Dave Snowden and friends - Organizational Design - Part 5

00:52:12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5a4SU34Rk4

Resumo

TLDRIn this session, the focus is on the complexities of organizational design, particularly adaptive capacity—an organization's ability to adjust and respond effectively to changes while maintaining operational stability. The speakers discuss the importance of informal networks in fostering communication and adaptation by allowing knowledge to flow freely across different parts of the organization. They emphasize the need for good conflict management as a means to stimulate innovation and problem-solving. The challenges of matrix organization structures are highlighted, noting how they can complicate decision-making through multiple lines of authority. The pitfalls of traditional maturity models in agile transformations are also discussed, as they often impose rigid frameworks that do not fit the adaptive nature of agile practices. Moreover, the session touches on the issues faced in knowledge management, due to a misunderstanding of knowledge as a fixable asset rather than a network of dynamic capabilities. The session concludes by discussing practical strategies for leaders to manage large-scale organizational changes, emphasizing coordination, enabling communication through informal networks, and focusing on maintaining 'messy coherence'—balancing the inherent messiness of change with coherence to sustain the organization's structure.

Conclusões

  • 🛠 Adaptive capacity is like a budget for adjustments.
  • 🌐 Informal networks enhance communication and knowledge flow.
  • 🤝 Conflict fosters innovation and problem-solving.
  • 📊 Matrix structures complicate decision-making authority.
  • ❌ Traditional maturity models may hinder agile transformations.
  • 📚 Knowledge management is about dynamic learning, not storage.
  • 💡 Economic terms can explain adaptive capacity's value.
  • 🔄 Frequent reorganizations can indicate strategic failure.
  • 🌪 'Messy coherence' balances flexibility and stability.
  • 🗣 Leaders should coordinate, allowing teams to self-organize.

Linha do tempo

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    In the opening session, participants reflect on the previous conversation on organizational design, specifically focusing on the concepts of adaptive capacity and potential pitfalls. The idea of adaptive capacity is introduced as a sort of 'budget' that organizations have, which can grow or shrink similar to social capital, and essential for managing organizational stability and flexibility.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:00

    The discussion expands on the adaptive capacity concept, highlighting the role of trust and human involvement as critical components. It emphasizes the importance of moving away from the notion of organizational stability towards understanding that organizations are constantly in flux and dealing with ongoing failures, with humans being the key to keeping the systems operational.

  • 00:10:00 - 00:15:00

    The conversation shifts to practical strategies for managing adaptive capacity, such as avoiding monocultural thinking, ensuring common ground for scanning widely, and reducing toil as seen in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). These strategies help maintain and boost adaptive capacity, crucial for successfully navigating unforeseen challenges like COVID.

  • 00:15:00 - 00:20:00

    The group debates the notion of capital within organizations, distinguishing between monetary and non-monetary capital such as human, knowledge, and social capital. They argue that adaptive capacity and social capital do not necessarily correlate with wealth, but rather with how well organizations invest in and manage human networks and relationships.

  • 00:20:00 - 00:25:00

    Attention turns towards the implications of connectivity and resilience in system design. The concept of having a loosely connected system that can flexibly adjust is discussed, alongside the risks of tight connections leading to failure under stress. The significance of systems being adaptively both loose and tight at times is underscored.

  • 00:25:00 - 00:30:00

    The session explores social network stimulation versus social network analysis, advocating for more organic community development. The importance of informal networks is reiterated, positioned against the failures of forced organizational structures. The idea that informal networks are essential for knowledge flow and resilience is highlighted.

  • 00:30:00 - 00:35:00

    As the conversation delves into practical advice for organizational design, it's suggested that fostering heterogeneous teams and minimizing hierarchical constraints can nurture informal network growth. The focus is on enabling environments where informal yet structured networks can naturally form and evolve.

  • 00:35:00 - 00:40:00

    Debate arises around the role of matrix organizations and how they often lead to confusion and conflict. The concept is criticized for perpetuating inefficiencies and becoming symbolic of bureaucratic difficulty, rather than facilitating effective organizational design or adaptability.

  • 00:40:00 - 00:45:00

    Further discussion touches on the challenges of implementing agile methodologies, where structures fail to adapt to new ways of thinking. The dialogue emphasizes the importance of allowing functional leadership to evolve organically rather than imposing rigid frameworks like matrix models or community practices.

  • 00:45:00 - 00:52:12

    The session concludes with reflections on organizational transformation and maturity models. Recognition is given to the challenges of measuring success in transformations and the pitfalls of using maturity models for assessment. The importance of having systems and methods that are purposefully messy but coherent, allowing for flexibility and adaptation, is emphasized.

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Vídeo de perguntas e respostas

  • What is adaptive capacity in organizational design?

    Adaptive capacity refers to an organization's ability to adjust and respond to changes or challenges while maintaining stability.

  • How can informal networks benefit organizations?

    Informal networks can enhance communication, facilitate knowledge sharing, and increase adaptive capacity by allowing information to flow smoothly between different parts of an organization.

  • What is the role of conflict in organizational health?

    Conflict is essential for healthy organizations as it drives innovation and problem-solving by challenging existing norms and facilitating new ideas.

  • How does the matrix organization structure affect decision-making?

    Matrix structures can complicate decision-making due to multiple reporting lines and potential conflicts between different parts of the organization.

  • What is the issue with traditional maturity models in agile transformation?

    Traditional maturity models often impose hierarchical structures that do not align with the flexible and dynamic nature of agile practices.

  • Why do organizations face challenges with knowledge management?

    Knowledge management often struggles because it is seen as a static resource to store rather than a dynamic process of continuous learning and adaptation.

  • What is the significance of economic terms in adaptive capacity?

    Adaptive capacity can be likened to a budget or social capital, emphasizing its importance as a resource that can be accumulated and spent within an organization.

  • What is the impact of continuous reorganizations in companies?

    Frequent reorganizations can be destabilizing and may indicate failure in strategy or leadership, rather than effectively addressing underlying issues.

  • Why is the concept of 'messy coherence' important in organizational design?

    'Messy coherence' allows for flexibility and adaptability within an organization, balancing stability with the constant change of dynamic environments.

  • How can leaders better manage large-scale organizational changes?

    Leaders should focus on coordination and enabling informal networks rather than attempting to control every decision, allowing teams to adapt and self-organize.

