Insights for the Journey: Recent Episodes
Frederic Laloux
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.
Perhaps you're ready to create self-managing teams at the front line but want/need to keep a pyramid "above" them - because that feels like a challenge already or because your owners or board wouldn't allow you to go further. Can that be done? And how would that work, a self-managing team reporting to a manager?
Managers are the losers in the transition to self-management - or so it seems on the surface. The reality is more complex and beautiful. How can you help managers make a temporarily difficult but ultimately rewarding transition?And if you are one of those managers, what can you expect? In a nutshell: at first, confusion and sometimes pain. And then relief, and the joy of doing creative work again.
It's hard for many people to understand how a team can operate if there is no manger or team leader. The principle is actually quite simple: we just need to stop thinking in terms of boxes (jobs) and think in terms of roles. And then to distribute the roles of the box we used to call "manager".In this episode I share some of the typical roles; how you can define the roles and how you can allocate them.Oh, and I'll share why "coordinator" or "lead" is NOT a role, but simply a way to call a manager something nicer!
This is a bit of a special episode. It's not based on something I've learnt from talking with people who are on the journey of transforming their organizations. This is based on something that I believe in strongly and would try to do, if I were in their place.We've forgotten the power of rituals to celebrate inflection points and sustain us through major transformations. How about we reclaim rituals for ourselves?Here are 6 ideas for creating a powerful moment to honor the best of the past and call a new future into being.
We are all used to org charts. So much so that when the pyramid goes, many people mistakenly believe any form of structure in gone too.You'll make your life a lot easier, I believe, if you make the new structure as visible as possible for everyone to be reminded, again and again, about the structure and roles in the new organization.
As you move to self-management, many existing practices need to be upgraded with new ones (how you make decisions, how roles are defined and allocated, ...)But how do you define and formalize these new processes in a way that doesn't feel like another thing that is imposed onto teams from the top?
What happens to the role of support functions as you transition to self-management? Support functions are often an integral part of the "power over" in traditional hierarchies, so prepare for some profound changes.To answer these questions, I find it helpful to disaggregate what support functions do into four different roles they play. In this episode, I'll share how each of these roles naturally adapts to self-management.And I'll share how people who work in support functions might end up with less "power over" but more joy in their work.
In the long run, the team at the top is bound to disappear.But in the meantime, what the team's role during the transition? How can the team help, rather than get in the way of self-management?
Perhaps your organization is ready to transition to self-managing teams at the front line, but needs or wants to keep a traditional management "above" the teams. That's often a first step... or all that is possible (for now) because your board or investor wouldn't support a more profound change. This can work... but how? How can you articulate the relationship between thee team and its manager above, so that the team really is free and powerful to self-manage?
What kind of support do teams need to start self-managing? In this episode, I'll address 4 kinds of support: creating important conversations, facilitation, expertise and training.And at the end, I'll share a nifty idea to incentivize teams to give self-management a try.
This happens too often: teams get the message "you are free now! Just self-organize". Most often, that's a recipe for failure.
Where do you start with self-management? At the bottom? At the top? In the middle? All at once?
Self-management requires that colleagues have a shared sense of purpose and vision.You might need to spend some time clarifying the purpose and vision before you really get going - at the overall level, and at the level of every team. I'll also briefly touch on the phenomenon of lofty but useless purposes. And how useful it can be to use polarities to help self-managing colleagues to deal with trade-offs.
Here is a question that is likely to be on your mind: how fast or how slow should you take this transition? What degree of risk can you take?It all depends on how much people care about the organization and their work. Inevitably, hiccups occur in the daily life of an organization. Balls get dropped. Only if there is real "psychological ownership" will people care enough to pick up the balls. So I invite you to seek the answer to this question: what's the level of psychological ownership in your organization today? A fair warning: if you are at the top of the organization, it might be lower than you think it is! What if the level of psychological ownership turns out not to be high enough to move ahead? I'll share some thoughts on what can be done.
