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Bye bye Elliott Jaques, it’s been fun but it’s time to part ways!

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What type of organisation do you see before you if I tell you that there is no top down strategy, no pre-defined roles, no budgets, no performance targets, full transparency and sharing of information (incl. financials), self-organising teams, fully decentralised decision-making, and where change management is a superfluous concept? Does a vision of some hippie commune, Kibbutz style co-operative emerge or perhaps a not-for profit charity type organisation?

What if I then say that it is not only a single organisation but a suite of very successful organisations ranging in size from around 100 employees to 10s of thousands of employees, across industries and in both the not for profit and for profit sector?

Perhaps you are asking yourself how you could run a large organisation without the foundations; a clear strategy, clear roles and accountabilities, levels of authority, defined performance targets cascaded down the organisation to measure how well strategy is executed, a well-developed project management framework with its associated budgets and Gantt charts, annual performance reviews and all the other practices we’ve been conditioned to believe are essential.

In his book “Reinventing Organizations”, Frederic Laloux has researched organisations that operate from level of consciousness that represent a significant shift. He categorises the practices of organisations using a spectrum of colours to represent the level of consciousness that shapes the organisational mindset.

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Plotting the successive stages of human and organisational consciousness on a timeline, the results tell a clear story; evolution seems to be accelerating, and accelerating ever faster. We have according to Laloux never been in time where so many people operated from some many different levels of consciousness at the same time. The same is true for organisations, Red, Amber, Orange, and Green Organisations are found working side by side in the same cultures and cities.

Graph 2

The difference between the organisations that Frederic Laloux has researched for this book and most other organisations today is not only stark but also incredibly exciting – not only is there is a better way, but there is plenty of evidence of its positive impact on people and its longevity.

Now here is the catch – you will only see the potential and the power of these practices if your adult development stage aligns with this worldview. As humans, we develop in stages, just as a caterpillar through sudden transformations becomes a butterfly, or a tadpole a frog. A key aspect of human development stages is that there is nothing inherently better or worst being at any level – it makes no sense saying that an adult is better than a toddler. However, depending on the task a certain stage may be a better fit. I have referred to adult development in previous posts, click here for link.

For anyone familiar with the Cynefin framework it quickly becomes evident that the practices that these organisations share are well suited for operating in complex environments. There is an incredible shared sense of purpose, which guides decision making on a day-to-day basis. There are also just a few clear and simple rules or principles that guide what is acceptable behaviour. This allows for initiatives to emerge and if there is merit in them, people will naturally support them and give them their energy. Because decision-making is so inclusive and closely tied to the organisational purpose, change does not have to be “managed” in the way we think about it in traditional organisations.

Below are some of the practices that are common and represent what Laloux refers to as Teal Organisations. If you read these and think – how crazy, could never work, maybe it is time to reflect on your view of people – are you a Theory X or a Theory Y supporter?

Each level of consciousness has brought with it some breakthroughs compared with the previous level. For Teal organisations these are; Self-management, Wholeness, and Evolutionary Purpose.

The following is quoted directly from a summary of the book by Ulrich Gerndt from Change Factory.

Self-management: operate effectively, even at a large scale, with a system based on peer relationships, without the need for either hierarchy or consensus.

Wholeness: practices that invite us to reclaim our inner wholeness and bring all of who we are to work, instead of with a narrow “professional” self / “masculine resolve” etc.

Evolutionary Purpose: organizations seen as having a life and a sense of direction of their own. Instead of trying to predict and control the future, members of the organization are invited to listen in and understand what the organization wants to become, what purpose it wants to serve.