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Legendas
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Rolagem automática:
  • 00:00:03
    okay
  • 00:00:04
    and welcome to the fifth session
  • 00:00:07
    of these conversations that we've been
  • 00:00:09
    having on organizational design
  • 00:00:11
    in the last session uh we spoke and
  • 00:00:14
    spoke at
  • 00:00:15
    capacity um and we spent a fair bit of
  • 00:00:18
    time
  • 00:00:19
    talking about uh some of the some of the
  • 00:00:22
    things you can get in trouble with
  • 00:00:23
    in organizational design um i'm gonna
  • 00:00:27
    kick off today we had a little we had a
  • 00:00:30
    bit of a conversation about adaptive
  • 00:00:31
    capacity last time but we were
  • 00:00:33
    really hoping that jade was there um to
  • 00:00:37
    add a bit of his at some of his thoughts
  • 00:00:40
    in
  • 00:00:40
    and i might also introduce this session
  • 00:00:42
    by telling everyone
  • 00:00:44
    that my child's teacher gave them a
  • 00:00:47
    rube goldberg project today
  • 00:00:51
    there is a special place in hell
  • 00:00:52
    reserved for people who do that to
  • 00:00:54
    parents
  • 00:00:54
    in lockdown
  • 00:01:00
    um yeah i um i watched a bit of the last
  • 00:01:03
    session
  • 00:01:03
    um adaptive capacity is a an interesting
  • 00:01:07
    topic to me i i come to adaptive
  • 00:01:10
    capacity from the resilience engineering
  • 00:01:12
    community um so like uh people like john
  • 00:01:15
    all spa dr woods and things like this
  • 00:01:18
    and that that emerges from a set of
  • 00:01:21
    theory called safety two theory
  • 00:01:23
    um from a guy named decker
  • 00:01:26
    from the university of lund where a
  • 00:01:28
    bunch of uh a bunch of computer nerds
  • 00:01:31
    have been
  • 00:01:31
    going recently to get master's degrees
  • 00:01:35
    magically they all tend to end up at
  • 00:01:37
    netflix
  • 00:01:38
    because netflix likes to hire these lond
  • 00:01:40
    graduates
  • 00:01:41
    um but the the idea of adaptive capacity
  • 00:01:45
    there um is this idea that
  • 00:01:49
    roughly like an organization has
  • 00:01:52
    i do this in economic terms i don't
  • 00:01:54
    necessarily think they would
  • 00:01:56
    totally agree with me by doing it this
  • 00:01:57
    way but like there's not a budget
  • 00:02:00
    of adaptivity that any organization has
  • 00:02:02
    and you can grow
  • 00:02:03
    and shrink that budget i think of it a
  • 00:02:05
    little bit like social capital
  • 00:02:07
    uh we like trust you can grow and shrink
  • 00:02:09
    trust by
  • 00:02:10
    and and organizations that have greater
  • 00:02:12
    trust can do things that or
  • 00:02:13
    that organizations have low trust can't
  • 00:02:15
    do right so there's a there's a way in
  • 00:02:18
    which
  • 00:02:18
    that social capital is a thing that you
  • 00:02:21
    can spend
  • 00:02:22
    to do something same thing with adaptive
  • 00:02:24
    capacity it's kind of like a budget
  • 00:02:26
    and the way that um that safety two
  • 00:02:29
    people like to think about this
  • 00:02:31
    is they want you to first stop thinking
  • 00:02:34
    of your organization as being ever
  • 00:02:36
    um stable or ever uh
  • 00:02:40
    the easier way to say it uh your your
  • 00:02:43
    organization is constantly failing
  • 00:02:45
    all the time especially the technology
  • 00:02:47
    involved in it
  • 00:02:48
    your technology is constantly in a state
  • 00:02:50
    of failure
  • 00:02:51
    um and the humans that are there have a
  • 00:02:54
    unique capability a unique coping
  • 00:02:57
    capability so
  • 00:02:58
    uh you know this this would uh lead us
  • 00:03:00
    towards things like
  • 00:03:02
    sense making um skillful coping things
  • 00:03:06
    like that
  • 00:03:07
    as a set of topics but that humans are
  • 00:03:10
    the thing that actually
  • 00:03:11
    keeps the organization uh
  • 00:03:14
    running and and that that contribution
  • 00:03:18
    that the humans make to the
  • 00:03:19
    socio-technical system is
  • 00:03:21
    its adaptive capacity right uh so
  • 00:03:25
    the important part being here that
  • 00:03:26
    there's an idea that
  • 00:03:28
    you stay roughly in control of the
  • 00:03:31
    system in other words the system appears
  • 00:03:33
    relatively stable and reproduces itself
  • 00:03:36
    relatively stably um by the way whether
  • 00:03:39
    that stability is good or
  • 00:03:41
    bad is a whole other topic right like
  • 00:03:43
    you can stably be in a bad place
  • 00:03:46
    and the humans can reproduce that
  • 00:03:47
    badness as well as goodness
  • 00:03:50
    but the point being that
  • 00:03:53
    events that happen and occur in the
  • 00:03:56
    world
  • 00:03:57
    could outstrip your adaptive capacity so
  • 00:04:00
    there's a there's a concept in which
  • 00:04:02
    um you are the the world
  • 00:04:05
    asks the organization to do something
  • 00:04:08
    and the organization
  • 00:04:09
    is not capable of doing that because it
  • 00:04:12
    has run out of adaptive capacity
  • 00:04:14
    um so it then it locks up or freezes up
  • 00:04:17
    or
  • 00:04:18
    you know i like to think of it kind of
  • 00:04:19
    like fight or flight type
  • 00:04:21
    theory starts kind of hooking in
  • 00:04:24
    and so the idea of this is is two things
  • 00:04:27
    that come out of that when you want to
  • 00:04:28
    kind of practically excuse me
  • 00:04:31
    practically manage for
  • 00:04:33
    adaptive capacity one is develop your
  • 00:04:35
    adaptive capacity which has to do with
  • 00:04:37
    things like
  • 00:04:38
    uh avoiding trying to get everybody on
  • 00:04:42
    the same page
  • 00:04:43
    in other words avoiding kind of
  • 00:04:45
    monocultural
  • 00:04:46
    mono thinking that reduces your adaptive
  • 00:04:48
    capacity
  • 00:04:49
    but ensure that you have common ground
  • 00:04:52
    so
  • 00:04:52
    these are these are ideas that i've
  • 00:04:54
    heard i i can't remember the exact
  • 00:04:56
    phrase dave used for it i
  • 00:04:57
    i like to use kind of like uh it's a
  • 00:04:59
    balance between requisite variety
  • 00:05:02
    and requisite coherence and those two
  • 00:05:03
    things are in tension with each other
  • 00:05:05
    dave has another term for it i can't
  • 00:05:07
    quite remember right now i'm sure he'll
  • 00:05:08
    remind us
  • 00:05:09
    so that's one thing is like uh common
  • 00:05:12
    ground
  • 00:05:13
    minimum amount of shared uh
  • 00:05:15
    understanding of what's happening in the
  • 00:05:17
    world
  • 00:05:18
    um so that everybody else can kind of
  • 00:05:20
    scan widely
  • 00:05:21
    um and then the second thing is um
  • 00:05:25
    reduce toil uh and this is a concept
  • 00:05:28
    from sre
  • 00:05:29
    uh the site reliability engineering
  • 00:05:33
    uh from google uh it's generally
  • 00:05:36
    applicable i think
  • 00:05:36
    in a lot of different situations and the
  • 00:05:38
    idea of this is that
  • 00:05:40
    if your system is constantly failing and
  • 00:05:43
    you have a budget for dealing with that
  • 00:05:44
    system failure
  • 00:05:46
    that's budget is your adaptive capacity
  • 00:05:49
    when you if you assume the adaptive
  • 00:05:51
    capacity is a capability that the humans
  • 00:05:53
    have
  • 00:05:54
    then if you reduce the amount of time
  • 00:05:56
    and energy they're spending
  • 00:05:58
    maintaining stuff that's broken in
  • 00:06:01
    obvious
  • 00:06:02
    toil-ish kind of ways that then you
  • 00:06:05
    actually kind of
  • 00:06:06
    it's like managing the bottom line of
  • 00:06:08
    your budget as opposed to increasing the
  • 00:06:10
    top line so like
  • 00:06:11
    you know the rough version is adaptive
  • 00:06:14
    capacity can be increased by
  • 00:06:16
    increasing humans abilities and by
  • 00:06:19
    decreasing
  • 00:06:20
    the toil of the system um involved
  • 00:06:23
    and that that means that as you kind of
  • 00:06:25
    go into
  • 00:06:26
    um the unknown where events can happen
  • 00:06:30
    like covid etc the organizations that
  • 00:06:34
    are currently
  • 00:06:35
    succeeding are the ones that had the
  • 00:06:36
    greatest adaptive capacity they were
  • 00:06:38
    able to not just
  • 00:06:39
    like do this kind of lean startup pivot
  • 00:06:42
    kind of
  • 00:06:43
    bullshittery uh instead they were
  • 00:06:45
    actually able to
  • 00:06:47
    harness their resources and direct them
  • 00:06:50
    in a way that allowed them to be more
  • 00:06:53
    productive and
  • 00:06:54
    i honestly think that part of that
  • 00:06:58
    is that they were able to reorganize the
  • 00:07:00
    flow of work
  • 00:07:01
    through their organizations through the
  • 00:07:03
    new constraints that appeared
  • 00:07:06
    and that means both organizational and
  • 00:07:08
    flow-based
  • 00:07:09
    analysis of what's happening in their
  • 00:07:12
    organizations
  • 00:07:12
    so that they can kind of do that and i'm
  • 00:07:14
    not sure that anybody did that
  • 00:07:16
    explicitly i just think that
  • 00:07:18
    organizations that have higher adaptive
  • 00:07:19
    capacity do that naturally i guess
  • 00:07:23
    jay do you think this is you mentioned
  • 00:07:26
    budget as in money as well as as
  • 00:07:28
    collateralizing people and knowledge and
  • 00:07:30
    capability
  • 00:07:31
    do you think that this is more capable
  • 00:07:34
    for wealthy companies or do you think
  • 00:07:36
    this is more whether investing in human
  • 00:07:38
    capital and capability and knowledge and
  • 00:07:40
    and continuous learning which do you
  • 00:07:42
    think is more likely to succeed
  • 00:07:44
    in what you've just defined so you know
  • 00:07:47
    i used to do
  • 00:07:48
    a quite a long lecture on the theory of
  • 00:07:50
    capital and
  • 00:07:51
    you know capital used to mean like
  • 00:07:53
    literally owning things machines
  • 00:07:55
    you know factories and you know the