Self-management will quickly reveal the amount of activity that existed in your organization but no longer needs to be done. Many people, in particular managers, might fear for their job.How can you address that fear?
People in some organizations told me that they regret using the term "self-management" (or flat or bossless..) early in the transformation because it raised unhelpful hopes and fears.But at some point you need to name it (how can you move in a direction you don't name?) The trick, I believe, is to try to always put "story over concept".
You'll avoid quite some trouble if you are clear upfront about how far you are able or willing to go in terms of self-management (for the foreseeable future). Once you start talking about self-management, people will really want to know this... and if it's not clear, they'll all project their own hopes and fears onto the future! Perhaps, what you really want (or what your board will let you do!), is not self-management but empowerment, pushing decision down as far as possible. Or perhaps you are ready to explore with self-managing teams at the front-line, but frankly aren't ready yet to contemplate transforming the management and support staff edifice? In this episode, I'll share two questions that I hope will inspire precise answers and bring clarity to you and the organization.
Early on, you'll have to make a choice: do you evolve your own version of self-management, or do you adopt Sociocracy, Holacracy or another ready-made systems?In this episode, I offer two criteria that can guide you in making that choice.And I'll also share some more specific input you might find useful if you are looking into Holacracy.
For some people, the transition to self-management can be hard. As much as I would like to believe that such a journey could be painless, I don't believe it is possible. But let's try and understand what this pain is about. It's important to make a distinction between "growth pain" and "avoidable pain", because the way you can deal with them is quite different.
Many self-managing organizations still have a team "at the top". For instance, in some factories, each self-managing team sends a "representative" to a coordinating circle. In Sociocracy and Holacracy, you have a General Circle.This is not incompatible with self-management, but let's pause and wonder: is such a team really needed? Or are we perhaps still dealing with a remnant of old thinking, a lack of imagination of how things could work without a team "at the top"? In this episode I'll share 4 reasons why I believe that having such a dedicated team might not be a good idea, and what the alternative can look like. I'll also briefly share the example of one company that, as a first step in the transition, kept its top team, but drastically reduced its scope.
Will we lose synergies and economies of scale if teams just start doing their own thing with no central coordination?This episode discusses how, in practice, organizations get to enjoy the best of both world: reaping synergies where they are, but without the diseconomies of motivation and disempowerment that almost inevitably show up when we centralize tasks in pursuit of specialization and economies of scale.
When self-management touches not just one team, but large parts or the entire organizations, it always comes with profound changes to the organizational structure. In this episode I discuss the three fundamental changes I see happening: the move to cross-functional teams, the collapsing of middle-management layers and the changes to how support functions are structured.
With rigorous self-managing practices, everyone gets to be fully powerful. Really? That is the promise. In reality, all sorts of factors make that for some of us, it's hard to take initiatives and step into our full power, because of our own history and because of the culture we live in.In this episode, I focus on the cultural aspects. Unfortunately, adopting self-managing practices doesn't magically erase subtle but consequential patterns that make it harder for some people to step into their full power, among them women, people from minority backgrounds and lower social classes. The only way to address it, I'm convinced, is by having open, honest and vulnerable conversations about the culture we are all part of. Only then can we start dismantling some of these hurdles and come closer to the promise of self-management: that everyone can truly be powerful in contributing their unique gifts to a shared purpose.
In a previous episode, I said that most likely, if you upgrade just 5 core practices, you'll be pretty much solidly self-managing. But is that true? Can you just start adopting self-managing practices and systems? It depends. Yes, if the culture and the mindsets at the top are more or less ready for it.
There are a number of processes that you will need to upgrade to make the leap to self-management. Most likely, these five processes will be the most critical. My sense is: go for these five, and you'll find yourself self-managing quite solidly.
Leaders in self-managing organizations realize they need to "give up control." But what does that really mean? How have other leaders experienced this? Also: sometimes I've noticed that leaders beat themselves up for finding it hard to give up control... when in reality, it wasn't their ego preventing them from doing it, but a valuable intuition that it would be foolish to do so until some concrete steps were taken for the organization to be able to take over control.