Self Management Practices Wholeness Evolutionary Purpose
Self organizing teams Self-decorated warm spaces without status markers Organization seen as a living entity with its own evolutionary purpose
Coaches w/o P&L responsibility when needed Clear values translated into explicit ground rules, Strategy emerges organically from collective intelligence of self-managing employees
Almost no staff functions Ongoing values discussion Decision making by listening to organization‘s purpose (everyone, large group, meditations…)
Coordination and meetings ad hoc when needs arise Quiet room, meditation practices, team supervision, peer coaching Concept of competition irrelevant (embraced to pursue purpose)
Radically simplified project management, Storytelling practices to support self-disclosure and community building Growth and market share only important in as much they help achieve purpose
Minimum plans & budgets Absence of job titles and descriptions to allow selfhood to shape roles Profit as lagging indicator: will come naturally when doing the right thing
Fluid and granular roles Honest discussion about individual time commitments Inside out marketing: offer is defined by purpose
Decision making fully decentralized (advice process) Regular time devoted to address conflicts “Sense and respond“ planning/budgeting/controlling
Transparent real time information sharing incl. financials Specific meeting practices keep ego at check No or radically simplified budgets, no tracking of variance; no targets
Anybody can spend any amount of money provided advice process is respected Distributed initiatives taking “Change management“ no longer relevant as organization constantly adapts from within
Formal multi-step conflict resolution process Recruitment interviews by future colleagues, focus on fit with organization Suppliers chosen by fit with purpose
Focus on Team performance, peer-based process for individual appraisals Personal freedom for training, focus on culture-building Total transparency invites outsiders to make suggestions to better bring about purpose
Self-set salaries with peer calibration, no bonus, profit sharing Personal inquiry into one‘s learning journey and calling Conscious sensing of what mood would serve best
Caring support to turn dismissal into a learning opportunity

This book really shifted my thinking about organisations and leadership; maybe I read it at the right time in my life and/or at a juncture where my understanding of complexity was sufficient to enable this shift. Either way, it was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back with respect to my long-standing relationship with Elliott Jaques and structured hierarchy. The more I am learning about complexity the harder this relationship has become. Faced with evidence that disprove my current view – I now have to dismiss some of the concepts I have been working with and often promoted for a long time, or at least recognise their limitations in complex environments.

I had an exchange with Jurgen Appelo a few months ago where we debated the idea of levels of work in manager – subordinate relationships. Jurgen has for a long time argued that management is too important to leave to the managers, I now feel that I have a much better idea of where he is coming from.

I still maintain that people have different levels of capability and that a successful outcome is to some extent dependent on a good match between complexity and capability. However, this does not have to be formalised through a hierarchy with defined role vested authority and accountability, personally earned authority seems to suffice. Collectively we are smarter than any individual is and not many complex tasks are completed in isolation from everyone else in the organisation.

The sad part of the research findings that underpins the book (although not surprising) is that Frederic was not able to point to any examples of organisations shifting and sustaining Teal practices without the following two conditions:

  1. “Top leadership: The founder or top leader (let’s call him the CEO for lack of a better term), must have integrated a worldview and psychological development consistent with the Teal development level. Several examples show that it is helpful, but not necessary, to have a critical mass of leaders operating at that stage. .

  2. Ownership: Owners of the organisation must also understand and embrace Evolutionary Teal worldviews. Board members that “don’t get it,” experiences shows, can temporarily give a Teal leader free rein when their methods deliver outstanding results. But when the organisation hits a rough patch or faces a critical choice, owners will want to get things under control in the only way they know that makes sense to them – through top-down, hierarchical command and control mechanisms”

Reinventing Organizations – Frederic Laloux

All the adult development theories I have come across suggest that only a relatively small percentage of the adult population is at a post-conventional or in a later developmental stage akin to that of Teal Organisations. Possibly even fewer in leadership positions where they could affect any change. Most operate from a conventional stage and hence we have so many of the achievement driven organisations we see and potentially work in today.

So perhaps given that last paragraph I should not totally give up on all of the ideas and concepts from RO and Systems Leadership Theory, some may have a place in making orange and green organisations better in some ways even if they will not guide us into Teal territory.