  • 00:07:58
    whole tayloristic view of the world
  • 00:08:00
    comes about by the idea that the
  • 00:08:01
    machines are and the factories are more
  • 00:08:03
    valuable than the workers you can
  • 00:08:05
    you want to tame the workers to apply
  • 00:08:07
    them to the machines and make them
  • 00:08:09
    replaceable
  • 00:08:10
    and what you see as we kind of move more
  • 00:08:12
    and more towards
  • 00:08:13
    knowledge work frankly is a move from
  • 00:08:15
    that to
  • 00:08:16
    human capital so kind of development of
  • 00:08:19
    human individuals
  • 00:08:20
    to knowledge capital which i'm sure dave
  • 00:08:23
    can take us on a great journey of uh
  • 00:08:26
    knowledge management's uh successes and
  • 00:08:28
    failures
  • 00:08:31
    and then finally uh you know i think
  • 00:08:33
    right now what's happening
  • 00:08:34
    is in most organizations is social
  • 00:08:36
    capital it's the it is the
  • 00:08:38
    development of informal networks
  • 00:08:41
    and then this adaptive capacity and
  • 00:08:44
    those forms of capital
  • 00:08:45
    uh don't have anything to do with direct
  • 00:08:49
    monetary funds right it's not something
  • 00:08:51
    you can
  • 00:08:52
    monetize easily and in fact in kind of
  • 00:08:55
    social capital theory
  • 00:08:56
    right one of the things is that if you
  • 00:08:58
    reduce those social relationships to
  • 00:09:00
    transactions
  • 00:09:02
    uh in other words you make them monetary
  • 00:09:04
    as opposed to reciprocal
  • 00:09:06
    there there are other issues that flow
  • 00:09:08
    out of trying to monetize it directly
  • 00:09:11
    uh and you know trust being something
  • 00:09:13
    that is usually expended in
  • 00:09:15
    in um kind of uh
  • 00:09:18
    in non-reciprocal or transactional uh
  • 00:09:21
    interaction so that makes any sense
  • 00:09:23
    no i don't there was a regular debate
  • 00:09:25
    between larry prusak and maya
  • 00:09:27
    me over social capital because
  • 00:09:30
    i used to argue it was the wrong framing
  • 00:09:33
    yep
  • 00:09:34
    because he talked about things like the
  • 00:09:36
    favor bank
  • 00:09:38
    and the implication was i'm investing in
  • 00:09:41
    order to get a defined return
  • 00:09:43
    right the reality is that's not the way
  • 00:09:45
    the informal networks work and it's not
  • 00:09:47
    the way that gifting works
  • 00:09:49
    that's right and so i think and i think
  • 00:09:51
    that was one of the big things when
  • 00:09:53
    drastically wrong with knowledge
  • 00:09:54
    management is they saw intellectual
  • 00:09:56
    capital
  • 00:09:57
    that's something you could store as
  • 00:09:59
    something to be managed all right
  • 00:10:01
    and it was kind of like and then because
  • 00:10:03
    knowledge management went down the
  • 00:10:04
    information specific route not the
  • 00:10:06
    knowledge route
  • 00:10:08
    um that was when we also got into giving
  • 00:10:10
    people a job for two years or three
  • 00:10:12
    years and not recognizing what happened
  • 00:10:14
    with long-term employment and network
  • 00:10:16
    density
  • 00:10:17
    and what it ended up with is people
  • 00:10:19
    rented their knowledge to the company
  • 00:10:21
    rather than donating it yeah and that's
  • 00:10:24
    where we still are because if you've
  • 00:10:25
    only got guaranteed employment for a
  • 00:10:27
    couple of years you'll do what you have
  • 00:10:28
    to do and that's the limit of it
  • 00:10:30
    so i think the the con framing things
  • 00:10:33
    and i think this is key thing postcoded
  • 00:10:37
    is framing things in terms of capital is
  • 00:10:39
    probably the wrong thing
  • 00:10:41
    i mean sonya and i were chatting about
  • 00:10:42
    the blockchain earlier and the
  • 00:10:44
    blockchain is just another means of
  • 00:10:45
    exchange
  • 00:10:46
    and the minute you have a means of
  • 00:10:48
    exchange who owns the means of exchange
  • 00:10:50
    has power
  • 00:10:52
    so the thing which it's meant to value
  • 00:10:54
    actually is made value-less
  • 00:10:57
    and i think that's a significant factor
  • 00:10:59
    in organizations
  • 00:11:01
    i think the other thing is that i mean
  • 00:11:03
    system
  • 00:11:04
    that's why i don't like anti-fragile
  • 00:11:06
    right um
  • 00:11:08
    systems which have systems which are
  • 00:11:10
    loosely connected have more resilience
  • 00:11:12
    than systems which are tightly connected
  • 00:11:14
    that's kind of like 101 complexity
  • 00:11:16
    theory but if a system is too loosely
  • 00:11:19
    connected
  • 00:11:20
    um then it's then it's not operational
  • 00:11:23
    and the other issue is it has to have
  • 00:11:25
    effectively the ability to become
  • 00:11:27
    slightly looser and slightly tighter at
  • 00:11:29
    need
  • 00:11:31
    and that's the problem the main your
  • 00:11:33
    point about reaching capacity so you you
  • 00:11:35
    have adaptive capacity up to a point but
  • 00:11:37
    then you reach what's the catastrophic
  • 00:11:39
    folding canary
  • 00:11:40
    is it gets too much and you collapse and
  • 00:11:42
    you can see that in individual mental
  • 00:11:44
    breakdown
  • 00:11:46
    um and some of the work i've done with
  • 00:11:48
    special forces on this
  • 00:11:50
    yeah what you see is huge adaptive
  • 00:11:52
    capacity but when they break golf they
  • 00:11:54
    break
  • 00:11:56
    yeah because of the it's almost like
  • 00:11:58
    there's kinetic energy stored up in
  • 00:12:00
    in the way that and there's no release
  • 00:12:02
    mechanism
  • 00:12:03
    within the system so i think in in
  • 00:12:05
    organizational design
  • 00:12:08
    this i mean it's one of our key
  • 00:12:09
    techniques which is social network
  • 00:12:11
    stimulation which i devised when i was
  • 00:12:13
    in ibm in the institute for knowledge
  • 00:12:15
    management
  • 00:12:16
    in total opposition to the idea of
  • 00:12:18
    social network analysis which i thought
  • 00:12:20
    was evil immoral and wrong and
  • 00:12:22
    a bad idea anyway um on the basis that
  • 00:12:26
    if you have everybody within three
  • 00:12:27
    degrees of separation of everybody else
  • 00:12:30
    the connections don't have to be visible
  • 00:12:32
    for you to know that knowledge will flow
  • 00:12:35
    definitely yeah and we also this is the
  • 00:12:38
    first ever major canvas article this
  • 00:12:40
    first one which started to win awards
  • 00:12:42
    which was complex acts of knowing
  • 00:12:44
    basically said formal community should
  • 00:12:46
    only ever be created from existing
  • 00:12:48
    informal communities
  • 00:12:50
    because the energy cost of creating a
  • 00:12:52
    formal community where there wasn't
  • 00:12:54
    already a natural nodal density
  • 00:12:56
    was too high to justify it going on and
  • 00:12:59
    it's fascinating to see the agile
  • 00:13:01
    community replicate
  • 00:13:03
    every single mistake using exactly the
  • 00:13:05
    same books
  • 00:13:06
    yeah paulo that invector is being
  • 00:13:08
    dragged out yet again
  • 00:13:10
    based on one study he did on one
  • 00:13:12
    engineering company and one point in
  • 00:13:14
    time
  • 00:13:14
    all right and that they're all it's a
  • 00:13:17
    classic oh we got to design this thing
  • 00:13:19
    yeah so rather than design an ecosystem
  • 00:13:22
    they're designing something based on
  • 00:13:23
    output that they've decided is desirable
  • 00:13:26
    and that's where organizational design
  • 00:13:28
    always gets wrong you can't design the
  • 00:13:30
    outcome
  • 00:13:31
    or the output qualities of a complex
  • 00:13:33
    system
  • 00:13:36
    so i'm just going to ask a question then
  • 00:13:38
    because you know we
  • 00:13:40
    i know we talked earlier on about you
  • 00:13:42
    know practically how to do this and
  • 00:13:44
    we're getting close in a lot of what
  • 00:13:45
    youtube just been talking about
  • 00:13:47
    so we talk about informal networks
  • 00:13:49
    within three degrees of separation i'm
  • 00:13:51
    going to come back to this rented
  • 00:13:53
    people renting their knowledge in a
  • 00:13:55
    moment but this informal network there's
  • 00:13:57
    three degrees of separation so
  • 00:13:59
    how do organizations enable this
  • 00:14:02
    through organizational design because to
  • 00:14:04
    your point dave if you over design or
  • 00:14:06
    prescribe something
  • 00:14:08
    you actually fail to achieve what you
  • 00:14:10
    want to achieve
  • 00:14:11
    so what advice can we give organizations
  • 00:14:14
    looking at how
  • 00:14:15
    because we want them to have this sort
  • 00:14:16
    of not completely loosey-goosey sort of
  • 00:14:19
    uh network but we want these informal
  • 00:14:21
    networks which can evolve and change and
  • 00:14:23
    adapt
  • 00:14:24
    based upon self-organizing principles um
  • 00:14:27
    so how do we guide organizations to
  • 00:14:30
    enable the right environments to
  • 00:14:32
    create this type of informal network
  • 00:14:36
    it's what social network simulation was
  • 00:14:38
    designed for and interestingly the first
  • 00:14:40
    case on it was in australia with westpac
  • 00:14:43
    that was the first time we ever ran it
  • 00:14:46
    and the principle is you have heuristics
  • 00:14:48
    for team formation
  • 00:14:50
    which force diversity into teams and
  • 00:14:52
    force people into teams with people they
  • 00:14:54
    haven't worked with before that's quite
  • 00:14:56
    deliberate
  • 00:14:57
    so there's no presumptions yeah but
  • 00:15:00
    people self-organize within those teams
  • 00:15:02
    we use dating agency software for it
  • 00:15:04
    so they can make the connection so they
  • 00:15:06
    choose who they work with but within an
  • 00:15:08
    enabling constraint
  • 00:15:10
    and if the team achieves a defined
  • 00:15:13
    externally measurable goal it has to be
  • 00:15:15
    empirical
