Times They Are A Changing... #2

How Do We Start Creating An Alternate Organizing Design?

How do we move to a new organizing design? Especially when things are already under way – the organizing design/model is established, and people come to each interaction with long established ways of doing things. Further, there is a built in, mostly implicit, expectation about how “things should be done around here”.

The challenge is even more daunting for many when they are unconsciously at the affect of a myth that includes beliefs like: change can only start at the top; you have to have permission or authority to cause change; change takes a long time and requires resources… all these beliefs have the effect of giving permission to inaction, resignation or a reluctant acceptance of the status quo.

We first need to recognize/acknowledge that our prevailing mindset is biased in favor of a worldview in which predict and control is the operating state.  If we can’t predict outcomes, and if we can’t control things on the way to desired outcomes, then we are, de facto, not ready, we are not prepared. We need more predictive data.

Instead, we need to start practicing operating with an emergent worldview in which the operative mode is sensing what is happening in our immediate environment and responding to what we see, sense and feel – sensing the gap between what is going on now and what could be in the furtherance of our purpose.

This moment-by-moment sensing will inform how to respond, NOW, with appropriate next actions – what to stop, what to start, what to do differently, and what to make sure we continue, all to forward the group’s purpose

Here are the key steps:

Start with Purpose

Why does the group exist? Who or what is it designed to serve? Who would care if the group no longer existed – in what way would they be impacted that would be a detriment to them?

Alignment with, and passion for, the purpose should be a fundamental, must meet condition for including people in the group – both in the initial recruitment stage and in the ongoing continuing to belong phase.

Add Values

Clearly articulated, and shared, core values help shape decisions about mission, strategy, governance, policies, rules, systems and day-to-day operations.

As Thomas Jefferson puts it, “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” Principles, or core values are non-negotiable, and are another fundamental must meet condition in decisions about who should be in the group.

Align on The Mission

The mission, or strategic intent, is a time-bound expression of intention for the group. It is aspirational and it is an articulation of things like scale, rate of growth, impact, and reputation, to name a few.

The value of articulating a mission is that it helps to guide conversations about resources, priorities, infrastructure, systems and day-to-day focus, goals and priorities.

Design The Groups Key Organizing Elements

1. The Organizing Structure: Organize the work that needs to be done into roles and functions [groupings of roles] that are needed – do not organize around people, job titles or job descriptions
2. The Governance Process: Governance is a continual/ongoing process to decide how to break down each element of the work into roles, what authorities each role has, what to expect of each role, and what resources and permissions each role has
3. Operations: the focus of operations is on getting things done. In tactical meetings the group reviews metrics, update projects, processes tensions – tensions being the gap between what is present now, and what could be to forward the group’s purpose.

 Some Guiding Perspectives

The more explicit we can be about guiding perspectives the easier it will be to align, collaborate, produce desired outcomes, and resolve tensions and conflicts.

1. The focus of leadership is on organizing work, not people
2. Everyone in the organization is considered to be a leader
3. Every leader’s primary job is to advance the roles they fill
4. Each roles is defined to include:
1. Specific accountabilities
2. The decision-making authority and permissions the role has
3. The responsibilities of the role for things like transparency, communication, surfacing and processing tensions
4. Managing expectations
5. Participating in conversations about operations
6. Contributing to governance conversations.

Some Essential Practices

A practice refers to a designed, regular and intentional set of actions that interrupt old habits [ingrained unconscious “practices”] and create new activities designed to generate the behavior and the results, wanted to forward the group’s purpose.

Practices need to be shared and need to be part of everyone’s day-to-day behavior to yield their value.

After the essentials are in place additional practices will be identified as missing in the day-to-day process of identifying and resolving tensions. In governance meetings proposals will be accepted to add new practices, as they are needed.

Starting essentials:

1.  Sensing and responding NOW, displacing predicting and controlling the future
2. Conversations for action – requesting, promising, making offers
3. Maintaining an existence system – a visible, distributed display of measures and metrics, next actions, and projects
4. Surfacing and dealing with conflict
5. Operational meetings
6. Regular governance conversations
7. Managing meeting to stay on purpose
8. Distributed decision-making