Hopefully the pace of development truly is accelerating, as that is a prerequisite for more Teal organisations to emerge that more people get to the later stages of adult development. Even now we can start to see the how younger generations prefer to operate, it is in a similar fashion to what Gary Hamel, in his book “What Matters Now”,  notes are common practice on the web:

  • No one can kill a good idea
  • Everyone can pitch in
  • Anyone can lead
  • No one can dictate
  • You get to choose your cause
  • You can easily build on top of what others have done
  • You don’t have to put up with bullies and tyrants
  • Agitators don’t get marginalized
  • Excellence usually wins (and mediocrity doesn’t)
  • Passion-killing policies get reversed
  • Great contributions get recognized and celebrated

Interestingly though the language in the title of the book is very much from an Orange Achievement lens rather than a Teal one. Perhaps children growing up in today’s hyper connected, peer sharing world will be naturally drawn to organisations where Teal practices are in place? For my own son’s sanity I really hope he does not have to suffer through the same level of corporate BS that his parents have (and are still dealing with).

For a summary of the book visit www.reinventingorganizations.com or for a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk

understanding the work part 2

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understanding the work part 2

In my last post when I spoke about systems of work, I also made a point that many Managers don’t really understand the system of work that they are accountable for. In this post I want to dig a bit deeper into this topic.

As you move vertically through the management structure of an organisation the work being done is different (or at least it should be). It is important to understand what is different about the work at different levels of management and that it is not just more of the same or more difficult work technically.

Complexity

So what is it that is different, what do we look for to make this distinction? The answer is – (as it usually is…) it depends. It depends on the level of work, as it is both the focus of the work and the complexity of the work that should shift as you move vertically in the organisation. Gillian Stamp from BIOSS developed a helpful framework to distinguish the difference that makes a difference with respect to the work at different levels of management. The product of this thinking is the idea of Work Domains and it builds on Jaques’ idea of  “levels of work” and I think presents it in a better way. Stamp and Elliot did work together for some time at BIOSS so no surprise that they share this view.

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Three Tools of Leadership

Increasing complexity means you as a Manager need a broader set of tools to work with. At lower levels your own behaviour is your main tool to influence the team together with and understanding of team dynamics (i.e. team leadership). Understanding and being aware of how your interpersonal leadership style impacts performance and how your team work together is of course critical at all levels of leadership but a lower levels i.e. supervisor and/or first level team leader the authority and accountability for organisational systems are not there so as leader you can only influence these, not authorise changes to them.

There is a saying that I first came across when working with a global mining company many years ago that had a great impact on me. They used it in the context of safety issues but it is applicable in a broader context:

“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”

In other word, your actions or inaction as a leader when unproductive or undesirable behaviours occur within the team sets the tone for what is accepted.

However, as we move up through the hierarchy relying on your interpersonal skills alone is no longer sufficient because you will no longer be able to have a personal relationship with everyone in the organisation.

So what other tools might leaders in more senior positions require?

Systems Leadership suggests that there are three tools; systems, symbols, and behaviour, that successful managers understand and use.

So whilst, role modelling is critical for challenging unproductive behaviours, it is not enough for sustainable change. You also need to align the systems and symbols of the organisation.  Having said that, if you as a leader cannot be bothered to actually live and behave in way that is consistent with what you want staff to do you might as well throw your change initiative in the bin straight away.

When I said earlier that many managers do not understand the system of work they work in or are accountable for this is exactly what I mean. There is lack of understanding of how the system is shaping and driving the behaviour of the people and overall performance. Without a theory for understanding this, changing it becomes a terribly difficult task.

The desire is of course for the authorised systems to be productive. Often they are either not as productive as they could be or they are productive despite of the manifest design. In other words the extant (or real) system is different from the official authorised system, usually became staff develop unauthorised “workarounds” to produce good customer outcomes.