  • 00:15:17
    then they get a reward so in westpac it
  • 00:15:19
    was 20 million dollars of added value
  • 00:15:20
    benefit to the client
  • 00:15:22
    maximum team sizes five and a six-month
  • 00:15:25
    sabbatical for all members of the
  • 00:15:26
    william team
  • 00:15:28
    and economically that was wonderfully
  • 00:15:31
    cost-effective
  • 00:15:32
    right i remember working on the models
  • 00:15:34
    on this with peter allen if you run an
  • 00:15:36
    sns every six months
  • 00:15:38
    in a company with 40 annual turnover and
  • 00:15:41
    only 20
  • 00:15:42
    participation within two years everybody
  • 00:15:45
    is within three degrees of separation of
  • 00:15:47
    everybody else haven't been on ssd
  • 00:15:50
    and and that's the principle you're
  • 00:15:51
    triggering a process which like that's
  • 00:15:53
    the system connect
  • 00:15:55
    yeah in that sense so i think you know
  • 00:15:59
    my my um current kind of obsessions with
  • 00:16:02
    these things
  • 00:16:03
    uh where current means maybe the last
  • 00:16:06
    five or six years
  • 00:16:07
    uh there's two things one one is um
  • 00:16:10
    a relationship between um
  • 00:16:13
    boundary roles and and something from
  • 00:16:15
    this guy named bert
  • 00:16:17
    who wrote a book about uh what he calls
  • 00:16:19
    social capital brokerage
  • 00:16:20
    and the important kind of concept to
  • 00:16:23
    grab out of there
  • 00:16:24
    i think is this idea that there's good
  • 00:16:26
    uh brokerage and bad brokerage and so
  • 00:16:28
    brokerage is just like
  • 00:16:30
    there's information or some value
  • 00:16:33
    somewhere in the company that somewhere
  • 00:16:34
    else in the company could have right now
  • 00:16:36
    right and
  • 00:16:37
    so uh the way i usually uh kind of
  • 00:16:39
    present it is like
  • 00:16:41
    bill is working on a database problem
  • 00:16:43
    and sally and another team is working on
  • 00:16:45
    a database problem
  • 00:16:46
    and when they both say it out loud it
  • 00:16:49
    sounds
  • 00:16:50
    similar enough that a a broker someone
  • 00:16:53
    who
  • 00:16:53
    moves in between the two teams would go
  • 00:16:56
    oh
  • 00:16:57
    these things are related and so
  • 00:17:00
    bad brokerage looks like this the broker
  • 00:17:03
    goes to bill
  • 00:17:04
    and says bill tell me what you did
  • 00:17:07
    and bill brings and the broker brings
  • 00:17:09
    that to sally and says sally this is how
  • 00:17:11
    to fix your problem
  • 00:17:13
    why is that bad brokerage well first of
  • 00:17:15
    all he's almost certainly
  • 00:17:17
    not going to be able to extract the
  • 00:17:19
    right
  • 00:17:20
    knowledge quickly enough to transport it
  • 00:17:23
    himself
  • 00:17:23
    right and the result of that is sally
  • 00:17:26
    tries to do what the
  • 00:17:27
    broker tells him and it doesn't quite
  • 00:17:29
    work
  • 00:17:30
    and then he all that sally also now
  • 00:17:33
    thinks the broker doesn't know what
  • 00:17:34
    they're doing
  • 00:17:35
    and also thinks that the uh bill doesn't
  • 00:17:38
    know what he's doing either
  • 00:17:39
    so you've like destroyed trust in the
  • 00:17:41
    organization by
  • 00:17:43
    moving knowledge around this way the the
  • 00:17:45
    good version
  • 00:17:46
    of of brokerage or or boundary spanning
  • 00:17:49
    is that the broker literally creates a
  • 00:17:52
    space for sally
  • 00:17:53
    and bill to work together on the problem
  • 00:17:55
    and that
  • 00:17:56
    does two things it literally taught it's
  • 00:17:59
    kind of like creating
  • 00:18:00
    a a temporary social network inside the
  • 00:18:03
    organization where
  • 00:18:04
    these people then learn to trust each
  • 00:18:07
    other learn to work together and then
  • 00:18:08
    they go back to their teams but they
  • 00:18:10
    know that they have a resource somewhere
  • 00:18:12
    else in the organization
  • 00:18:13
    so i think this is this is one version
  • 00:18:15
    of trying to create
  • 00:18:16
    um a loose uh
  • 00:18:19
    flexible dynamic network that
  • 00:18:23
    uh stitches things together i always
  • 00:18:24
    like to point out that like complexity
  • 00:18:27
    the plexur and complexity is like
  • 00:18:29
    knitting it's like
  • 00:18:30
    tying things together um
  • 00:18:34
    so yeah so you know getting that right
  • 00:18:38
    and and making those connections loose
  • 00:18:41
    as in like they can dissolve
  • 00:18:43
    the formality of them can dissolve after
  • 00:18:46
    the problem's gone is important
  • 00:18:48
    the second thing that i've become really
  • 00:18:50
    obsessed with recently is this idea
  • 00:18:52
    about
  • 00:18:53
    self-organization when we look at it um
  • 00:18:56
    at the team scale as opposed to the
  • 00:18:59
    inside the team
  • 00:19:00
    so like team of teams stuff
  • 00:19:03
    and the thing that i think is most
  • 00:19:04
    critical there is it's not self
  • 00:19:06
    organization it's the ability to
  • 00:19:09
    negotiate with peers
  • 00:19:10
    directly right because
  • 00:19:13
    both teams have direct specific
  • 00:19:16
    interests
  • 00:19:17
    um the in kind of the literature this
  • 00:19:19
    would be called polycentric
  • 00:19:21
    uh theory like an idea that there's no
  • 00:19:23
    one
  • 00:19:24
    group in charge of the outcome there's
  • 00:19:26
    multiple groups in charge
  • 00:19:29
    and why do i think that's important i
  • 00:19:31
    think that's important because the
  • 00:19:32
    minute that that collapses the minute
  • 00:19:35
    that the teams can no longer directly
  • 00:19:37
    negotiate they
  • 00:19:38
    go up right in order to get the
  • 00:19:40
    negotiation to happen
  • 00:19:42
    they go to their boss and then they go
  • 00:19:44
    to their boss bus
  • 00:19:45
    and i in my experience if it skips more
  • 00:19:47
    than two levels
  • 00:19:48
    it always ends up with a manager who
  • 00:19:50
    doesn't really understand what the
  • 00:19:52
    concerns are
  • 00:19:54
    and therefore they make suboptimal uh
  • 00:19:56
    you know
  • 00:19:58
    baby baby splitting uh answers in order
  • 00:20:00
    to get things
  • 00:20:01
    done and and no one gets the value out
  • 00:20:03
    of it so
  • 00:20:05
    by like pushing the negotiation skills
  • 00:20:08
    so like i think like people say
  • 00:20:10
    you know distribute decision making or
  • 00:20:12
    distribute information or get
  • 00:20:13
    the decisions to the right place and
  • 00:20:15
    close to the edge where the information
  • 00:20:17
    is
  • 00:20:17
    all those things are useful inside of a
  • 00:20:20
    team
  • 00:20:20
    but negotiation the ability to negotiate
  • 00:20:24
    a settlement where you know not
  • 00:20:27
    everything gets
  • 00:20:28
    exactly where people want but progress
  • 00:20:31
    is made
  • 00:20:32
    that is the primary skill i think that
  • 00:20:35
    you need to get at this kind of team of
  • 00:20:37
    team level
  • 00:20:38
    and we don't train it either i mean
  • 00:20:40
    there's some basic heuristics on
  • 00:20:41
    negotiation like never give without
  • 00:20:43
    taking
  • 00:20:45
    because if somebody gives and they don't
  • 00:20:47
    take you actually kind of like don't
  • 00:20:48
    trust them so there are things you can
  • 00:20:50
    teach on that
  • 00:20:51
    yep and i think calculation has to have
  • 00:20:53
    penalties so when i had my when i was a
  • 00:20:56
    general manager
  • 00:20:57
    my view is very simple you've got
  • 00:20:58
    contradictory targets if you can't
  • 00:21:00
    resolve it between yourself come to me
  • 00:21:02
    and i'll treat you like we need the pool
  • 00:21:04
    treated out i'll say yes and no
  • 00:21:06
    alternately and you
  • 00:21:07
    know which sequence i'm on yeah so you
  • 00:21:10
    better resolve it for yourself
  • 00:21:12
    right and i think but i think the the
  • 00:21:14
    issue and this is where we get into this
  • 00:21:16
    key concept i think which comes from
  • 00:21:18
    complexity of thinking about identity
  • 00:21:20
    not individuals
  • 00:21:21
    so sometimes identity is an individual
  • 00:21:24
    but it isn't necessarily the case
  • 00:21:27
    and i'd say that's the next generation
  • 00:21:28
    of marketing as well you're trying to
  • 00:21:30
    trigger identity
  • 00:21:32
    yeah because identity is associated with
  • 00:21:35
    um behavior
  • 00:21:36
    yeah totally it's it's
  • 00:21:39
    uh point we got um bring it back to the
  • 00:21:43
    practical so we've probably done
  • 00:21:45
    30 or 40 pieces of work where we've
  • 00:21:48
    we've tried to go into organizations and
  • 00:21:50
    shift them
  • 00:21:51
    to more agile ways of working i suppose
  • 00:21:54
    over the last two or three years and a
  • 00:21:56
    lot of the time you walk into
  • 00:21:58
    organizations with
  • 00:21:59
    matrix based management so you've kind
  • 00:22:01
    of got the
  • 00:22:02
    functional leads and they've got their
  • 00:22:04
    functional teams
  • 00:22:07
    and the old way of doing things meant
  • 00:22:10
    past the parcel through those different
  • 00:22:12
    functions until you've got an end
  • 00:22:13
    outcome
  • 00:22:15
    now it's kind of two things that we see
  • 00:22:17
    the first
  • 00:22:18
    is you go in and uh you haven't got
  • 00:22:22
    the authority to change the structure
  • 00:22:26
    so you basically try and create i
  • 00:22:29
    suppose
  • 00:22:30
    they're cross-functional teams but the
  • 00:22:32
    liner management still goes up to
  • 00:22:34
    functional
  • 00:22:35
    hierarchies and when you do that you get
  • 00:22:39
    because authority flows to information
  • 00:22:41
    there's just
  • 00:22:42
    lots and lots of information going all
  • 00:22:44
    through the organization decisions get
  • 00:22:46
    really hard to make
  • 00:22:48
    leadership's basically tied up in
  • 00:22:50
    [Music]
  • 00:22:52