Here is a fundamental principle for leaders to understand: in self-management, your role is no longer to resolve tensions, but to orchestrate ways for the system to solve its tensions on its own, in other words, for the system to self-correct. That's quite a shift in perspective. And a shift in what you do every day! How often do people come to you with a problem to fix? Well, every time, from now on, I hope you remember not to try and fix the problem, but see how you could help shape the system to it will be able to deal with similar problems on its own, from now on!
A powerful way for systems to self-correct is when people withdraw their participation. In traditional organizations, you can't simply leave a project isn't working out or a meeting that is a waste of time. In self-management, this can be actively encouraged.For self-correction to work, we need to pick up week signals. And one of the best week signals is a sense that our time would be better spent elsewhere.
The notion of self-correction is so important that in this episode I'll take six problems that regularly occur in a workplace. In traditional organizations, someone higher up the system is then needed to intervene and fix the issue.What mechanism could you put in place to help the system to self-correct much more quickly and painlessly?(If you want to, you can use this episode as an exercise. Pause at the right moment and see what ideas you come up with, before resuming and hearing to my suggestions...)
At the heart of traditional management lies hierarchy. At the heart of self-management lies self-correction. This is a fundamental concept we need to wrap our heads around. If you don't understand how self-correcting systems work, you don't understand self-management.In this episode, I talk about the key ingredients for systems to be able to self-correct.
This is another tragic misunderstanding I see happening again and again. We so much resent the old, bureaucratic, life-sapping, top-down systems of control that we come to see control as a bad thing.Here is the predictable thing that then happens... people get rid of all the control mechanisms and say "from now on, we just operate on trust". And then things don't quite go as expected! Wait... what does that mean? Were we wrong to trust? Trust is absolutely essential, but not sufficient. We need to reframe the conversation. Control is not a bad thing. A system wants to be in control to be healthy! But not through the old top-down control mechanisms. But then... how?The answer, in one two words: self-correction! There is no self-management without self-correcting mechanisms that replace the old top-down control mechanisms
A clear sign that an organization's leadership hasn't yet fully embraced self-management is when it uses terms like "empowerment" and "servant leadership." In self-managing organizations, leaders don't need to "empower" their subordinates, thank you very much! Everyone has access is fully vested with power by the very design of the organization.And while in traditional workplaces, "servant leadership" is a wonderful thing, it feels awkwardly paternalistic in a self-managing organization.
I don't like the words "flat" or "horizontal" organizations. And I often hear people say "In self-management, everyone is equal". I think this is an important topic that deserves that we bring to it the kind of nuanced thinking that paradox allows. Here is a beautiful paradox: In self-management, everyone is intrinsically of equal human value, and yet we celebrate and value differences in roles and contributions! Another way of saying this: we get rid of dominator hierarchies, but welcome and celebrate natural hierarchies. Here is yet another way to say it: we don't want everyone to have the same power, but everyone to be fully powerful.
In the old model, all major decisions and initiatives came from the top. That must mean then in the new model, the top must hold back and let thing happen bottom up, right? I've had conversations with top leaders of several organizations who started doing this. They held back. Stopped making decisions, stopped leading. The result wasn't what they were hoping for. The organization seemed confused and lifeless. The problem with this way of looking at things is that we still reason in terms of "top" and "bottom". That's not self-management! I believe that when we need to start reasoning in terms of "specific" and "broad" roles. And then a whole new perspective opens up, where everyone can be fully powerful. Including the former "top" leaders.
Oh my, almost everyone falls for this one to some degree! Self-management is not the absence of structures, processes and rules. This is a pitfall that many organizations pay the price for, until they manage to correct it. When you deconstruct the old system, but don't build up new systems, you end up with a "blob", a situation where everyone is confused, no one quite knows what they can do and can't do, results often start to slide... Self-Management relies on structures, processes and rules just as much as traditional organizations. It's just that they ensure power-with rather than power-over. That they exist only when they are useful. And that everyone can change them, which makes them very fluid, organic, ever changing...