Systems_Matrix_2

For senior executives it is essential to understand how systems work so that they can design appropriate organisations systems to deliver on the purpose of the organisation. Designing the organisation is the role of senior management; a role that I often see being delegated way down in the HR function to someone with no real authority, often lack the capability to do this level of work, and often with no real understanding of organisational design theories or organisational systems.

A helpful theory for understanding the critical functions in an organisation and the relationships between them is Stafford Beer’s work in Management Cybernetics – The Viable System Model. In a previous post there is a video by Javier Livas explaining the Universal Management System, which is the VSM in less complex language. If you want to watch an in-depth video of the VSM by Javier, you can email him to request access details from his YouTube account. I thoroughly recommend doing so it you can find the time to view the full 2 hour video.

In short, the VSM views an organisation as a system that requires five key functions to remain viable (i.e. maintain its existence). The five systems are recursive (or nested in each other like a Russian doll) so every system one is in turn made up by the five key functions:

System 1 – Operations

System 2 – Coordination

System 3 – Management

System 3* – Audit & Monitoring

System 4 – Development

System 5 – Policy

I will not go on in detail about the VSM as many other better writers and thinkers have done a great job of this already, Beer alone wrote at many books on the topic: The Brain of the Firm, The Heart of Enterprise, Diagnosing the System of Organisation to name a few.

I have found the VSM to be an outstanding theory to work with when diagnosing organisations. It provides immense value and insights and I can discuss the insights with clients without getting into the underlying theory in too much detail. The beauty of the VSM in my view is the recursive nature of the model, which means it is applicable for systems at any levels and Managers across an organisation, can all get value from it. It does require some investment in time to get your head around but it is well worth the investment.

Another “theory” I am a big fan of is the Vanguard Method. Its use in service organisations and it has greatly influenced my thinking and my work. Like any method it is not all-encompassing and I have found the mix of The Vanguard Method, Systems Leadership and The Viable System Model to be very powerful and insightful across multiple levels of organisational complexity.

In a service organisation, one of the quickest ways to make value creating more difficult, is to functionalise the work. This is just one of the many issues that emerge when applying tools and ideas that were designed to solve manufacturing issues in a service or knowledge environment. Functionalization of work is based on the assumption that someone with specialist skills will perform a task faster and to a higher quality. Whilst this seems to make sense it fails to account for the flow of the work and is based on Tayloristic view of the workplace.

If you read up on articles or books by John Seddon you will find that he keeps banging on about the damage from the “economies of scale” mentality that permeates most organisations. His point is that they should shift to understanding demand and design the flow of work accordingly. Seddon is trying to shift ingrained mental models of how organisations operate many of which came about due to Taylor’s theory becoming the mainstream one and the ideas of others such as Mary Parker Follett, were less successful at the time. Only now after the failings of the mechanistic view of organisations are we starting to embrace her ideas employee engagement and power with rather than power over. This is not to say that Taylor’s ideas were useless, they did help the industrialisation of the world. We can only guess how different the world of work might have been if Follett’s more humanistic ideas had been the dominant ones.

In the spirit of economies of scale we tend to measure activity (because being busy and high utilisation of our time is important…seemingly regardless of what we are doing) instead of measuring how well we deliver on what matter to the customer, treat all demand the same. John Seddon made life a bit easier by coining the term “failure demand” as he gave word and enhanced meaning to something I had come across many times but just treated as COPQ (cost of poor quality or rework). Its significance as leverage for improvement quickly became evident through Seddon’s work. For me earliest time I can remember identifying this was at a when doing some work to understand the complaints process in a public housing organisation where we came across an unreasonable amount of plumbing issues in relation to the amount of properties owned by the organisation. The practice was to just log the complaints about poor work, no shows and rescheduled visits as new jobs. This hid away the true volume of value work amongst all of the failure demand – i.e. demand created by a failure of doing the right thing for the customer the first time or failing to do it at all.

