Insights for the Journey

How do you think about self-management? Most people view it simply as a better way to organize work.That's a perfectly legitimate way to hold it. In this episode, I offer two other perspectives: self-management as the only way I would ever want to organize work. And self-management as the most natural way to organize work.

I've noticed it can be reassuring to have, early on, a mock design session with a number of senior leaders to outline what the organization might look like in the future.Wait a minute: I no longer believe that you can and should re-design an organization on a white board with a few leaders locked up in a room. And yet I've found myself doing exactly that a few times.That's because the goal is not to design the future organizations. But to get a shared, reassuring sense that yes, this is not crazy, it actually looks possible. It is much easier to sail of to new adventures when you have a sense that there is firm land on the other side of the water.

As they consider a leap in their management system, a lot of companies want to visit organizations that are further ahead on the journey.That sounds reasonable, but experience seems to indicate that it's not a good idea. When people reach out to me to ask: who should we visit, I generally say "I'm sorry, I'm not sure it's a good idea that I help you with this."In the episode, I share what brought me to this understanding and I suggest what you could do instead. And why, when you are a year or more into the journey, the story changes and there might be now be very fruitful to visit other companies for inspiration.

Is it a good idea to start with some visible, symbolic actions? I'm not sure I resonate with the notion of "symbolic". I reframe the question differently: do you start with a big, meaty change right away?Or do you start with smaller changes that help the organization get ready for more? That's the route I've seen many organizations take. In the episode, I share some of the first, smaller actions they've taken that I found intriguing.

The traditional way to make change happen is to appoint a team that will think things through, get approval and then implement it.Organizations that make the leap to next-stage practices rely on invitation instead of appointment.There are obvious reasons to switch to invitation, but also a few pitfalls I will discuss. Spoiler alert: invite the volunteers who show up to use the advice process, which takes care of most of the pitfalls.

I've heard (and can easily believe) that making old and new assumptions explicit is perhaps the most powerful step you can take in the early stages of the journey. Invite colleagues to name the unspoken assumptions behind your current management practices. Most likely, people will be shocked by the ugliness of these assumptions, once they put them into words. Shocked... and relieved that they are finally named. And then you can invite people to evoke a new set of life-giving assumptions that will inspire and guide your transformation. I've come to see that a conversation about assumptions is like a conversation on values, but on steroids!

When is a good moment to go public with your vision, and how?It's a tricky question, because you want to invite the whole organization, but avoid a big "ta-da" announcement. To me, the answer might boil down to making a powerful, yet humble invitation.

In large organizations, engaging the whole organization right away might not be the most productive way to get the ball rolling. I've heard from a number of large organizations where the leader has started the journey by creating a group of first followers.In this episode I'll share the many benefits this approach seems to have, and some powerful ways to get such a group started and inspired to rock the boat.

Quite quickly, you are likely to find that many of the people closest to you, those in the top team, don't share your vision for a new management paradigm, and send contradictory signals down the organization. Here are some thoughts on how you can you engage the executive committee.

As a top leader you are "different", you play by different rules than most other people in your organization. This insulates you from others and makes you less powerful in the transformation.It is time to be a mortal again.