    20 or 30 stand-ups whatever you want to
  • 00:22:54
    call them a day
  • 00:22:55
    um and they they find it very difficult
  • 00:22:58
    to operate
  • 00:23:00
    the second is when you break that
  • 00:23:03
    down um then there's a few really good
  • 00:23:05
    patterns for that so
  • 00:23:06
    two in a box is a really nice one where
  • 00:23:09
    you have
  • 00:23:10
    uh you you have leaders
  • 00:23:13
    with equal authority in a team context
  • 00:23:16
    and that scales up but you actually
  • 00:23:19
    manage the tension that you want in the
  • 00:23:21
    system through the allocation of those
  • 00:23:23
    leaders so it might be a product in an
  • 00:23:24
    engineering lead
  • 00:23:25
    or it might be a product engineering
  • 00:23:28
    design i think atlassian uses
  • 00:23:30
    or you might have financial
  • 00:23:33
    it might actually distribute financial
  • 00:23:35
    acumen into the team if it makes sense
  • 00:23:37
    to have
  • 00:23:38
    like that financial tension in the
  • 00:23:41
    product sense
  • 00:23:43
    what happens then though is that you
  • 00:23:45
    lose some of the really good things that
  • 00:23:47
    you had with the functional leadership
  • 00:23:49
    which is if you've got
  • 00:23:50
    uh people that are not super high
  • 00:23:53
    capability
  • 00:23:54
    um or you've got juniors uh
  • 00:23:57
    sort of the the mentoring pathways and
  • 00:24:00
    that kind of
  • 00:24:01
    that sort of thing disappears and we had
  • 00:24:04
    a great conversation with dave
  • 00:24:05
    a few months back because what we tend
  • 00:24:08
    to find is
  • 00:24:09
    you put a bit of work in that model into
  • 00:24:11
    launching communities in practice to try
  • 00:24:13
    and replace
  • 00:24:16
    that function that you used to have with
  • 00:24:18
    the matrix
  • 00:24:19
    but inevitably and dave's dave can talk
  • 00:24:22
    to the theory about this that the
  • 00:24:24
    participation in those communities of
  • 00:24:26
    practice starts to decay
  • 00:24:28
    unless you've got someone who's really
  • 00:24:30
    really good at keeping
  • 00:24:32
    groups of people together so it's almost
  • 00:24:35
    like
  • 00:24:36
    the quality of the person dictates how
  • 00:24:38
    well those things
  • 00:24:40
    uh how well they endure
  • 00:24:43
    rather than the quality of the practice
  • 00:24:47
    i think you're you're over complicating
  • 00:24:49
    it whenever you walk in you find a
  • 00:24:51
    matrix organization
  • 00:24:52
    you just rename everything squads and
  • 00:24:55
    tribes and then you walk out and you're
  • 00:24:56
    done
  • 00:24:57
    you should give them a really big bill
  • 00:24:58
    after that though uh
  • 00:25:00
    it's clear as day that uh that's just a
  • 00:25:03
    matrix organization with communities of
  • 00:25:05
    practice right
  • 00:25:06
    so you're done squared all all good
  • 00:25:10
    i love the reference all right and being
  • 00:25:12
    sarcastic about the spotty
  • 00:25:14
    spotify model is good for all of us yeah
  • 00:25:17
    i think one of the i think we need to
  • 00:25:20
    get rid of it
  • 00:25:20
    i think what you get with matrix is two
  • 00:25:22
    hierarchies
  • 00:25:24
    and they compete and so nobody knows
  • 00:25:26
    where they belong or who they
  • 00:25:28
    work for or anything else like that yeah
  • 00:25:31
    definitely and that becomes deep you
  • 00:25:33
    know a deep issue
  • 00:25:34
    yeah within most organizations
  • 00:25:40
    sorry son you go ahead i'm sorry i
  • 00:25:41
    didn't hear you
  • 00:25:43
    no i think this is a bit of a lag nigel
  • 00:25:45
    i think
  • 00:25:46
    just what it feels like what's being
  • 00:25:49
    highlighted here you know
  • 00:25:50
    you know andrew what what you spoke
  • 00:25:52
    about you know so you go in for an agile
  • 00:25:54
    transformation and
  • 00:25:55
    you end up not having the authority to
  • 00:25:57
    change the structures
  • 00:25:58
    etc and it it's not only happening with
  • 00:26:00
    with agile it feels like
  • 00:26:02
    um the od community and the
  • 00:26:06
    you know in the organizations who
  • 00:26:08
    actually have them you know i think in
  • 00:26:09
    many organizations
  • 00:26:11
    it sort of falls to hr which tends to be
  • 00:26:14
    even more disastrous
  • 00:26:16
    but i don't they are not included in the
  • 00:26:18
    processes where they
  • 00:26:19
    need to be included and when they are
  • 00:26:21
    they tend to be
  • 00:26:23
    um gatekeepers of sorts and i and i
  • 00:26:25
    think it's
  • 00:26:26
    it's probably because you know they they
  • 00:26:29
    are being taught or the thing that they
  • 00:26:31
    tend to fall back to are designing
  • 00:26:34
    hierarchies designing
  • 00:26:35
    matrix um matrices
  • 00:26:39
    and i'm i'm not sure that they actually
  • 00:26:42
    are doing the work to start
  • 00:26:44
    thinking differently about the
  • 00:26:46
    organization's design
  • 00:26:48
    you know i mean one if one of the
  • 00:26:49
    metaphors that i use a lot and and
  • 00:26:51
    you know it's probably not the best one
  • 00:26:53
    but it seems to resonate is this whole
  • 00:26:54
    idea of you know it's it's hard to
  • 00:26:56
    survive in the jungle if you were
  • 00:26:57
    trained in the zoo
  • 00:26:59
    and i think the the consultants are the
  • 00:27:02
    ones creating the zoos you know
  • 00:27:04
    and that's that's a a level of you know
  • 00:27:06
    something that that frustrates me
  • 00:27:08
    because you know going back to um
  • 00:27:10
    to what you just spoke about the
  • 00:27:11
    communities of practice that don't
  • 00:27:14
    maintain their energy for for very long
  • 00:27:16
    especially in these matrix organizations
  • 00:27:18
    you know it's a very human thing you
  • 00:27:20
    know i'm i'm being measured
  • 00:27:22
    and my targets are linked to whatever is
  • 00:27:25
    in the matrix
  • 00:27:27
    the community of practice not so much so
  • 00:27:29
    if if there's no incentive for me there
  • 00:27:33
    you know you're almost creating um
  • 00:27:35
    schizophrenic organizations where these
  • 00:27:37
    things are pulling against each other so
  • 00:27:40
    i think the question and it might be why
  • 00:27:42
    these sessions are so popular is
  • 00:27:44
    how can we get complexity
  • 00:27:47
    informed thinking different ways of
  • 00:27:50
    looking at design
  • 00:27:51
    into the organization design community
  • 00:27:55
    because it seems as if that is just not
  • 00:27:59
    happening the people that i see that's
  • 00:28:01
    experimenting with this are people in
  • 00:28:03
    the agile community or in the you know
  • 00:28:05
    it's not necessarily
  • 00:28:06
    the od practitioners um in the
  • 00:28:09
    organizations where i work at
  • 00:28:11
    at least yeah
  • 00:28:15
    but i i mean i think uh
  • 00:28:20
    you go
  • 00:28:25
    i think the thing that i that it makes
  • 00:28:27
    me think of immediately is like
  • 00:28:29
    so much of what i see from od is like
  • 00:28:32
    spans and layer analysis type stuff
  • 00:28:34
    right like how many people are reporting
  • 00:28:36
    how many people
  • 00:28:37
    how many layers do you have uh frankly
  • 00:28:40
    you know i
  • 00:28:41
    i tend to follow a little bit more of a
  • 00:28:43
    jaxian root and think that most people
  • 00:28:45
    have like way way too many layers
  • 00:28:47
    frankly
  • 00:28:48
    um and that creates huge amounts of
  • 00:28:50
    conflict
  • 00:28:51
    frankly uh inside organizations we could
  • 00:28:54
    get into that a little bit
  • 00:28:55
    but i think like you know the thing that
  • 00:28:57
    it makes me think about the most
  • 00:28:59
    is like uh you know matrix comes from a
  • 00:29:02
    guy named gailbraith and gailbraith made
  • 00:29:04
    what's called the star model and the
  • 00:29:06
    thing about the star model is that it
  • 00:29:07
    always starts from strategy
  • 00:29:09
    it's a contingency theory of
  • 00:29:11
    organizational design it says you have
  • 00:29:12
    to know what the strategy is
  • 00:29:14
    and you design the organization around
  • 00:29:15
    the strategy right well
  • 00:29:19
    i like the amount of organizations that
  • 00:29:21
    i've been in who cannot express a
  • 00:29:23
    coherent strategy is pretty high frankly
  • 00:29:26
    um and so it's not all that surprising
  • 00:29:28
    that the
  • 00:29:29
    the tool set that was built for working
  • 00:29:32
    with a strategy that would be kind of
  • 00:29:34
    again matrix and all these other things
  • 00:29:36
    becomes incoherent in the hands of
  • 00:29:38
    people who are skipping the first step
  • 00:29:40
    of the pro
  • 00:29:41
    of the way of thinking right so i think
  • 00:29:44
    one of the things is like to understand
  • 00:29:45
    what contingency
  • 00:29:46
    based theories of organizational design
  • 00:29:49
    would look like
  • 00:29:49
    if we were actually doing them and
  • 00:29:53
    understanding that uh organizations that
  • 00:29:56
    have strategies that pivot every three
  • 00:29:58
    months are gonna have to either get
  • 00:29:59
    really really good at constantly
  • 00:30:01
    reorganizing or they're gonna have to
  • 00:30:03
    have someone
  • 00:30:04
    lift their head up a little bit and look
  • 00:30:06
    a little bit further into the future
  • 00:30:08
    and start organizing around longer term
  • 00:30:11
    goals
  • 00:30:12
    and that doesn't mean you can't
  • 00:30:13
    opportunistically take advantage of
  • 00:30:16
    of you know opportunities that are
  • 00:30:18
    presented to you
  • 00:30:19
    but i i you know i think that
  • 00:30:22
    uh one of the rants i i get on
  • 00:30:25
    eventually
  • 00:30:26
    when i talk about this kind of stuff is
  • 00:30:28
    that strategy is a middle management
  • 00:30:30
    theory it's a middle management thing
  • 00:30:32
    it's not an executive thing an executive
  • 00:30:34
