Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan

What does it mean to be Complexity Conscious about resources? Accept that you cannot predict the future. Choosing how and where to spend your money a year in advance is folly. Minimize long-term commitments where appropriate to maximize discretionary funds. Ignore annual rhythms and allocate resources dynamically based on real-time information.

Our modern perception of innovation is synonymous with their story. Mad men. Isolated. Focused.

innovation doesn’t have to be so intentional. It often occurs when things are used in ways we did not intend.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the precursor to the telephone in order to help deaf students visualize sound.

While we like to think of modern life as the result of human ingenuity and eureka moments, the truth is that accidental breakthroughs have led to as much success as their more intentional counterparts. Randomness and innovation are good friends.

One of the primary goals of global brands and institutions is to eliminate variation and ensure conformity.

close. Every activity in the organization is a black box of potential energy. If every team isn’t constantly learning and improving in ways big and small, we’re missing our chance to pursue our purpose with everything we’ve got.

happens. Amazon recently confounded the Securities and Exchange Commission when it refused to disclose its research and development spending in the same way other major public companies do. At present, the company discloses only “technology and content” spending of more than $20 billion. When pressed as to why it couldn’t break out R&D spend, the firm’s worldwide controller wrote, “Our business model encourages the simultaneous research, design, development, and maintenance of both new and existing products and services. For example, our teams are constantly working to build new Alexa skills and simultaneously maintain current skills, and these activities are within a continuum of those described in ASC 730–10–55–1 and 2 and are not easily distinguishable operationally.”35 The point? We do so much innovation so frequently in so many places here at Amazon that it’s not worth tracking project by project the way other companies do.

Defaults vs. Standards. It’s easy to get in the habit of cementing practices, methods, tools, and products as standards. Standards tend to be enforced. We use this tool and only this tool. We evaluate leads using this process and only this process. And so on. The great thing about standards is that they show us a proven way to do something and they are reliable (for the most part). The problem with standards is that they undermine our ability to use judgment, innovate, and learn. Instead of enforcing standards, think about proven practices as defaults. Defaults are exactly like standards with one exception: you don’t have use them. A default says: If you don’t know what you’re doing, do this. If you don’t have time to think, try it our way. But if you’ve achieved some level of mastery in an area and you think you see a better way, feel free. Let us all know how it goes, because either you’ll generate further proof that our default is sound or you’ll sow the seeds for a new default that we can all benefit from. In the case of my firm, we maintain a default fee structure for our services. If an experienced member wants to try something different—a price premium, a discount, an equity swap—there are no rules against that, but we want to learn from it. Our members know they can take a risk and go their own way, but only when they think that we all stand to benefit.

Twenty Percent Time. Google famously offered its early employees the opportunity to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing personal projects that might or might not have a clear connection to their daily work. We have this program to thank for products such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google News, and even AdSense. All of them grew out of projects started in employees’ spare time. Valve Software, as we’ve discussed, went one step further. They offer employees 100 percent time. Work on what compels you; change it up at any time. Now, you may not be ready to go that far, but consider applying Google’s model in your team for a ninety-day trial period. Remember, the day-to-day workload is going to undermine this program at every turn. That’s what happened at Google in recent years. You’ll have to model and support this practice with discipline and passion to realize its many benefits.

Now, you may not be ready to go that far, but consider applying Google’s model in your team for a ninety-day trial period. Remember, the day-to-day workload is going to undermine this program at every turn. That’s what happened at Google in recent years. You’ll have to model and supp...

Instead of trusting your assumptions and barreling ahead, you’re going to identify them and ask one of the most powerful questions in innovation: how might we validate that?

What does it mean to be People Positive about innovation? Recognize that people are inherently creative given the right conditions. Trust them to sense opportunity and pursue it fluidly. A true culture of innovation is one where we can’t tell the difference between operations and invention.

A true culture of innovation is one where we can’t tell the difference between operations and invention.