Almost everyone who is new to self-management has a sense that this is something, well... new, and therefore a quite mysterious, untested, and frankly risky.The truth is that some organizations have been self-managing for decades, withstanding severe recessions.It's still un uncommon practice, but not a risky one. And not a mysterious one. There are enough organizations out there that are doing self-managing really successfully for us to understand it's main practices really well.Just avoid falling for some of the common misunderstandings of what self-management is, and you'll be fine! (That's why there are 5 more episodes in the this mini-series about "Misconception about self-management". You're welcome :-))
A self-managed organization is so fundamentally different from a hierarchical organization that as soon as you talk about self-management, most people will have images come up that are very different from you mean.Boy, there are so many misconceptions around self-management! And for that reason, many organizations head off in a wrong direction at first. There is something you can do to avoid this: first, make sure you don't fall for any of the misconceptions.Then talk about what self-management is and is not over and over again. Consider this a major new role you'll have to play for a while: relentlessly address the misunderstandings around self-management.
I often get asked the question: for self-management to work, does everybody have to be "Teal"? The simple answer: no!Not everyone in your organization views the world through "Teal" lenses, but almost everyone can operate in a self-managing system. It helps if you know how to talk about self-management from all stages, and make it work for all stages.
Organizations where leaders started talking about self-management as a goal in itself, without sharing a deeper "why", still have scar tissue to show for it. Self-management is a concept, and few people get excited for their work place to embrace a concept. In this episode, I will invite you to clarify what could be the most powerful invitation you could make.Hints: link it to the deeper purpose of the organization, and to fundamental assumptions you hold about people and work.
How do you think about self-management? Most people view it simply as a better way to organize work.That's a perfectly legitimate way to hold it. In this episode, I offer two other perspectives: self-management as the only way I would ever want to organize work. And self-management as the most natural way to organize work.
I've noticed it can be reassuring to have, early on, a mock design session with a number of senior leaders to outline what the organization might look like in the future.Wait a minute: I no longer believe that you can and should re-design an organization on a white board with a few leaders locked up in a room. And yet I've found myself doing exactly that a few times.That's because the goal is not to design the future organizations. But to get a shared, reassuring sense that yes, this is not crazy, it actually looks possible. It is much easier to sail of to new adventures when you have a sense that there is firm land on the other side of the water.
As they consider a leap in their management system, a lot of companies want to visit organizations that are further ahead on the journey.That sounds reasonable, but experience seems to indicate that it's not a good idea. When people reach out to me to ask: who should we visit, I generally say "I'm sorry, I'm not sure it's a good idea that I help you with this."In the episode, I share what brought me to this understanding and I suggest what you could do instead. And why, when you are a year or more into the journey, the story changes and there might be now be very fruitful to visit other companies for inspiration.
Is it a good idea to start with some visible, symbolic actions? I'm not sure I resonate with the notion of "symbolic". I reframe the question differently: do you start with a big, meaty change right away?Or do you start with smaller changes that help the organization get ready for more? That's the route I've seen many organizations take. In the episode, I share some of the first, smaller actions they've taken that I found intriguing.
The traditional way to make change happen is to appoint a team that will think things through, get approval and then implement it.Organizations that make the leap to next-stage practices rely on invitation instead of appointment.There are obvious reasons to switch to invitation, but also a few pitfalls I will discuss. Spoiler alert: invite the volunteers who show up to use the advice process, which takes care of most of the pitfalls.
I've heard (and can easily believe) that making old and new assumptions explicit is perhaps the most powerful step you can take in the early stages of the journey. Invite colleagues to name the unspoken assumptions behind your current management practices. Most likely, people will be shocked by the ugliness of these assumptions, once they put them into words. Shocked... and relieved that they are finally named. And then you can invite people to evoke a new set of life-giving assumptions that will inspire and guide your transformation. I've come to see that a conversation about assumptions is like a conversation on values, but on steroids!