What Vanguard does really well is providing a method “Check –Plan – Do” for understanding the flow of the primary activities (System 1 in VSM language) at the level of recursion where the customer interaction occurs. For me the gap with the Vanguard method relates to how to embed constructive leadership behaviours and models to support a new way of thinking (and subsequently a new way of working) such as the decision making model and the task assignment model I outlined in a previous post. At higher levels in the organisations the work is more focussed on how all the other systems across multiple recursions are meant to work together to support value creation for customers.

Usually the feedback systems are in terms of hard numbers such as “productivity measures” or process output measures. More often than not, they are looking at the wrong things and provide little if any understanding of the system of work. Activity measures are in place to measure performance with a complete disregard for the inherent variety in demand that comes in and failure demand is treated as value demand.

Understanding demand, understanding variation, understanding the connections and feedback loops in “your” level of recursion (as part of the VSM), understanding the systems, symbols and behaviours that reinforce or contradict the desired culture are all important aspects for Managers to consider when they grapple with the difficult task of “understanding the work”.

It is not easy, it is a complex task but with some good theories and models it becomes less challenging.

a model for participatory decision making

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Decision Making

Let us start with a strong and perhaps bold assertion, based on Richard Barber’s tremendous work on systemic risk management.

“The greatest risk to an organisation is the quality of its decision-making!” 

The standard risk management approach assumes ALL risks can be identified, placed in a matrix, be allocated a pretty colour and by some magical process risks are “managed”.  How many organisations have risk matrices or risk registers where the quality of decision-making is mentioned? I would think only a few. There are a few that I know of, but only because they have worked with Richard and have been made aware of how narrow their view of risk has been.

If the quality of decision-making is the organisations greatest risk, then it is by default the greatest point of leverage for success. So how can an organisation support its leaders in making better decisions? Well for starters, a helpful decision making model will certainly go a long way.

Depending on the domain you are operating in (using the Cynefin framework as reference) there might be multiple plans or approaches  (A, B, or C) that are equally as good. It is the role of the leader to make the decision on which plan to proceed with. I have deliberately used the work leader here, as the Manager might not be the one leading the task. How that plan is developed with the contribution of the team is explained in the decision making model below.

Before I get to the model some assumptions about participative decision-making must be made explicit.  The model is based on the idea that better decisions are made when:

  • We assume that everyone on the team (and others) can add unique insights to the situation.
  • Challenging our assumptions can lead to unique and powerful outcomes and is therefore a valuable contribution.
  • Spending time and effort into really understanding the nature of the problem is critical.
  • Options, ideas and critical issues are explored openly as part of the process.
  • Good use is made of both analysis and intuition.
  • The leader is clear about the final decision and their accountability for it.

SETED  – A participative leadership decision-making model

  • Share Context and Purpose
  • Explore Critical Issues
  • Test Mental Models and Assumptions
  • Explore Options
  • Decide on Option

Share Context and Purpose

Context aims at setting the scene and provide clarity about what brought about the task, linkages to other tasks, and anything that could in any substantive way influence what we are trying to achieve. Depending on the size of the task at hand the context could vary in length and detail. Sometimes there is already shared understanding of the context but it is a good habit to always check this by assuming it is not.

The purpose is the reason for the work – not the work itself. It clarifies why we are we doing this and what do we hope to achieve by doing so?

Effective leadership behaviours at this stage include:

  • Taking the time to brief others properly.
  • Inviting questions and alternate views about the context.  Listening and reflecting.
  • Using dialogue to make sure the purpose makes sense to everyone, in the same way.
  • Avoiding setting filters or limiting exploration.
  • Making sure context and purpose are well understood before moving on to the next stage.

Explore Critical Issues

Critical issues are also known as showstoppers or challenges that unless resolved threatens the purpose.  They are different from constraints, as constraints are already known.  Critical issues are not certain and need be identified so that you can develop actions to address them – contingency planning.