What does it mean to be Complexity Conscious about innovation? Accept that innovation is inherently uncertain. A healthy amount of variation and divergence is necessary if you want a vibrant ecology of self-renewa...

Improving workflow, the way value is created, is a continual source of advantage for the firms that do it. They gain speed, quality, efficiency, and in many cases simplicity.

In my experience, very few organizations have a handle on all their projects, how they move through the organization, or how they’re managed day to day.

This is, in many ways, a by-product of functional division. When you nurture large functions—engineering, marketing, human resources—you create an environment where important projects have to cut across the matrix and necessitate the participation of a wide variety of disconnected people.

herd. Of course, they lack the authority to really lead the effort, because all the participants’ allegiances lie with their functions.

Nothing but Projects. Could it be that an organization is nothing more than a series of projects? I know, the traditional definition of a project says that it must have a beginning, an end, and a defined scope and resources. But technically speaking, isn’t that every activity we undertake? Everything from product development to cleaning the bathroom matches that description, depending on your time-frame orientation. Some projects last a century and some last a day. Just because we do something repeatedly doesn’t mean it’s independent of the bigger picture. Indeed, treating everything as a project allows us to be more intentional—starting, stopping, and evolving activity with the same level of scrutiny. A project has a purpose. A project has a cadence. A project uses feedback to learn. A project lens allows us to share a common language about the work of the organization. It forces us to take quotidian tasks and make them more strategic.

Working in Sprints. One way to establish a better rhythm at the team level is to work in sprints. Rather than basing your rhythm on the project’s time line or complexity, consider running every project as a series of one- or two-week sprints. Think of a sprint as a unit of time during which you must produce and share a unit of work—a self-imposed deadline. While this might seem arbitrary, sprints enforce a lot of good habits that seldom emerge without a rapid cadence. For starters, they force teams to get going.

While this might seem arbitrary, sprints enforce a lot of good habits that seldom emerge without a rapid cadence. For starters, they force teams to get going.

Sprints also force teams to break down the work into smaller bites.

So teams are left to figure out what can be done.

Limit WIP.

Limiting our work in progress (WIP) increases flow and overall productivity. But how does this work in practice? First, think about how many projects you can reasonably juggle at once. Now cut that number in half.

You can change a lot about your way of working, but you can’t change the number of hours in the day.

What does it mean to be People Positive about workflow? Recognize that healthy workflow comes from organizing around the work, not working around the organization. When our teams and projects live in the same place, relationships fuel the work. And instead of pushing for uniformity, let local methods and tools flourish.

What does it mean to be Complexity Conscious about workflow? Accept that workflow is something to be coordinated and refined, not something that can be solved. Ensure that every team has the capacity to do the work and improve how they do the work at the same time. In order to maximize the adaptive potential of the organization, create the infrastructure to support loosely coupled, tightly aligned teams.

Accept that workflow is something to be coordinated and refined, not something that can be solved. Ensure that every team has the capacity to do the work and improve how they do the work at the same time. In order to maximize the adaptive potential of the organization, cre...

Death to Status Updates.

The alternative is far simpler. Leaders can either join a team and become part of the workflow, or they can be part of an advice process at the outset of the project or upon request.

“status should live in software.” Words to live by.

Great one-on-ones can provide feedback and mentorship, deepen relationships, or give us a chance to collaborate on the work.

Governance. Over the years, corporate governance has become a circus of compliance and risk avoidance. In the meantime we have forgotten that true stewardship comes from participation

and ownership, not fear. Put simply, if we want organizations to learn and adapt—if we want them to be good citizens—then we need a distributed mechanism for steering and changing the organization. One way to do this is to encourage every team to hold a monthly governance meeting. The goal of this meeting is for everyone to have the chance to voice their concerns and propose local changes to structure, strategy, resources … anything that will help the organization pursue its purpose. Thousands of organizations around the world that practice Sociocracy, Holacracy, or other forms of participatory governance are doing this today. Imagine every team in your organization continuously and deliberately tweaking, not just your products and services but the organization itself.