When is a good moment to go public with your vision, and how?It's a tricky question, because you want to invite the whole organization, but avoid a big "ta-da" announcement. To me, the answer might boil down to making a powerful, yet humble invitation.
In large organizations, engaging the whole organization right away might not be the most productive way to get the ball rolling. I've heard from a number of large organizations where the leader has started the journey by creating a group of first followers.In this episode I'll share the many benefits this approach seems to have, and some powerful ways to get such a group started and inspired to rock the boat.
Quite quickly, you are likely to find that many of the people closest to you, those in the top team, don't share your vision for a new management paradigm, and send contradictory signals down the organization. Here are some thoughts on how you can you engage the executive committee.
As a top leader you are "different", you play by different rules than most other people in your organization. This insulates you from others and makes you less powerful in the transformation.It is time to be a mortal again.
If you check in with your integrity, you'll probably notice there are lots of rituals of management that you can no longer condone.Lots of things that were barely visible suddenly stand out, ready to be changed. Using your integrity as a flashlight in that way can become a central part of the journey. Sure, there will be big inflection points, big changes you and your colleagues will have carefully thought through. But a big part of the journey also happens when you and others say "Enough! I no longer want to do (xxx) the old way."
Sometimes you need to build trust in your intentions before you start the journey (see previous episode). And perhaps you also need time to mature your understanding of the journey and your resolve for it. Here is a simple way to do it: walk around the shop floor and talk from your heart about your hopes and longings. Learn to speak your message and see how it resonates with others... and what it does to you to share it.
Several leaders I have met shared with me that, before they could start on this journey, they sensed they first needed to build more trust with their colleagues.It makes sense to me: many employees have learnt from past experience not to trust people at the top. And you are asking them to join in a journey that might not make sense to them, at least at first. They will join only if they really trust you.How can you build that trust?
Boards can make or break this transformation. How can the board play a supportive role? How do the roles of a board change?In this episode, I touch upon the topics of control beyond figures and reports, on appointing the CEO, creating spaces for conversations with top leaders and challenging established perspectives.
Traditional consulting methods are at odds with this kind of transformation.Is there a role for coaches, facilitators, or consultants nevertheless? And if yes, what is it?
Long word memos and PowerPoint slide decks feel so tired. They exhale a dreaded corporate smell.Could you engage colleagues in fresher, more authentic ways? What forms would that take? And beyond the format, how can the tone be different (spoiler alert: can you speak from the heart and the guts as well as the head?)In this episode, I'll also touch upon an interesting phenomenon I witnessed (interesting but unsurprising, come to think of it). Before they started on this journey, most organizations were communicating almost exclusively one-way. Now suddenly, two-way communications become central. In practice, how does that look like?
Boy, we take work and ourselves at work so seriously. What role could humor and lightness play in the transformation? And could you perhaps invite more humor and lightness into your own life?
I once attended a fascinating workshop where people from various organizations discussed the shadows they had experienced along the journey to 'Teal'. What are some of the typical shadows? And how come shadows show up in the first place?In this episode I'll share my perspective that the organizational journey that you are on comes with an invitation for you to ruthlessly see and accept reality as it is.
Here is a piece of advice I've heard consistently from leaders who've been on this journey: Some people resist your invitation to a new management paradigm. Focus you energy on the enthusiasts, not on people who resist. That advice makes sense to me. And I want to offer another perspective. Do engage the resisters, but not on a surface level, because that indeed tends not to lead anywhere. Explore the need behind their resistance, because there you might stumble upon a nugget that can help you and them in the transformation. Finally, I discuss another issue: what about people who are not resisting, but simply apathetic?
Some organizations experience, early on in the journey, pent-up frustration, conflict and resentment suddenly breaking out.It can be unexpected and disconcerting to experience... and it can be a valuable phase in building a healthier future.
In previous episodes, I shared how powerful it is to invite people to this whole new land of management not through abstract concepts or bullet points, but by talking about what call you there. By sharing what you no longer want and what you long for. In this episode I invite you to explore the other side of the change ahead, with two powerful questions: What is our identity that will not change? And where is the future already here? Leaders often focus so much on the future that they neglect to share with colleagues the foundations that will not change.
