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. :)

Radical Coaching - What it was for me

By Hans Hillewaert [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

We have started a new training/coaching/mentoring session called Radical Coaching. This session has already gained publicity inside the company and also around external communities. The problem has been, that it's like the Matrix, you need to see it for yourself.

I'll try to explain now the Matrix. :)

Like one of the fathers (Henri Kivioja) of the sessions has said, it's emotional. There are almost none Agile/Lean methodology and framework stuff. We are going to the core values, where all the good things grow. A true change is not eg. taking Scrum into use, a true change is to change the surroundings in order to support people to evolve.

The entire session was based on conversation. Facilitators created a context and then people started to share ideas and opinions about it. It takes the whole session to a new level, that actually our leaders are the ones who are facilitating it. It's just not that this has outsourced this to eg. some external company, it gives strong feeling of commitment, that we are really going to do it.

This whole thing gave me a lot of new hope! We are really going to change things to the better and we are truly going to support each others. Maybe the biggest thing that I felt from the whole session was companionship. You guys and girls are amazing!

It's just the tip of the iceberg.

An organisation is in the middle of Agile transformation process. Some Agile methodology is implemented, but something is not right. Teams are lazily having their retros, some of them are dropping the daily stand ups. All cool practices are not really taken into use. The organisation feels like teflon, nothing really sticks and some off the stuff is falling off.  Does this sound familiar? If so please go on.

Introducing Agile software methodology (eg. Scrum) to the organisation is fairly easy, most easiest way is just to use old Command and Control mechanics and just push it in. The process is pretty simple, only three roles, handful of artifacts and meetings and that's it. But does it really stick? I would say no. I see the whole thing as an iceberg.

By Created by Uwe Kils (iceberg) and User:Wiska Bodo (sky). [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

TIP

This is where all processes, practices and methodologies are. If this part starts to show symptoms it's really painfully visible for everyone. In my experience, this is also what people are trying to fix. Usually this is just pushing more those processes, methodologies and practices in and what I have seen, this rarely do the trick. The reason for this is that there is really no soil to grow, soil is in the rest of the iceberg.

REST OF THE ICEBERG

Here is the organisation culture, if this is not right, nothing magnificent really happens. When I'm talking about organisation, I mean everybody included from the coding grunt to the highest manager (and whatever roles you have in your organisation). Do you have trust in place? Are the different roles of your organisation blaming one another? Are people really taking responsibility? Is it really a great place to work? Do your people collaboratively seek better ways to satisfy the customer?

If you get this part working, I claim that magic really starts to happen. People are seeking better ways to work and they are learning and discovering new things.

LAST WORDS

It is always easier to work with the tip of the iceberg, the rest of the iceberg is really much harder and also more fuzzy. But hey the question is: do we really want to change the world? Or at least our organisations? Please, if any ideas, post a comment.