Hierarchies are oversimplifying complex things

After I started working as a Scrum Master back in my times. I felt, that there is something really dysfunctional about our workplaces. Still I was not able to put my finger on it. There was an excellent talk by Kati Saarikivi about Work as learning, meaning and interconnectedness in my previous company where I worked. In the talk there was something mind blowing and it has been puzzling me ever since.

Here comes the idea in brief:

By nature, people are creating human networks dynamically. Pretty much same way as neurons are working in brains. In other words we (group of people) organise ourselves automatically to correspond to the changing environment.

During that time, I was working as an Agile Coach and of course I started to think, how this idea reflects to companies which I have been working with. If you have ever worked in corporate, you know that organisation change is something which is constant... every year.

So this was my first tought out of it.

Forced organisational changes are bad imitations of humans natural way to organise themselves freely to respond to a changing environment.
— Ismo Aro (@ismoaro) April 7, 2013

Workplaces nowadays does not really support this natural way of forming. If we think about all the "fun" stuff, what is happening, like policies, rules, hierarchies and matrix organisations. I came to this one.

Companies policies, rules, hierarchies are usually causing more harm than good. Is it unethical to follow them?
— Ismo Aro (@ismoaro) November 24, 2013

and this one.

Social networks are dynamic by nature, not a hierarchical or matrix.
— Ismo Aro (@ismoaro) November 24, 2013

But I was not quite happy yet. What is the reason, why is it like this? The final piece came from Duarte Vasco, he tweeted like this.

Hierarchies are good at avoiding complexity. Networks are best to *embrace* the existing complexity. #socbiz #pmot
— Vasco Duarte (@duarte_vasco) December 10, 2013

We are trying to make sense to these complex things. How to do it? We try to categorise things. Introduce different kind of boxes with different functions. Oversimplify things with the hierarchies and matrix organisations.

So what should we do? A change in paradigm is required which makes it hard. We should embrace the environment which nurtures adaptive social networks.We should not create any artificial borders or roles. And we should not be bothered about the fact that the situation changes all the time. And above all, enjoy working together!

And how this reflects thing like Agile methods and frameworks? Kids, that's an another story. :)

Given Empowerment

The company goes Agile. In one night teams are in self-organization and -management mode. The management announces empowerment to the teams and stands aside. Time goes and it seems that teams are not performing as expected. The blaming starts: "even with the empowerment you are not delivering".

Sculpture "Empowerment", Lincoln (PAUL FARMER) / CC BY-SA 2.0

Empowerment is something what leaders should foster. Leaders should create an environment which really supports people's and team's self-management. In an environment with no blame but trust, people can truly choose how they are working and learn new things. Also a clear vision why and what we are doing, including constant constructive feedback must be in. These things are not coming automatically when empowerment is given.

It is about focusing what you can do for your people, not what they can do for you, or how they should act / behave. As a work it's difficult, much more difficult than giving commands.

Dilemma of: Scrum from Above and Self-managed teams

Scrum values strongly self-managed teams, with a good reason and that probably works nicely, if Scrum has been taken first into use in R&D team(s) and after that it has spread up.

But when you are in situation where Scrum has been decided in the management and it has dropped to teams, situation is pretty much different. Job of a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach becomes very interesting when you offer the gift of self-management to persons who are absolutely not wanting it.

This is again the situation where your people skills are far more valuable than technical skills, because changing people to think that self-management is rather like freedom than a cage of responsibility, is a challenging task.