Many times, I have experienced colleagues who could not get across fantastic, innovative ideas or problem solutions, or were not listened to, only because they were lower in the organizational hierarchy.
Or there was a culture of silence during team calls. Often, directions were given to the frontline without understanding what was really happening, just for the sake of being a leader, resulting in getting stuck in the circle of not moving forward with the project, plus having unhappy clients. (*How damaging for the business!)
Or getting necessary approval from a chain of leaders on easy and obvious tasks, just for the sake of it.
Risk of the ‘’Halo effect’’? – refers to the tendency to allow one specific trait or our overall impression of a person, company, or product to positively influence our judgment of their other related traits.
Can a company succeed without a hierarchy?
Picture a huge, complex organization where no one is in charge. Can’t see it? Well, look in the mirror. One example is that thing sitting on top of your shoulders called your head. The human brain has 85 billion nerve cells, with many thousands of interconnected processes happening simultaneously. Or think about our massively Networked Economy.
Highly complex systems like these have structures and coordinating mechanisms but are also highly adaptive and self-managing. Nobody is in charge. Of course, most organizations today are exactly the opposite. They run on century-old hierarchical management models designed for the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, where centralization, conformity, and obedience were critically important. It should be no surprise that these models are poorly suited to a world where complexity is epidemic, and innovation accelerates exponentially.
Holacracy? (Harvard Business Review)
Self-organization models typically share three characteristics:
• Teams are the structure. Within them, individual “roles” are collectively defined and assigned to accomplish the work.
• Teams design and govern themselves, while nested within a larger structure.
• Leadership is contextual. It’s distributed among roles, not individuals, and responsibilities shift according to fit and as the work changes.
Adopting self-management wholesale—using it to determine what should be done, who should do it, and how people will be rewarded across an entire enterprise—is hard, uncertain work, and the authors argue that in many environments it won’t pay off. But their research and experience also suggest that elements of self-organization can be valuable tools for companies of all kinds, and they look at circumstances where it makes more sense to blend the new approaches with traditional models. *The majority doesn’t rule—and not everyone has to agree with every idea that moves forward. In a holacracy, for example, any circle member can propose changes, and they are adopted unless another member objects on the grounds that they would harm the circle.
Harvard Business Review: What They’re Talking About When They Say...
A glossary of self-management terms, starting at the organization level and moving to the team and individual levels.
TEAL ORGANIZATION: A new kind of organization designed to enable “whole” individuals (not narrow professional selves) to self-organize and self-manage to achieve an organic organizational purpose (determined not through hierarchical planning but incrementally, responsively, and from the bottom up).
HOLACRACY: The most widely adopted system of self-management, developed in 2007 by Brian Robertson. Authority and decision making are distributed among fluid “circles” (defined below) throughout the organization, and governance is spelled out in a complex constitution.
PODULARITY: A system of self-management in which each basic unit, or “pod,” is treated as a microcosm of the whole business and acts on its behalf. Podularity has its roots in agile (defined below).
AGILE: A theory of management originating in software development. In an agile system of work, cross-functional, self-managed teams solve complex problems iteratively and adaptively—when possible, face-to-face—with rapid and flexible responses to changing customer needs.
CIRCLE: In a holacracy, a group of “roles” (defined below) working toward the same purpose; in essence, a team that forms or disbands as the organization’s needs change.
CABAL: At the video game developer Valve, a multidisciplinary project team that forms organically to work toward a major goal. “Voting with their feet,” employees create or join a cabal because they feel the work is important.
ROLE: In a holacracy circle, a set of responsibilities for a certain outcome or process. Roles can be created, revised, or destroyed; individuals usually have more than one, in multiple circles.
LEAD LINK: In a holacracy circle, the role responsible for assigning other roles and allocating resources. A lead link has some characteristics of a traditional manager but is subject to the circle’s governance process.
CLOU: “Colleague letter of understanding”—at the tomato-processing company Morning Star, an agreement crafted by each employee in consultation with relevant colleagues, outlining the employee’s roles along with detailed performance metrics.
Conclusion: Making decisions closer to the work."
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