?? Employee Participation Prepares Teams for Self-Governance

File this under #businessresilience.

We’ve been exploring how Economic Engagement (EE) can help organizations achieve self-governance — the most advanced form of self-organization (see #302 through #311). We’ve covered four of EE’s five key aspects: Customer Engagement, Economic Understanding, Economic Transparency, and Economic Compensation (see #322 through #235). Now, let’s explore the fifth and final aspect: Employee Participation.

So, what exactly is Employee Participation, and how can it guide organizations toward self-governance?

Let’s start with a clear definition:

Employee Participation means actively engaging employees in decision-making processes and giving them a meaningful voice in matters that affect them. Unlike top-down management, it creates opportunities for employees to be heard. Through gradual and voluntary implementation, organizations help employees grow into this responsibility, preparing them for the accountability that self-governance requires.

Here are three practical ways to foster Employee Participation:

Application in Organizations

As usual, these ideas aren’t meant to be exhaustive, but they’re strong starting points to involve employees more deeply in decision-making.

• Tactical Decisions, Self-Management: This level focuses on how work is done. It empowers employees with the autonomy to choose the tools, processes, and methods they use to complete tasks. Many Agile teams experience this level of self-organization. For example, in Scrum, a team may be told what to work on by a Product Owner or stakeholders but can decide how to achieve it. Scrum provides a structure for self-management, making it an excellent introduction to autonomy and participation.
• Strategic Decisions, Self-Direction: This level involves deciding what to work on. Teams and individuals set their own goals and priorities, aligned with the organization’s broader strategy. At MAQE, for instance, we’ve been using OKRs since 2016. While OKRs are merely tools, they provide a framework for setting goals, aligning on success metrics, and continuously tracking progress. At MAQE, teams define their OKRs at the start of each 6-month period, giving them ownership over their direction.
• Systemic Decisions, Self-Governance: This level relates to shaping the systems that govern the work. At MAQE, we promote this through several practices. We hold OpenSpace events before each new operating period to gather input on tactics, strategy, and governance. We also use an Advice Process in Slack to propose new policies, ensuring everyone’s voice is heard. Once policies are approved, they’re added to the MAQE Operating System (mOS) for transparency and reference.

Conclusions

Employee Participation is the final, and arguably the most crucial, aspect of Economic Engagement. It plays a pivotal role in driving self-governance. Tools like Scrum, OKRs, OpenSpace, and the Advice Process provide the structure, but real change only happens when leadership commits to sharing decision-making authority and inviting employees to participate.

That’s all for this week. Until next time: Make it matter.

/Andreas

How can we build better organizations? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer for the past 10 years. Each week, I share some of what I’ve learned in a weekly newsletter called WorkMatters. Back issues are marinated for three months before being published to Linkedin. This article was originally published on Friday, Sep 20, 2024. Subscribe now and get the next issue delivered straight into your inbox. ??