Insights for the Journey

So if there is no manager anymore, who is accountable for a team's results? Someone needs to be!This is an important episode: I'm struck that many people on the journey to self-management can't really answer this question.No wonder people in the organization are confused and that many people see self-management as some idealistic dream, when it's the most powerful mechanism we know.

Perhaps you're ready to create self-managing teams at the front line but want/need to keep a pyramid "above" them - because that feels like a challenge already or because your owners or board wouldn't allow you to go further. Can that be done? And how would that work, a self-managing team reporting to a manager?

Managers are the losers in the transition to self-management - or so it seems on the surface. The reality is more complex and beautiful. How can you help managers make a temporarily difficult but ultimately rewarding transition?And if you are one of those managers, what can you expect? In a nutshell: at first, confusion and sometimes pain. And then relief, and the joy of doing creative work again.

It's hard for many people to understand how a team can operate if there is no manger or team leader. The principle is actually quite simple: we just need to stop thinking in terms of boxes (jobs) and think in terms of roles. And then to distribute the roles of the box we used to call "manager".In this episode I share some of the typical roles; how you can define the roles and how you can allocate them.Oh, and I'll share why "coordinator" or "lead" is NOT a role, but simply a way to call a manager something nicer!

This is a bit of a special episode. It's not based on something I've learnt from talking with people who are on the journey of transforming their organizations. This is based on something that I believe in strongly and would try to do, if I were in their place.We've forgotten the power of rituals to celebrate inflection points and sustain us through major transformations. How about we reclaim rituals for ourselves?Here are 6 ideas for creating a powerful moment to honor the best of the past and call a new future into being.

We are all used to org charts. So much so that when the pyramid goes, many people mistakenly believe any form of structure in gone too.You'll make your life a lot easier, I believe, if you make the new structure as visible as possible for everyone to be reminded, again and again, about the structure and roles in the new organization.

As you move to self-management, many existing practices need to be upgraded with new ones (how you make decisions, how roles are defined and allocated, ...)But how do you define and formalize these new processes in a way that doesn't feel like another thing that is imposed onto teams from the top?

What happens to the role of support functions as you transition to self-management? Support functions are often an integral part of the "power over" in traditional hierarchies, so prepare for some profound changes.To answer these questions, I find it helpful to disaggregate what support functions do into four different roles they play. In this episode, I'll share how each of these roles naturally adapts to self-management.And I'll share how people who work in support functions might end up with less "power over" but more joy in their work.

In the long run, the team at the top is bound to disappear.But in the meantime, what the team's role during the transition? How can the team help, rather than get in the way of self-management?

Perhaps your organization is ready to transition to self-managing teams at the front line, but needs or wants to keep a traditional management "above" the teams. That's often a first step... or all that is possible (for now) because your board or investor wouldn't support a more profound change. This can work... but how? How can you articulate the relationship between thee team and its manager above, so that the team really is free and powerful to self-manage?