Meetings in Action Facilitators and Scribes. One of the best ways to increase meeting effectiveness is to ensure that someone is responsible for the structure, flow, and output of every meeting. Two roles that we have found to be particularly effective are facilitator and scribe. The facilitator role keeps the meeting on track, enforcing whatever format and ground rules the team has agreed upon. That could include cutting off conversational tangents, noticing when some people need to step up or step back, and even pointing out when the leader isn’t playing by the rules. The scribe role captures any actions or outputs created throughout the meeting and leverages any tools or interfaces required by the work. This could include anything from a digital Kanban board to a live document to a task manager. To get started, try electing a facilitator and scribe in ea...

Retrospectives. If you were to chart the most valuable but least practiced meetings, the hands-down winner would be something called a retrospective. A retro is simply a chance for any team to stop, notice, and learn.

complex (four Ls: liked, learned, lacked, longed for). The best kind of retrospective? The one that happens.

It’s also important to make sure that retros are a place where participants can say what needs to be said. If everyone holds back, the value of the meeting drops enormously.

Start meetings by checking in. Beginning with a question allows us to connect on a human level. We want to hear from everyone. Typical questions include: What’s on your mind? What are you looking forward to? What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken?

Speak and participate in rounds. When we want to prioritize speed and inclusion, we’ll go around the table and give everyone one chance to provide updates, ask questions, offer feedback, or give consent, depending on the type of meeting we’re holding. Everyone else is invited to listen respectfully and wait for their turn to speak.

liberatingstructures.com

Transparency. It’s difficult to overstate the degree to which Evolutionary Organizations value and practice transparency.

insight can come from anywhere, but only if information reaches the right person at the right time. Because we can’t predict when that will be, we have to aspire to what economists refer to as information symmetry—a condition in which all relevant information is known to all participants.

Ask Me Anything. One powerful way to break patterns of secrecy and rumor is to host a regular Ask Me Anything session with your function, division, or organization.

Team Charter. In our rush to deliver, we often forget to do the foundational work of standing up a new team. Management puts eight people in a room and calls one of them the leader, and we’re off to the races. This is a missed opportunity. By tackling a few important topics early on, we can avoid a lot of confusion and conflict later. That’s why I like to make the agreements that define a team explicit before we get started, by creating a team charter. Think of this a little bit like an OS for the team. A team charter forces the team to answer critical questions about why it exists and how its members want to show up for one another. To get started, gather a new (or existing) team and answer the following questions. Keep in mind, these are just a starting point. Real charters can go significantly deeper if the team is willing to do the work. When you’re done, use a consent process (see page 70) to ensure that what you produced is safe to try. Revisit it at any time, particularly when there’s disagreement or disruptive change that may impact the team.

Why does this team exist? How do we contribute to the organization’s success? What are we accountable for? What is our essential intent for the next days? How will we know if we’ve succeeded? What principles will guide us? What will we prioritize for the next days? What are the roles required to do this work? What roles will we each play? Are there any roles not yet claimed? What do we expect of one another? Who are our users or customers? What decision rights do we have? What can we do without asking permission? Within what guardrails do we have autonomy? Are we responsible for anything that we don’t control? How will we make decisions? What resources do we control? What is our meeting rhythm? How often will we conduct retrospectives? What tools will we use to communicate and coordinate? How will we share our work with one another and the organization? What are the learning metrics that will help us steer? How will we know if we’re making progress?

If you’re the leader, go first. You’ll be able to hear a pin drop, because you’re about to share the secret code that everyone in the room has been trying to crack for months or even years: what makes you tick.

Questions About You What are some honest, unfiltered things about you? What drives you nuts? What are your quirks? How can people earn an extra gold star with you? What qualities do you particularly value in people who work with you? What are some things that people might misunderstand about you that you should clarify?