Us versus them...
In my post "The self organised team" I wrote about the effects and awesomeness of being part of a self managed team, and how accountability is quickly established by handing over the reigns to those creating the change. Almost two years after that post... damn time flies, our team still retains a level of independence. I'd like to say we have completely changed the minds and practices of all the teams in the organisation but alas that is not the case. Thankfully I believe i have managed to pinpoint why, and what we need to do to move together as unit.
Lets get the obvious reasons out the way first, then I'll offer my two cents on how to jump over these hurdles :)
1. Change is scary as ...
Having another team try to dictate how you should work is often met with resistance and scepticism. People like coming up with their own master plan to take over the universe. Change or the idea of changing needs to bubble up from within each team and not be hammered down by others. Change wont happen if a team doesn't believe it needs to happen - a comfort zone is a difficult ship to step off of.
2. Organisational structures are broken ...
I had a meeting with someone from our HR department... sadly the person didn't have a clue who I was, it was a random catch-up meeting. I say sadly not because I think everyone should know Jose Pita (although that would be nice, I think) instead it was sad because it meant the Team who you'd expect to at least know the souls working for the organisation didn't have a clue who it was meeting with. At first this was annoying but while chatting to the HR person an idea sparked in the depths of my brain... The structure is all wrong!
When I look at our little dev team (8 developers) it's easy for us to tackle large problems because we simply break the problem up into smaller tasks usually these tasks take about a day to complete. These tasks range from coding some new component to arranging a new server to deploying stuff to new servers etc. the key is that each morning we touch base and see how each task that supposed to make up a greater task has progressed and if there were any issues (agile). Now zoom out a little and an interesting picture emerges. Each developer in our team is a full stack developer - any one of us can pretty much take on any task (UI, back-end, deployment ...) and each of us are capable of working independently as if we were our own team (very scale-able) or our own manager offering a service to the other members in our team. Communication flows naturally from one team member to another, there is no hierarchy blocking the flow of communication. Teams/ individuals with direct access to each other, muito importante. There is no "me versus them" or "us versus them", there is only a collective healthy "US" trying to achieve a goal
This got me thinking about what a completely flat organisation might look like, one where there is no gatekeepers blocking access to team resources / people. I'll get back to this...
Step back a bit...
One of the issues of being part of a self-organised team is getting the rest of the organisation specifically a disconnected HR department to recognize the role of individuals in a team. This in itself shouldn't be a problem but it is the nature of the beast. When it comes to things like remuneration it is the individual that is looked at not necessarily the team as a single unit. This was us shooting ourselves in the foot I guess. We essentially confused the hell out of HR, and put a substantial blur in their telescopes.
Let's flatten it...
Okay back to solutions mode. How do we kill two birds with one stone, clear up the blurred HR telescope and change the us versus them into us alone. Time to zoom out again, just like our tiny little dev team (tiny but we do massive things, our ROI is very impressive ;)) is able to split up and rejoin. an organisation should be able to split up its roles, ideally at a moments notice...but baby steps. What I mean is let people do what they are good at, and let them do it for everyone. Imagine stripping out the managers from all teams and placing them into a separate teams, lets call them "enablers", that can serve the needs of a few teams. This is by no means an elite cult that requires secret ceremonies and symbolic tattoos stamped on the members ass, nope this is just another unit or disc that is capable of removing the things stopping dev teams or other teams from achieving their goals.
This like the other units require members to be elected in. Managers tend to be people people while developers for example are not so much people people. We love to bury our heads into our code and come out for some air and coffee every now and then. The key is not to disconnect the team from the enablers but to give them unlimited access to all enablers... the people that have built up relationships with other teams over time and are able to get these other teams to assist other dev teams. For example, just like people run to IT guys (even dev guys) to fix a printer, teams around the organization should be able to run to the "Enabler" teams to get resources or remove hurdles etc.
Saying all devs are not people people is a bit of lie. Sometimes devs fall off the wagon and decide they would rather coordinate than create (that was a bit cheeky). At this point the creators can elect that such a person be moved into an enabler space, this isn't a promotion our demotion but rather recognition of a persons strengths or preference changing. The same should be allowed the other way around... enablers become creators.
The key here is to create groups of people moving together to achieve a common goal and not creating a structure of us vs them by placing certain groups further up a hierarchy. It's not difficult to imagine other units, I picture discs of people in my mind, mentioned discs before this is just another word for team, for example sales team, traders, accountants and dare I say a CEO team??... The main differences is the ability awarded to people to move in and out of the different units/ discs, and the access all other teams have to these specialized teams.
Recognizing excellence...
When it comes to the HR problem of recognizing the excellence of individuals, look no further than the enabler units or the units requesting work from other units, they will be able to judge performance. For example HR wants to decide how Jose did this year, firstly identify which units Jose was part of throughout the year (since he can move around), what those units did for what other units and simply find out if the required service or attention or work was produced. If the tasks fell under control of an entire unit that unit will decide how Jose did. This sets the seen for a performance formula... (more details to follow). Zoom out and a clear picture will be given of Jose's usefulness :) easy peasy... well sort of... the prerequisite to all of this would be to have a framework like agile or something similar to track changes (not micro manage). some Digital tools might also help. It is also essential to establish a "formula" that can be used to determine exactly where an employee stands with regards to remuneration. Bonuses and increases should not be a surprise, knowing exactly what you get for what you do is a simple way to hand back the motivation torch and place choice and control in the employees hands. For instance giving an entire company an increase of 20% sounds like a great idea except that lazy folk will remain lazy and productive folk may actually become less productive (e.g. similar to the observed effects of communism). To motivate people you need to give them control and what better way than to make remuneration and rewards completely transparent by giving employees a formula that will provide them sense of where they are heading at any point in the year. The challenge of course is determining the formula, challenging but not impossible.
And Boom people are recognized for what the contribute without quarterly reviews. Employees purpose becomes the organisations purpose, rank gets thrown out the window and the organisation moves as a unit and not as a bag of cats in bag clawing at each other trying to find a comfy spot:)
One problem remains how do you get people to change age old comfortable ways of working? The only way is by example, smaller teams need to be given the freedom to change. Change that motivates people is infectious others will follow :)
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