A good way to frame Critical issues is to use the language of “What if…” and “How to…” The reason for this is to depersonalise the issue raised and to objectively analyse it. It is really good practice to develop the skills to identify critical issues as it can push the thinking to a higher level.  It may take a few iterations before you reach clarity of an issue.

Identifying and understanding critical issues a step that differentiates this particular model from many others. It is also the most difficult step to do well.  Part of the problem is that people want to move quickly to solution (ready-fire-aim) and become frustrated when asked to continue exploring critical issues.

This jump to action mentality is often very destructive and can create unintended consequences that due to the delay (see fixes that fail system archetype) are not connected and the hero fire-fighter can come save the day and get promoted even though they might have caused it. Unfortunately for the careful planner, diligent in planning for critical issues and with few or no fires, the reward is little, or no recognition.

Effective leadership at this stage behaviours include:

  • Staying in the “critical issues” stage until certain that there are no more to identify (at this point in time). Remaining disciplined, strong – avoid moving to solution too early.
  • Exploring views, inviting different thinking, challenging assumptions.  Listening, reflecting.
  • Seeking analysis, maverick views, and independent opinions – anything that might open new possibilities.
  • Matching the effort to the complexity and value of the challenge.
  • Ensure that critical issues and associated ideas are documented.

Test Mental Models and Assumptions

Mental models are “rules” we unconsciously apply to make it easy to make rapid decisions in familiar situations.

Assumptions are beliefs we apply without testing.

Effective leadership behaviours at this stage include:

  • Accepting that everyone has limiting mental models and make untested assumptions.
  • Valuing and exploring the perceptions and ideas of others even when they seem to be a ‘misfit’ to what we believe is possible.
  • Explicitly acknowledging and discussing assumptions and mental models and use conversation to try to generate new insights.
  • Reviewing the impact of identified assumptions on critical issues, context and purpose.
  • Actively listening to what everyone is saying and encouraging different views.

Michael Stange, a fellow Sydney Lean Coffee member  mentioned how he had his team view their assumptions from a different perspective. They had all written down the things they took for granted for a specific project. They were then asked to negate all those assumptions to see if that brought about any new critical issues. This could be a simple yet powerful method to get the ball rolling.

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Image courtesy of Gaping Void

There is a possibility that this stage can identify that you are trying to address the wrong issue. This is of course a very powerful insight but often this stage is not even in the back of minds of people.

Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is another process used to generate deeper insights and better decisions.

  

Explore Options

By Options here I refer to the possible approaches or parts of approaches to dealing with the critical issues and the activities that need to be completed to deliver on the task.

Effective leadership behaviours at this stage include:

  • Getting organised to capture ideas, possibilities, and options
  • Listening to and exploring ideas
  • Probing the views, concerns and ideas of all stakeholders
  • Building an overall approach, strategy or theme and testing it with others
  • Critical review, testing and challenging even of obvious options
  • Continually bringing people back to solving the critical issues
  • Reflecting on and adapting the purpose and critical issues, as new insights come to light

 

Decide on Option

With multiple options or pathways available someone has to make a decision on which option to proceed with. Obviously my view is that the person accountable makes this call and in doing so accepts to be held to account for judgments and behaviours exercised when delivering on the task.

The decision making model is a tool that both leader and team member can refer back to if either is concerned the team is getting off track. Furthermore, not all decisions require participation and input from the team. The leader has to exercise judgement depending on the specific circumstances surrounding the decision.

Before I move on to a Task Assignment model, let me be very clear. The model above does not assume that the leader or Manager makes ALL decisions, far from it in fact, what is can do is support a social process of decision making. It is aligned with a view of organisations that believes that decisions in general should be made at the lowest possible level.

The decision making model is linked to the Task Assignment model as the options or plan will contain tasks that need to be clarified and assigned. When a task has been assigned (and accepted) a decision has to be made on how to deliver on the task.

DM_TA

Systems Leadership Theory consider this the work, i.e. working out the how and work is subsequently defined as “turning intention into reality”.