    is supposed to be managing the
  • 00:30:35
    capabilities of the firm and the
  • 00:30:37
    and the long-term goals of the firm uh
  • 00:30:40
    not
  • 00:30:40
    doing strategy so the way i like to say
  • 00:30:43
    this is like
  • 00:30:43
    a basketball coach is the person who
  • 00:30:46
    does strategy
  • 00:30:47
    in a basketball frame right
  • 00:30:50
    and so they deploy their particular
  • 00:30:53
    resources those are the human beings
  • 00:30:55
    that play
  • 00:30:55
    basketball for them in a particular kind
  • 00:30:58
    of way against a particular kind of
  • 00:30:59
    client
  • 00:31:00
    that is strategy yeah on the other hand
  • 00:31:03
    that guy is that person sorry is not
  • 00:31:06
    responsible in any way
  • 00:31:07
    for attendance getting an arena
  • 00:31:10
    paying salaries getting a food vendor
  • 00:31:13
    all
  • 00:31:13
    all of that stuff are capabilities that
  • 00:31:16
    are managed by an executive firm
  • 00:31:18
    above them right and so i think in a lot
  • 00:31:20
    of ways
  • 00:31:21
    one of the failures of organizational
  • 00:31:24
    design is one of the failures of
  • 00:31:25
    organizations right now
  • 00:31:27
    executives are being dragged down into a
  • 00:31:30
    very short time
  • 00:31:31
    frame and they're doing strategy instead
  • 00:31:34
    of
  • 00:31:34
    organizing and creating capabilities and
  • 00:31:37
    i think
  • 00:31:38
    that that causes a collapse in
  • 00:31:42
    the way that people organize and you
  • 00:31:45
    know then you get these kind of like
  • 00:31:46
    weird like constantly evolving
  • 00:31:50
    functionalized matrix models that
  • 00:31:53
    you know just create huge amounts of
  • 00:31:55
    conflict in organizations so
  • 00:31:56
    i don't know jade to piggyback on to
  • 00:31:59
    that
  • 00:32:00
    some of the things that i have observed
  • 00:32:02
    is that
  • 00:32:04
    i mean i talk about distributed
  • 00:32:05
    leadership which is that we've talked
  • 00:32:07
    about this in previous conversations
  • 00:32:08
    that centralized coordination
  • 00:32:10
    distributed decision making which is
  • 00:32:12
    what you're describing but what we're
  • 00:32:13
    finding
  • 00:32:14
    is that distributed decision making is
  • 00:32:16
    only okay as long as the boss agrees
  • 00:32:18
    so i i'm not sure that we're dragging
  • 00:32:20
    them down or whether they're
  • 00:32:22
    sort of wandering down and sort of
  • 00:32:23
    interfering you know
  • 00:32:25
    yep i mean i it's like it's peter
  • 00:32:27
    principle stuff to me
  • 00:32:28
    um you know i i i in
  • 00:32:31
    in jack's it's time it's called time
  • 00:32:33
    span analysis and the
  • 00:32:35
    type 10 analysis is super easy to do how
  • 00:32:37
    long can you work before your boss comes
  • 00:32:39
    and checks on you
  • 00:32:41
    um and so like in a scrum team that's
  • 00:32:43
    like two weeks
  • 00:32:44
    that's my time span so what do you get
  • 00:32:46
    good at you get
  • 00:32:47
    really good at telling two week stories
  • 00:32:49
    you get really good at telling in about
  • 00:32:51
    five minutes you can tell a story what
  • 00:32:52
    are you doing right now
  • 00:32:54
    this is what i'm doing for the next two
  • 00:32:55
    weeks go up to middle management
  • 00:32:58
    same things happen but it's quarterly or
  • 00:33:01
    every six months
  • 00:33:01
    yeah that every six months i have to go
  • 00:33:03
    and report to my executive
  • 00:33:05
    about what i've been doing so i get
  • 00:33:06
    really good at telling a six-month story
  • 00:33:08
    again i still only get about 15 minutes
  • 00:33:10
    to tell my story
  • 00:33:12
    so i can't put the same things in my
  • 00:33:14
    story that the people
  • 00:33:15
    on the scrum team can because otherwise
  • 00:33:17
    my story would take way too long yeah
  • 00:33:19
    so different details different shapes
  • 00:33:21
    yeah as you move
  • 00:33:22
    up the organization in theory you know
  • 00:33:25
    in
  • 00:33:25
    jack's theory there's at least probably
  • 00:33:27
    three or four levels potentially five
  • 00:33:30
    um and each time you double the time
  • 00:33:32
    span in theory or
  • 00:33:34
    one and a half times yeah so by the time
  • 00:33:36
    you get up to an executive you're
  • 00:33:37
    supposed to be telling
  • 00:33:38
    two and a half year stories right but
  • 00:33:41
    how do you
  • 00:33:41
    learn what goes in those stories
  • 00:33:45
    because you still only get like that 30
  • 00:33:47
    minute pitch
  • 00:33:48
    to tell the organization what because
  • 00:33:51
    after 30 minutes nobody's paying
  • 00:33:52
    attention anymore so you gotta get
  • 00:33:53
    really good at telling that thing
  • 00:33:55
    and a lot of executives i just think
  • 00:33:57
    don't have
  • 00:33:58
    a peer community that teaches them what
  • 00:34:01
    a good
  • 00:34:01
    story sounds like and i'm sure dave's
  • 00:34:04
    gonna
  • 00:34:04
    yell at me about narrative and stuff
  • 00:34:06
    like that but we'll just stick here
  • 00:34:07
    uh and and the result of this like 30
  • 00:34:10
    minutes
  • 00:34:11
    uh explanation is that they can't do it
  • 00:34:14
    so they peter principle themselves and
  • 00:34:16
    they go down and start telling the
  • 00:34:17
    stories that they
  • 00:34:18
    know how to tell six month stories and
  • 00:34:21
    stuff like that
  • 00:34:22
    and the result of that is an actual
  • 00:34:25
    conflict because the people who are
  • 00:34:27
    supposed to be telling that story are
  • 00:34:29
    like
  • 00:34:29
    hey wait a second that's my i'm supposed
  • 00:34:32
    to
  • 00:34:33
    what story am i supposed to tell now and
  • 00:34:36
    then they go
  • 00:34:36
    down right and so you get this
  • 00:34:38
    compressiveness that happens where the
  • 00:34:40
    narration of the firm
  • 00:34:42
    gets compressed and then it feels like
  • 00:34:45
    when you get down to the bottom level
  • 00:34:47
    where you get the most amount of people
  • 00:34:49
    involved
  • 00:34:50
    they don't have any way to tell their
  • 00:34:51
    own story anymore because someone's
  • 00:34:53
    always telling it for them
  • 00:34:55
    um and there's not room for them to tell
  • 00:34:57
    those stories
  • 00:34:58
    um and so i think like that kind of
  • 00:35:02
    opening up again of the time spans at
  • 00:35:05
    the top of the organization
  • 00:35:06
    isn't just about like long-term vision
  • 00:35:09
    blah blah blah blah
  • 00:35:10
    it's actually about literally creating
  • 00:35:11
    the space for people to
  • 00:35:13
    have you know to pick on something dave
  • 00:35:16
    just said
  • 00:35:17
    uh identity is is knowing who you are in
  • 00:35:20
    a story
  • 00:35:21
    and it's a story that you feel like you
  • 00:35:24
    understand and that you are
  • 00:35:25
    narrating well right and the lack of
  • 00:35:28
    that
  • 00:35:29
    screws people over sorry go ahead
  • 00:35:31
    capacity is the ability to change
  • 00:35:33
    identities
  • 00:35:35
    yep the the the problem is people
  • 00:35:37
    confuse that the ability to move between
  • 00:35:39
    identities in different contexts
  • 00:35:42
    nuclear if you ritualize it yeah and
  • 00:35:45
    that's how armies get people to do
  • 00:35:46
    things like go over the barricades yeah
  • 00:35:49
    because the whole ritualization switches
  • 00:35:51
    the identity so people do extraordinary
  • 00:35:53
    things
  • 00:35:54
    yeah and i think the other thing is need
  • 00:35:57
    conflict for any system to be healthy
  • 00:36:00
    the trouble with the matrix it creates
  • 00:36:02
    conflict between two
  • 00:36:03
    formal organizations whereas actually
  • 00:36:07
    the normal conflict is between the
  • 00:36:09
    formal organization and the informal
  • 00:36:10
    networks
  • 00:36:12
    and that's actually a healthy conflict
  • 00:36:14
    yeah yeah
  • 00:36:15
    i mean it's sometimes seen as cronyism
  • 00:36:17
    and all those sort of things but the
  • 00:36:19
    reality is
  • 00:36:20
    no it's senior just and i keep arguing
  • 00:36:23
    to agile people i keep pointing out
  • 00:36:25
    decision makers don't have time to
  • 00:36:27
    assess the evidence
  • 00:36:28
    right i mean you're a general manager or
  • 00:36:30
    a legislation you might get five minutes
  • 00:36:33
    yeah if you're really lucky you might
  • 00:36:36
    get to hear a couple of presentations
  • 00:36:38
    and you've got to make a call
  • 00:36:40
    yeah and you're going to make a call
  • 00:36:42
    based on who you trust the most
  • 00:36:44
    right because that's the least risky
  • 00:36:46
    solution or you're going to call him
  • 00:36:47
    mckinsey's to make a recommendation
  • 00:36:50
    because nobody got fired for
  • 00:36:51
    implementing a mckinsey's report
  • 00:36:53
    and and i hired mckenzie's three times
  • 00:36:56
    in order to validate what i wanted to
  • 00:36:58
    get away with it with venture
  • 00:36:59
    capitalists
  • 00:37:00
    all right um because it was an authority
  • 00:37:03
    issue
  • 00:37:04
    and you know the sort of desire for
  • 00:37:06
    everything to be peaceful and harmonious
  • 00:37:08
    and common objectives and common goals
  • 00:37:10
    is deadly
  • 00:37:11
    right the engineering approach this is
  • 00:37:14
    also the problem with hypocrisy is it
  • 00:37:16
    builds
  • 00:37:16
    bureaucratic conflict into the system
  • 00:37:19
    yep
  • 00:37:20
    yeah rather than this sort of informal
  • 00:37:23
    formal conflict which is actually quite
  • 00:37:24
    healthy
  • 00:37:25
    and something we grew up with yeah in
  • 00:37:27
    fact you see it in all primates
  • 00:37:30
    it's it's the informal networks the way
  • 00:37:32
    that the king is sometimes toppled
  • 00:37:35
    yeah i think so like one of the things i
  • 00:37:37
    teach executives
  • 00:37:38
    that i think is similar to this is what
  • 00:37:40
    i call uh decision economies and