Several leaders I spoke with had this advice to share: don't turn this transformation into a program! Don't give this journey, or the new world you are aiming, for a name. Here is why...
In some organizations I've talked to, teams are purposefully left to struggle to define their new way of working. They often reinvent the wheel even though other teams have already cracked things. Isn't that cruel and awfully wasteful? Or is it perhaps a necessary part of unlearning and relearning? It's a profound question, that has serious implications for leaders, whose traditional role is to help avoid mistakes and waste wherever possible.
This is a tension you will almost certainly encounter. As you start reinventing your organization, teams will start experimenting with all sorts of new practices. Which is great... and can become confusing, when different teams all do things differently.This tension easily leads to two opposite pitfalls. I've seen some organizations who standardize things from the start or too early. They forego all the learning and the spirit of adventure and ownership that comes with experimenting. Other organizations fall for the opposite trap: they experiment seemingly forever and never want to standardize anything (standardizing is so old world!), which leads to much unnecessary pain and confusion. Bonus insight: some practices might never need to be standardized.
In the old "top-down" mode, there is this subtle level of fear that drives us to think things through completely and try to avoid any possible mistakes - which often means endless meetings before anything gets approved. Another habit we can unlearn.Instead, you can try and learn the habit of asking the questions "Good enough for now?" and "Safe enough to try?"
In larger organizations, where do you start? At the top? The bottom? A pilot in one area? One process across the entire organization? Or could you apply the cool hack that Jos de Blok devised for the competitors he is advising?
I get this question often: where do we start? I tend to respond with two questions of my own that can help you find the best answer for you.
"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like nails." Here I invite you to explore which kind of interventions you naturally gravitative towards, and which you tend to neglect.This might be a great exploration to do with other people who lead this transformation with you. And if your work with a coach or facilitator in this journey, it might be worthwhile to examine what their preference and blind spots are!
We've all inherited ways to think about change ... and it might be time for an upgrade! You can't plan this change in the way you might be used to.
Three ideas for how you can get support and energy to sustain you on the personal and organizational journey you are on. The loneliness at the top might finally be a thing of the past at some point down the road... but probably not quite yet.
A deeper look at one of the new roles of the "CEO" - what does "holding the space" mean during the transition?
This episode addresses one of the questions I see leaders struggle with most. Can I still make decisions? And if I do, how will this not contradict what this is all about? This transition seems to need forceful leadership, but how is that not old style top-down autocracy?For an answer to emerge, you need to start distinguishing between the various roles you hold.
We all have preferences and biases. For instance, do you have a bias for clarity/formalization or for ambiguity/emergence? It's helpful to know your preferences, to become more flexible and adapt to what's needed.
To help you show up in new ways, what words, concepts, and phrases do you no longer want to use? What new vocabulary could you invite?How we speak shapes our reality, so it's worthwhile looking at the vocabulary we use.
There are two ways to think about the journey ahead, as you start reinventing your organization: will it be a hard, challenging transformation? Or the adventure of a lifetime? It's worth shining light on the way you sit (perhaps unconsciously) with what's ahead.
There are two ways to think about where you are going with the reinvention of your organization: as a leading-edge and frankly challenging destination. Or as a much place where things become much simpler. How do you think about it?
You can avoid creating unnecessary stress and false expectations by being clear about how far you are willing to go and what, at least for now, is beyond your level of comfort or imagination.
There is a level of fearlessness that is required for the journey you are embarking on. But what does fearlessness really mean? What doesn't it mean?
This question can give you powerful clues and energy for the journey ahead. What hurts your integrity? What do you no longer want to do, participate in, or impose on other people?
This is perhaps the single-most important question I have for you: what is the real, deep drive that makes you want to reinvent your organization's management? It's spooky to what degree the clarity of your answer might influence the ease or difficulty of the transformation ahead.
If you think the journey ahead is only an organizational journey, think again! It might well be the personal adventure of a life time.