As this post ended up being longer than anticipated, I will continue with the Task Assignment Model and work as a social process in the next post.

managerial leadership part 2

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Managers work of role

Systems Leadership Theory defines the role of a Manager as:

“A person in a role who is accountable for their own work, and the work performance of others over time.”

I think the purpose can be shortened a bit and this statement might be controversial, but if you are in a managerial role then in simple terms, your role is there to:

“Maximise performance to purpose.”

Before the systems thinkers out there start jumping up and down saying,

“What about sub-optimisation?” just hold on to your hats and please read on.

Taking a systems view of work and of organisations means you must understand not only your system of work, you must at a minimum understand the purpose of the system “above” (the system that your area is a sub-system of) because that system provides the context for your system’s existence. This means that clarity of purpose is critical, in fact so critical you will see a recurring theme in many of the models clarifying context and purpose.

This could mean that from the perspective of any single unit or division, it may not operate at maximum capacity as performance has to be viewed in the context of the broader system and sub-optimisation is a big no-no. I will get to this topic when I discuss the “understanding the work” element.

Value adding

An important aspect of a well-functioning organisation is the value-adding function of the different roles. Systems Leadership Theory identifies three main types of managerial roles – Operational, Support, and Service. I think it was John Seddon from Vanguard who said that there are only three roles in an organisation: one that creates value directly to the customer, one that enables that value creation to occur, and one that improves how they both occur. If you are not creating value, enabling it or improving it, then what are you doing?

These two ways of articulating types of work focus on the individual rather than the organisation.  To create clarity of the broader focus of a role using different work domains as outlined in Luc Hoebeke’s – Making Work Systems Better is quite helpful for identifying the general theme of the work context. The work domains are  – Value adding for the present – Value adding for the future – Value Systems (value adding for humanity).

There are additional functions required for a viable system from a management cybernetics perspective but we’ll get to that when discussing organisations as systems later on.

Master – apprentice

In many organisations the individual with the most experience or best technical skills gets promoted to a managerial role. We can see it in health care where the best surgeon becomes the administrator; in accounting firms and law firms it is almost standard practice to task senior partners with running the organisation, even though their skills in this area might be very limited.

Often the remuneration system is the culprit as the only way to reward individuals is by increasing the number of people reporting to them and by moving them higher up in the organisation. Even though this means doing less of the technical work they are highly skilled in (and often enjoy more than the additional administrative work). They would probably add more value being in a specialist role focusing on their technical skill and perhaps developing the skills of others.

The e-myth is a great book discussing the idea that just because you are technically good at something does not mean you are good at running a business that provides that technical skill.

For some types of organisations, roles, skills this practice still serves a valuable purpose – to pass on the technical skills that you will only master through experience. So this is not to say that the practice is out-dated, just questioning its usefulness when it comes to appointing Managers based on technical skills or seniority. In fact praxis (theory informed practice) is invaluable even for knowledge workers as a great way to develop true understanding and capability.

In today’s environment with a large proportion of organisations filled with knowledge workers the Manger is unlikely to have higher level of technical skills than the person reporting to them.

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, it has been estimated that 95 % of workers could not do their job as well as their immediate boss. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is estimated that this statistic has pretty much reversed, so that 95% of workers can do their job better than their boss.” – The Fractal Organization

So if you are technically more competent than I am in your area, then how do I add value to your work?  I think it is funny how some people have a view that their Manager ought to know more about the technical side of the work than the people working for them. The view does not stack up logically as the CEO by that logic must be the master of everything in the organisation.

This is exactly why we have organisations – because there is too much for any one person to do we need more people with a wide range of skills and capabilities. The question is how to get the best out of all those diverse skills and capabilities.

Levels of work

In many organisations the organisational chart is used to describe the organisation, even though its use for that purpose is desperately limited. I don’t think the organisational chart was ever intended to explain how the work flows, it is just one way of outlining reporting relationships and possibly a helpful way of knowing who’s who in the Zoo.

