pam
Ross's January article with the Huffington Post introduces several
companies that are experimenting with how to best organize
work.
