No more boss?! How do things get done around here?!

As you know I am dedicated to developing self-management in both individual career management as on an organizational level. This month’s blog is about self-management on an organizational level.

Unmistakably, there is a growing sense that something in the way we work and run organizations today is broken. This sense urges leaders to explore new ways of working and organizing. Frederic Laloux (2014) has conducted a series of case studies in which he's been looking at organizations that are successful and practice new approaches to management. One of his findings is that all the organizations in the study, regardless of their size, sector or activity, made breakthroughs in regards to three things:

1. The development of self-management. Along with self-management come flat organizations with a minimum of managers and staff-functions, placing responsibility with the people that are doing the day to day operations in the field.

2. Purpose. The purpose of these organizations is clear and supported by every single employee.

3. Striving towards wholeness. In these organizations, people tend to show up ‘whole’ at work. No masks, creating an atmosphere of openness, truth, and trust.

This month’s blog was inspired by his book ‘Reinventing organizations’ and by my neighbor Tinne.

Today, few people in the workforce escape top management's efforts to change the way we work. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my neighbor over a Friday-afternoon-white-wine. She was telling me about recent changes at work. A new manager had been brought in and his analysis was that over the years too many staff functions with little added value had been created. Furthermore, he wanted to place more responsibility with the people in the core of the activities of the company. Recently the decision was made to strike regional managers form the organogram. The argument being that the teams should be managing themselves. My neighbor sighed. She said she felt powerless. Team meetings had become very difficult with no manager to make the decisions. She felt awkward in the conversations with her peers, for instance telling a colleague that she wasn't happy with the quality of his work. Taking simple decisions had become near to impossible: 'We can't even come to an agreement concerning holiday planning!'

In other words, even if the line of thinking of Tinne's new boss is valuable and relevant if you want to foster self-management, things seem to have gotten out of hand. The employees are left in chaos. They don't know how to deal with the new reality (yet).

Of course, I am a big fan of self-management. Tinne’s boss has altered the structure of the organizations by eliminating management roles. A strong signal that he wants to control less and trust more if ever I’ve seen one. However, structure is not the only aspect. If you are going to let people take responsibility you are also going to have to put some processes in place that allow people to self-manage.

The reason is obvious when you think about it. You are asking people to adopt all new sorts of behavior: teams have to make collective decisions, resolve their own conflicts and come up with solutions for unforeseen problems, without a boss who used to make decisions for them. As Tinne’s story proves, this is not so easy as most people have been operating in a top-down environment for a long time. Introducing self-management is actually a fundamental transformation which will alter organizational culture.

If you want to make self-management work in organizations you have to replace old ways with new ones. Setting clear processes can help:

- establish ground rules for conduct in meetings

- build a process for team meetings

- build a process for decision making

- train people in conflict management

It might be a good idea to attract or find people within the organization who are willing to take on a role as team coach for teams to contact whenever they feel a coach can add value.

Transforming top-down run organizations into organizations where self-management replaces the control and demand mantra is not something that happens simply by taking down old structures. You also have to put new processes in place.

If you want to learn more about co-creation, contact me on Lesley.Vanleke@VanlekeAdvies.be or call +32 478 51 96 66