  • 00:37:42
    and what that means is roughly like as
  • 00:37:45
    dave said
  • 00:37:46
    you're an executive how many decisions
  • 00:37:48
    can you make a day
  • 00:37:50
    literally how many can you make in a day
  • 00:37:52
    and then then the really easy thing to
  • 00:37:54
    do is you go back to an executive and
  • 00:37:55
    say roughly like
  • 00:37:56
    listen in my experience uh
  • 00:37:59
    most people and maybe you're an
  • 00:38:01
    exceptional person can manage about five
  • 00:38:03
    to ten projects at a single time
  • 00:38:05
    that's that's what they can juggle like
  • 00:38:07
    that roughly
  • 00:38:08
    and so if you're making decisions you
  • 00:38:10
    should probably have like five to ten
  • 00:38:12
    buckets that you're making decisions
  • 00:38:13
    about
  • 00:38:14
    just roughly and so what's your budget
  • 00:38:17
    you know you get you get a big company
  • 00:38:19
    their budget is
  • 00:38:20
    you know i i manage 100 million 500
  • 00:38:24
    million a billion dollar budget yeah
  • 00:38:26
    okay so divide that up and make it into
  • 00:38:28
    buckets so that we know
  • 00:38:29
    generally where your focus is now
  • 00:38:32
    whenever
  • 00:38:33
    anybody comes to you from any of those
  • 00:38:35
    buckets
  • 00:38:36
    uh and ask you a question i want all i
  • 00:38:38
    want you to do is you can
  • 00:38:40
    do your normal thing but when they leave
  • 00:38:41
    the room i just want you to write down
  • 00:38:43
    was that an
  • 00:38:44
    interesting question or is that a boring
  • 00:38:46
    question
  • 00:38:47
    and it's a boring question it means
  • 00:38:49
    literally you don't think it was useful
  • 00:38:50
    for you to be involved in it but you
  • 00:38:52
    realized that there was some sort of
  • 00:38:53
    political [ __ ] going on and you
  • 00:38:55
    needed to deal with it yeah
  • 00:38:57
    interesting questions are the ones that
  • 00:38:59
    like dave said earlier are ones where
  • 00:39:01
    you go oh
  • 00:39:01
    i think they brought me a question where
  • 00:39:04
    i actually added value because i have
  • 00:39:06
    access to information
  • 00:39:07
    where networks were things that not
  • 00:39:10
    everybody has access to in the
  • 00:39:11
    organization
  • 00:39:12
    so they brought me a good question so
  • 00:39:14
    you at the end of the week you go
  • 00:39:16
    through this like little
  • 00:39:17
    scheme that you've made for yourself and
  • 00:39:18
    you go what are all of the
  • 00:39:20
    questions that were boring questions
  • 00:39:24
    and what am i going maybe group them
  • 00:39:27
    into piles or something like that
  • 00:39:29
    what am i going to do in the
  • 00:39:31
    organization
  • 00:39:32
    to actually distribute these decisions
  • 00:39:36
    actively work to make sure that these
  • 00:39:38
    types of decisions
  • 00:39:39
    don't come to me anymore and and again
  • 00:39:42
    it's it's a passive version of this
  • 00:39:44
    you're not resisting you're not saying
  • 00:39:45
    to people stop coming into my office
  • 00:39:48
    you're saying there's got to be a reason
  • 00:39:50
    why people keep on bringing this stuff
  • 00:39:52
    to me
  • 00:39:53
    and again i think one of the skills that
  • 00:39:55
    ends up happening there is that a lot of
  • 00:39:57
    times
  • 00:39:58
    the biggest pile is conflict resolution
  • 00:40:01
    negotiation skills going down into the
  • 00:40:04
    organization and
  • 00:40:05
    working with the teams that have the
  • 00:40:07
    hardest time
  • 00:40:09
    negotiating their own settlements in a
  • 00:40:12
    in a point where it hasn't become a
  • 00:40:14
    crisis right so literally going to them
  • 00:40:16
    or working asking somebody to work with
  • 00:40:18
    them to
  • 00:40:19
    learn negotiation skills learn how to
  • 00:40:22
    keep control of their own
  • 00:40:24
    decisions that i think is you know
  • 00:40:27
    one of the things that i think people
  • 00:40:28
    get good great value from when when they
  • 00:40:30
    do it well
  • 00:40:31
    i called about this yesterday i've got
  • 00:40:33
    another call at three o'clock today on a
  • 00:40:35
    conflict resolution job we're doing
  • 00:40:38
    and what we're actually suggesting is
  • 00:40:40
    they took they take two people from each
  • 00:40:42
    side and put them with a third
  • 00:40:44
    administrator who just wants the problem
  • 00:40:46
    to go away
  • 00:40:47
    that forms a trio but we create ten
  • 00:40:50
    trios
  • 00:40:51
    and they all come up with solutions
  • 00:40:53
    working independently of each other
  • 00:40:55
    yeah and then we look at what comes out
  • 00:40:57
    of that and again i think
  • 00:40:58
    the key thing if you're a leader is that
  • 00:41:01
    you shouldn't be making decisions unless
  • 00:41:03
    you've really got it
  • 00:41:04
    exactly you do everything in your bloody
  • 00:41:06
    power to avoid it
  • 00:41:07
    because your job is to i mean this is
  • 00:41:09
    the key thing on crisis management
  • 00:41:11
    your job is to coordinate not design
  • 00:41:15
    yeah and link can connect people and i i
  • 00:41:17
    remember one of the best companies i
  • 00:41:18
    ever worked with which was landleafs
  • 00:41:21
    which is an australian company in a day
  • 00:41:23
    when it was run
  • 00:41:24
    by good people as opposed to ex harvard
  • 00:41:26
    trained people
  • 00:41:28
    and the way they they ran it is stewart
  • 00:41:31
    and neville and one other person all
  • 00:41:33
    right these are really good guys yeah
  • 00:41:35
    really experienced managers is they'd
  • 00:41:37
    fly around the world and beat up project
  • 00:41:39
    teams
  • 00:41:40
    literally beat them up we created a
  • 00:41:42
    teaching story from it which
  • 00:41:43
    the name of which was the corporate
  • 00:41:45
    seagull comes in and shits all over you
  • 00:41:47
    so you could tell it was an australian
  • 00:41:48
    company all right
  • 00:41:50
    um but they would never come up with a
  • 00:41:52
    solution but they connect you with
  • 00:41:54
    people who might
  • 00:41:56
    yeah and they have no formal reports
  • 00:41:58
    that's how they managed
  • 00:42:00
    major projects like blue water darling
  • 00:42:02
    harbor san francisco front right
  • 00:42:05
    they can achieve things nobody else
  • 00:42:07
    achieved because actually their central
  • 00:42:09
    team
  • 00:42:09
    never made a decision
  • 00:42:13
    yeah that wasn't the way they did it all
  • 00:42:14
    right and i think
  • 00:42:16
    at the moment and again you know the
  • 00:42:18
    other problem is that you've got
  • 00:42:19
    organizational departments and i think
  • 00:42:21
    i've said this before in this chat
  • 00:42:22
    who've got the chief executive officer
  • 00:42:24
    in a stockholm syndrome relationship
  • 00:42:27
    in which he or she actually thinks
  • 00:42:29
    they've got to reorganize when anything
  • 00:42:31
    goes wrong
  • 00:42:32
    yeah yeah the organization is a
  • 00:42:34
    recognition that you failed
  • 00:42:36
    absolutely that we tweaking the system
  • 00:42:38
    changing the system
  • 00:42:39
    you know moving people moving the people
  • 00:42:41
    around that's actually what you do on an
  • 00:42:43
    ecosystem approach this constant desire
  • 00:42:46
    to re-engineer from scratch
  • 00:42:49
    or at the other extreme the nonsense of
  • 00:42:51
    talib solution to everything which is
  • 00:42:53
    kind of like a free market
  • 00:42:55
    yeah we sort of bids all right
  • 00:42:59
    both of those extremes are wrong but i
  • 00:43:01
    also think there's there's nothing
  • 00:43:03
    there there is no metric or measure in
  • 00:43:07
    traditional management that actually
  • 00:43:09
    tells you whether
  • 00:43:10
    an organizational transformation has
  • 00:43:12
    been successful
  • 00:43:14
    apart from the p l i think if you can
  • 00:43:16
    pull costs down
  • 00:43:18
    no that they never have been nobody's
  • 00:43:20
    ever created a measure because nobody
  • 00:43:22
    ever
  • 00:43:23
    has ever seen a successful
  • 00:43:24
    reorganization we're still waiting for
  • 00:43:26
    uh uh uh well i i have to say that
  • 00:43:30
    except when nigel reorganizes himself
  • 00:43:32
    which you can see from his background he
  • 00:43:34
    does on a regular basis
  • 00:43:37
    i was just gonna say that um in a
  • 00:43:40
    tongue-in-cheek way i was working with a
  • 00:43:42
    senior leader at toyota who decided that
  • 00:43:44
    once we were 75 percent agile we've
  • 00:43:46
    successfully transformed and and when i
  • 00:43:50
    asked about
  • 00:43:50
    what did 75 percent agile mean this is a
  • 00:43:53
    bs metric that a lot of people put out
  • 00:43:55
    there by the way all that type of
  • 00:43:56
    nonsense
  • 00:43:57
    uh as long as they were doing something
  • 00:43:58
    vaguely agile-ish they had something
  • 00:44:00
    they called a kanban board or they were
  • 00:44:02
    doing some form of daily stand-up then
  • 00:44:04
    we're obviously becoming agile so as
  • 00:44:06
    long as 75
  • 00:44:07
    of the workforce were doing some
  • 00:44:09
    nonsense we would transform to an agile
  • 00:44:20
    organization
  • 00:44:26
    maturity model like i grew up with cmmi
  • 00:44:28
    and
  • 00:44:29
    uh codification of nonsense but
  • 00:44:32
    given right to be nonsense by a number
  • 00:44:36
    um i actually think their kanban
  • 00:44:37
    maturity model is a massive step forward
  • 00:44:40
    for maturity models
  • 00:44:41
    um and i'm pretty allergic to them as a
  • 00:44:43
    rule
  • 00:44:44
    i just think the spider graph as a
  • 00:44:46
    designer is the most awful thing that's
  • 00:44:48
    ever been inflicted on humans it's
  • 00:44:50
    terrible radar graphs make no sense to
  • 00:44:52
    any human being
  • 00:44:53
    ever just useless um i would i would
  • 00:44:56
    agree jerry
  • 00:44:58
