What's all this about self managing organizational structures….

You might be reading this (or contemplating reading it) and wondering what all the fuss is around the whole idea of self managing organizational structures, holocracy, sociocracy or teal based workplaces etc etc….

And I wouldn’t blame you.

I've been in and around this space for almost 10 years now (as well as the organizational design and leadership development space for 25 years) and I've witnessed many 'practitioners', 'gurus' (insert your own term here) all jump on the 'self managed organizational structure bandwagon' in one way or another.

Each well intentioned practitioner has their own unique spin on what really amounts to a different way of designing, developing and operating our organizational model for the future.

Thank you Frederic

A key architect behind the rise of this movement is Frederic Laloux, whose seminal work Reinventing Organizations (link here - https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/) has undoubtedly been a significant undertaking and continues to play a prominent role in how and why organizations and leaders are increasingly talking about this subject.

One of the things I admire about Frederic is the level of humility and awkwardness he displays at being labelled a 'game changer' or any one of the other labels attached to him.

I'm not here to write about this even further or to put Frederic on a 'pedestal' for his work. If you want some more information on this, here's an insightful and easy to follow video I posted a while ago by Timm Urschinger:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/paulmccarthy73_lean-and-agile-adoption-with-the-laloux-culture-activity-6723760440264019968-PoTp

This from Srinath Ramakrishnan is also useful if you want to understand how to build a self managed team within your organization: Building Self Managed Teams

The point of this article

I want to pick up on a key theme underpinning the work of Reinventing Organizations and all the other 'flavors' of self managed, teal based practitioners that I've come into contact with over the years.

And that theme was brilliantly articulated in a podcast between Lisa Gill and Frederic that I heard a few months ago - here's a link to it in case you fancy listening to it:

https://tuffleadershiptraining.libsyn.com/ep-55-frederic-laloux-on-reinventing-organisations-and-juicy-questions

"The need to create the conditions for a different type of dialogue and for our world views to be challenged".

This.

This resonates with me because it is fundamentally lacking from almost every leader or leadership team I have interacted with throughout my career. Don’t get me wrong – many leaders or leadership teams ‘talk a good game’, though very rarely do they ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to this sentiment.

As an aside, there are also many other stellar takeaways from this podcast (kudos Lisa) and I'd encourage you to listen to it.

The work we are doing at FIRED Leadership is almost exclusively focused on creating the conditions for organizations and leaders to have honest based and open dialogue about the current state of leadership (including the leadership identification, recruitment, onboarding and development processes). We are re framing the narrative and in pursuit of our mission are regenerating the future of leadership.

And in order to do this, it starts with exactly what Frederic mentioned above.

This then got me thinking about the relevance of this podcast (and the above message) to leaders, decision makers and those ‘at the top of the tree’ so to speak within organizations.

I've reflected on what Frederic said in the podcast and re framed some of the 'nuggets' that jumped out for me into questions that I'd like to ask if you're a leader inside an organization and grappling with how your organization looks in a post Covid-19 world.

My invitation to you is to reflect on these as you think through how to make sure your organization and leaders are ready for the future:

1. Why are we afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions and have the uncomfortable discussions that we need to as leaders within our organization?
2. Why are we scared of acting fully with integrity if that means we may be ejected by the overarching system?
3. Are we ready for the future of work and the role we will play in it? Are we waiting for 'social permission'?
4. What are we as individuals within the ‘system’ prepared to say 'I'm no longer OK with'?
5. What will we do to create the conditions for a different type of dialogue?

I was pleasantly surprised at hearing Frederic acknowledge that we don’t have the answers to these concepts that I’ve turned into the big questions above.

We do, however, need to be open to and curious about how to find them. Together.

I also don’t want to sugar-coat the level of difficulty there is in shifting our thinking on these topics. One can pay a high price (believe me, I know) for asking the big questions that will eventually evolve our ways of working, of leading, of showing up.

 So how can we create the conditions for a different type of dialogue

 Again, I've reflected on what I heard from the podcast and outline below two simple, yet immediately applicable, practical and impactful things we can do right now to create the conditions for a different type of dialogue.

1. Real Conversations

Let’s drop the egos and have real conversations that matter. We know it will be hard to do at first because few of us are used to truly being real in our workplace, though if we are open to having real conversations that's a start. It's also a great step forward to acknowledge that our current system is flawed because up until now, few 'public' conversations have been held about this.

2. Just do it

Frederic advises us to 'go out and do it', meaning quite literally to go out and address the stuff that bothers you. Our level of seeking permission is so ingrained in how we work within organizations that we seem to always be waiting for someone to give us permission to try something different. In the organization of the future (and in how we lead in the future), we won't need such permission, so get ready and take your permission now.

Remember when smoking was cool

I loved how Frederic used the metaphor of smoking to illustrate how social norms and narrative can be evolved. In recent years, smoking has become almost a taboo activity, having been banned in many public spaces, including restaurants and bars.

But it wasn't always like that.

Smoking was once widely accepted in public and indeed, those who spoke out against it were seen as different (dissenting, challengers of the status quo, rebels). 

In order for this shift to happen, a tipping point of our social norms was needed. And once that tipping point was reached, our global narrative about the topic of smoking began to change.

Just as the global narrative is beginning to evolve about self managed organizational structures and the future of leadership,

I’m also intrigued by how we will need to discuss the types of leaders we'll need within these increasingly popular organizational environments.

What will the qualities be that leaders will need to thrive in these environments and how will our leadership identification, recruitment, onboarding and development processes need to adapt in order to keep up?

Final words

If, having read this article, you’re still OK with the inefficiencies of the status quo, be aware that future leaders will not be. Do you want to evolve your organization based on what Frederic refers to as a shared 'evolutionary purpose'?

If you want your organization to attract and retain future leaders who are aligned with this purpose, then decide right now to do something about it.

Start small if you need to.

Encourage leaders to generate their own experiments about how they want to lead. This is key to the work we do at FIRED Leadership and is reflected through our FIRED Leader Labs as well as our 'name what you see' moments that leadership teams embody.

Ask yourself, what might be a better playbook for the way you structure your organization and approach to future leadership identification, recruitment, onboarding and development. What are you no longer OK with as a leader inside your organization and what are you prepared to do about that?