The organisational chart can easily be used to manipulate the system of organisation into power plays based on role vested authority and drive all sorts of unproductive behaviours but it does not have to be that way.  I think the traditional organisational chart has to be used in conjunction with some other ways of understanding the organisation.

Before I continue to how Managers add value I want to make a short comment on role-vested authority. As a Manager it is critical that you understand that leadership is not something that comes with a role, it is expected, but you have to earn the right to lead people and without personally earned authority you will never be successful as a leader.

According to Elliot Jaques there is natural hierarchy of capability that should be replicated in the managerial hierarchy of organisations for best performance – hence the name, Requisite Organisation. I have in an earlier post linked to a good paper that goes into Levels of Work in greater detail.  It might be worth pointing out that a theory of discontinuous distribution of capability should not be interpreted as elitist in any way. There is nothing inherently better or worst being at any stage of adult development or having higher or lower mental processing ability – it is just a question of best match for the challenge an individual is to undertake.

If the organisation does not have a requisite structure there will potentially be some recurring issues. When there are too many layers in organisations, clarity between roles can become difficult and it will often lead to micro managing.

Micromanaging is often seen as a personality issue with control-freaks but as Patrick Hoverstadt points out in his book “The Fractal Organization” it is more likely the design of the system that is driving “normal” people to behave in this way.

The solution to the Control Dilemma is to design and implement a better system of monitoring which might mean better measures for understanding system performance, improved role clarity, and better task assignments.

When working with organisations and trying work out where there might be too many levels some a quick insight is gained by asking the question: who is your real boss?

The answer people give, usually refers to the person that they feel add real value to their role rather than who is on the official organisational chart. More often than not this will be an individual with a higher level of capability.

Slide2

The value managers provide is providing clarity about roles and operating context, and most importantly by removing barriers that stand in the way of better ways of doing the work.

There are three fundamental questions about work that all employees need answered and your job as a Manager is to ensure that your staff have answers to them:

1.    What is expected of me in my role?

2.    How am I performing in this role?

3.    What does my future look like (in this organisations)?

Dave Snowden from Cognitive Edge suggests that continuous removal of small barriers is good ways for leaders to earn the authority to lead. Snowden makes the point that this practice will lead to positive stories which will get a life of their own and spreads across the organisation (The Use of Narrative), a far superior way of influencing culture compared with just talking about change. This is very aligned with what Systems Leadership Theory calls mythologies – stories that represent positive or negative value of organisational behaviour. Understanding what the current mythologies are is extremely important for change initiative. I’ll cover mythologies in greater detail in an upcoming post.

Alternatives to hierarchy

Even though I am discussing how to make organisations with a hierarchical structure a better place to work, I am also exploring alternative ways of structuring an organisation. I am deeply fascinated by the concepts of Sociacracy and Holacracy as alternative ways to structure and run organisations. Both concepts have strong links to Management Cybernetics, which is another theory that I work with.

I do, however, have some deeply held mental models around levels of mental processing ability and stages of adult development that neither alternative seems to discuss.

The only references to adult development I’ve come across to date is paper on Holacracy that mentioned a common misunderstanding was to assume that a higher circle required later stages of adult development. The reason Holacracy rejects this was the potential for is to lead to abuse of power. The problem with that assertion is that later stages of adult development are characterised by low ego and highly developed sense of community and social fairness, not quite the characteristics of people who are power-hungry.

For more on adult development theories please have a look at David Rooke and Bill Torbert’s Leadership Development Framework supported by Susanne Cook-Greuter’s article “Making the case for a developmental perspective” or Robert Kegan’s Constructive-Developmental Theory used by Jennifer Garvey-Berger in her great book “Changing on the job”

In the next post I intend to discuss work as a social process, I will outline a model for participative decision-making and a model for task assignment that helps provide clarity around expectations and limits of discretion.