    the circle i might believe it but he
  • 00:45:00
    makes it a hierarchy and that's the
  • 00:45:01
    problem
  • 00:45:03
    yeah all of these things which says
  • 00:45:04
    you're this you know you've got these
  • 00:45:06
    capabilities those are useful
  • 00:45:08
    but the minute you make it a hierarchy
  • 00:45:10
    people want to be at the top of the
  • 00:45:11
    hierarchy and you privileged people
  • 00:45:13
    there
  • 00:45:14
    yeah i think that the thing i really
  • 00:45:15
    like about the kanban maturity model is
  • 00:45:17
    that
  • 00:45:18
    to proceed through it you need to become
  • 00:45:21
    more systems aware
  • 00:45:23
    so traditional maturity models were all
  • 00:45:25
    about codification
  • 00:45:27
    so i need to be able to show that i've
  • 00:45:29
    got repeatable processes i need to
  • 00:45:31
    be able to show that i'm measuring
  • 00:45:33
    things i'm documenting things i'm doing
  • 00:45:35
    the right thing whereas the kanban
  • 00:45:36
    maturity model
  • 00:45:37
    and i'm i haven't really dug deeply into
  • 00:45:40
    a couple of
  • 00:45:41
    my team members have but it's
  • 00:45:44
    it seems to be about recognizing fitness
  • 00:45:47
    for purpose
  • 00:45:48
    so making sure that teams really
  • 00:45:49
    understand the customer
  • 00:45:51
    it's self-assessed ender so if if he put
  • 00:45:54
    in
  • 00:45:55
    i mean you know something we'd happily
  • 00:45:56
    work on him with you know
  • 00:45:58
    mass sense capability where you can't
  • 00:46:00
    gain the output
  • 00:46:02
    yep i start to buy it and if it was
  • 00:46:04
    something which basically said
  • 00:46:05
    this is kind of like your overall
  • 00:46:07
    pattern so these are the behaviors which
  • 00:46:08
    appropriate for you i'd accept it
  • 00:46:11
    yeah but the self-assessed hierarchy has
  • 00:46:13
    a really bad record in industry
  • 00:46:16
    yeah i i see that risk but i also think
  • 00:46:19
    in terms of what's out there for
  • 00:46:21
    measuring
  • 00:46:23
    whether you're doing agile well compared
  • 00:46:26
    to some of the other
  • 00:46:27
    maturity measures and the health checks
  • 00:46:29
    and all the other stuff which are
  • 00:46:31
    frankly frighteningly novice um
  • 00:46:34
    there is a fair bit of thinking behind
  • 00:46:37
    the cam imagery anymore i just want to
  • 00:46:38
    say
  • 00:46:39
    i think i think you know when the goal
  • 00:46:41
    is measurement that
  • 00:46:42
    that is one of the problems
  • 00:46:45
    uh that that starting from how are we
  • 00:46:49
    gonna measure this as opposed to
  • 00:46:51
    starting from how are we going to
  • 00:46:53
    evolve this change this that type of
  • 00:46:55
    stuff and you know the
  • 00:46:57
    the stuff that i i've been using
  • 00:46:59
    recently is this
  • 00:47:00
    um it's uh called maturity mapping
  • 00:47:04
    and the idea of it is that um
  • 00:47:08
    the whole set of theory that i won't go
  • 00:47:09
    into really uh because we're about to
  • 00:47:12
    run out of time but there's a whole set
  • 00:47:13
    of kind of social practice theory and
  • 00:47:15
    basically the idea
  • 00:47:16
    is that like any skill inside of an
  • 00:47:18
    organization
  • 00:47:19
    is dependent on other skills it's a
  • 00:47:21
    network of skills so it's like uh
  • 00:47:25
    in the in in the literature they call it
  • 00:47:27
    a nexus of skills
  • 00:47:28
    um and so the thing is you can ask a
  • 00:47:31
    team what are they trying to do
  • 00:47:32
    what skills are they trying to learn how
  • 00:47:34
    are those things connected to each other
  • 00:47:36
    which things should you focus on in
  • 00:47:39
    order to drag
  • 00:47:40
    other things forward if that makes any
  • 00:47:42
    sense uh the way i i like to think of it
  • 00:47:44
    is roughly
  • 00:47:45
    um you know certain skills
  • 00:47:48
    that you learn or certain processes or
  • 00:47:52
    techniques that you learn
  • 00:47:53
    inside of an organization for instance
  • 00:47:54
    like a kanban board
  • 00:47:58
    gives you the information you need to
  • 00:48:01
    learn
  • 00:48:01
    and do other things lacking it
  • 00:48:05
    you lacking that information you can't
  • 00:48:07
    have the feedback loop close
  • 00:48:09
    so there's a lot of skills that you just
  • 00:48:11
    you don't create them
  • 00:48:12
    for their direct value you create them
  • 00:48:14
    in order to enable other skills to be
  • 00:48:17
    useful at all to kind of create the
  • 00:48:19
    feedback loop
  • 00:48:20
    so i think there's some value in that
  • 00:48:22
    but it has nothing to do with
  • 00:48:24
    measurement
  • 00:48:25
    uh directly but one of the things we
  • 00:48:27
    have been doing is
  • 00:48:28
    we'll do a maturity map in a team and
  • 00:48:31
    then we'll
  • 00:48:32
    ask the executive what they think the
  • 00:48:34
    team is doing what what skills do you
  • 00:48:36
    think this team is trying to learn
  • 00:48:38
    and then you compare the two and you say
  • 00:48:41
    ah
  • 00:48:41
    you know part of the reason why this
  • 00:48:42
    team isn't developing the way you want
  • 00:48:44
    them to is because they think they
  • 00:48:45
    should be doing
  • 00:48:46
    different things than you think they
  • 00:48:48
    should be doing
  • 00:48:50
    maybe we should have a little bit of a
  • 00:48:51
    conversation about where you're going
  • 00:48:53
    and why
  • 00:48:54
    they think they need to learn these
  • 00:48:56
    skills and you think they need to learn
  • 00:48:58
    those skills
  • 00:48:59
    so that's kind of like a using the map
  • 00:49:01
    to create a
  • 00:49:02
    some contrast between the two layers
  • 00:49:04
    with the theory that then the executive
  • 00:49:06
    will have a better understanding of the
  • 00:49:08
    direction the team wants to go in
  • 00:49:10
    because i i do think um most
  • 00:49:13
    maturity models tend toward those um
  • 00:49:18
    like the 75 implementation of some
  • 00:49:21
    thing homogenizing the world even if we
  • 00:49:24
    can't define what that homogenization
  • 00:49:26
    really means
  • 00:49:28
    as opposed to something like this which
  • 00:49:29
    more asks the teams that are very close
  • 00:49:32
    to the surface
  • 00:49:33
    but you know a little bit like a toyota
  • 00:49:34
    kata style what do you need to learn
  • 00:49:37
    and and how are you organizing around
  • 00:49:40
    that and then let's measure
  • 00:49:41
    your your attainment of that go ahead
  • 00:49:44
    and i mean i know we're out of time but
  • 00:49:46
    i think there's another session here
  • 00:49:48
    because
  • 00:49:49
    uh so andrew because
  • 00:49:52
    uh uh three years ago i stood up on a
  • 00:49:54
    stage talking about the self-guided i so
  • 00:49:57
    a self-assessment and self-guided
  • 00:49:58
    correction dashboard we created at
  • 00:50:00
    toyota which is exactly what you're
  • 00:50:02
    describing
  • 00:50:03
    which is teams identify themselves where
  • 00:50:06
    they need to improve and how they
  • 00:50:08
    improve and continuously improve and
  • 00:50:09
    we're not talking
  • 00:50:10
    scrum retrospectives here we're talking
  • 00:50:12
    something that is way beyond that
  • 00:50:14
    and then at the coaching level we
  • 00:50:16
    introduce behavioral markers so that we
  • 00:50:18
    can define
  • 00:50:19
    behaviors that we think were ideal and
  • 00:50:21
    then we could measure those behaviors
  • 00:50:23
    objectively and and the focus is always
  • 00:50:26
    on the delivery of
  • 00:50:27
    value not on achieving metrics
  • 00:50:30
    um and so i'll give you a phrase for
  • 00:50:33
    that
  • 00:50:34
    i mean we kind of said it's called messy
  • 00:50:36
    coherence
  • 00:50:38
    yeah you need the system to be messy but
  • 00:50:40
    coherent
  • 00:50:41
    yeah which is why i oppose maturity
  • 00:50:43
    models and everything else
  • 00:50:45
    because they try and get rid of the mess
  • 00:50:47
    probably
  • 00:50:48
    right and i think that's one of the
  • 00:50:50
    areas where you can measure things and
  • 00:50:52
    there's another phrase which i'm not
  • 00:50:53
    referring to frank herbert's dune which
  • 00:50:55
    is melange
  • 00:50:56
    you want that sort of you know that that
  • 00:50:59
    fervent sort of spice risk mixture of
  • 00:51:01
    things which might was almost at the
  • 00:51:03
    verge of blowing up actually i'm
  • 00:51:04
    referring to frankie but now
  • 00:51:06
    yeah and i think that that's kind of
  • 00:51:08
    like the next generation of
  • 00:51:09
    organizational design the hierarchy
  • 00:51:11
    provides a back-up
  • 00:51:13
    framework a spine which you can fall
  • 00:51:16
    back to but most of the real work is
  • 00:51:18
    done by the muscles and the tendons and
  • 00:51:20
    the
  • 00:51:21
    hormones and everything else around the
  • 00:51:22
    spine that's what we do
  • 00:51:26
    with my physiotherapist for which i'm
  • 00:51:28
    now three minutes late
  • 00:51:30
    i did politely ask david a couple of
  • 00:51:32
    years ago when the maturity model was in
  • 00:51:34
    its
  • 00:51:35
    early uh um early versions whether we
  • 00:51:38
    could change the name
  • 00:51:39
    um but yeah we kind of got stuck where
  • 00:51:42
    we got stuck
  • 00:51:44
    uh i've set up directly to i mean
  • 00:51:46
    they're one to one but
  • 00:51:47
    i'm not going anywhere yeah um all right
  • 00:51:50
    well we'll wind it up there so that dave
  • 00:51:51
    could get to his physiotherapist
  • 00:51:53
    um and the rest and i can go to bed um
  • 00:51:56
    great to see you all and yeah
  • 00:51:59
    look forward to that
  • 00:52:03
    thanks guys nice to see you bye
Etiquetas
  • Adaptive Capacity
  • Organizational Design
  • Informal Networks
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Matrix Structure
  • Agile Transformation
  • Knowledge Management
  • Leadership
  • Complexity Theory
  • Messy Coherence