There is a well know adoption curve that looks somewhat like a wave that products surf going through their life cycle. Just like the surfer, they start well before the main curve/wave with the pioneers. In this stage new possibilities are created, new ideas, new language. Soon there is a slight build up of the approaching wave as early adopters discover and use the new product basking in the novelty. A critical point develops, where the novelty is not enough and a transition to the main wave must be made. This is often called the early adopter chasm as it is usually very difficult to make the transition to a mainstream product surfing on the massive wave. While there is excitement in the early phases, with all of the discoveries and new ideas, the real impact is in the actual surfing of the wave. Here you feel the presence of the masses and prove the general usefulness of the product under stress. Flow state is needed here to maintain the equilibrium to stay on the face of the wave. Losing the equilibrium can cause a wipe out or even simply sliding over the top and off the backside of the wave.
I have experience the full life cycle through this wave. In the late 1970's into the early 1980's, I was a contributor to the creation and development of early computer network architectures as a developer, architect and standards body member. It was an exciting time, creating new protocols defining how computers talk to each other, new ideas about how to use networks.
The company I worked for created a very advanced network architecture well out in front of any other networking product existing in the world at the time. Many ideas we developed into a product came into the open internet many years, sometimes decades later. The down side was that most people at that time did not know how to effectively take advantage of the features. The implementation was so big that it could only run on mainframe computers. Instead, a light weight protocol called TCP/IP satisfied their needs at the current popular level of sophistication. I watched our network architecture slide into niche markets as TCP/IP took over the world. 30 years later, I recently, helped the last major user complete the transition to TCP/IP. So I have experienced the full life cycle from birth to death.
Directly experiencing this, I learned a lot of lessons.
1) Pioneers and early adopters are essential to feed the product pipe line. But don't expect to take what is developed there directly to the main stream. It must be tempered to fit the following:
2) Main stream products must be barely ahead of the current needs of the main stream users. Not so novel that they cannot immediately see their need and its value. But yet novel enough to be seen as a bit different. It must not introduce concepts that are so foreign that it scares them away from trying it. It must not be perceived as being bloated with features that do not address some known need.
Developing and enhancing a product at this precise point is like surfacing the face of a wave, you need to be in flow state sensing the current need of the masses and moving with that need. Staying to far ahead keeps you in the early adopter stage, falling behind put you on the back side of the wave to be quickly forgotten.
The practice of Holacracy directly supports the flow state needed to surf the wave. The principles of sense and respond apply to both the agility to adapt the product but also in keeping the entire organization constantly aware of the surf board and adapting its form to stay on top of it.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
You Get What You ...
A while back I wrote a blog post titled "You get what you measure" discussing the importance of metrics in the change process. A couple of days ago I read a blog post at ZenHabits on the theme "You get what you do" discussing the actual change happens in the doing. It hit me that these two concepts are intimately intertwined. How do you change without doing and how do you understand what to do without measuring.
These two came together recently for me in the area of weight loss. I have been on a steady uphill slope with my weight and became very dissatisfied with how I felt, how out of breath I became and of course not liking looking like a stuffed sausage. I have heard the story: "I keep reading diet books but I am not losing weight". The punch line is that you cannot lose weight by trying to understand the process, but only by actual practice.
But what is practice? It seems to me to be a loop of measure, do, measure, do...
Back to my weight. Several months ago I saw a program by Dr Joel Furman about changing eating habits (life style change) to focus on consuming a diet high in micro nutrients (vitamins, phyto-chemicals, anti-oxidants, etc) but low in the macro nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, protein). One premise is that we over eat because the body craves micro nutrients but the western diet is high calorie but low in micro nutrients. Thus we over eat and get obese.
So I increased my intake of micro nutrient rich food and watched my high calorie foods. Weight kept going up. So I began to understand that the phrase "watch what I eat" means exactly that; observe the food as it move from my plate to my mouth. It is not a measurement technique, but a placebo in place of actually doing anything to moderate my input.
So with the micro nutrients, my hunger was well contained and my body felt healthier, and I was actually doing something in the right direction, but I did not have any handle on calories. What I was missing was any real measuring.
A couple of months ago one of my best friends at work came in with a high tech pedometer and an app on his smart phone, raving about how measuring his steps and logging his food was helping him lose weight. The device and app came from a company called Fitbit.
I looked into it. The system was very easy to use and fairly automatic. They had a tracker device that would measure steps, stairs, distance, calories burned and if worn on your wrist at night, how well you slept. It would automatically sync through a blue tooth connection to your online account. They also had a wifi connected scale that measured weight and fat content; which also automatically synced with your account. Just wear the tracker and step on the scale every day. The only piece of the puzzle that was not automatic was logging food consumed. With the phone app, you always have a tool at easy hand to do that.
Automatic enough that I would stick with it, I bought the set. I now have the measurement tools with historical graphs, etc. I need to understand what to do and the motivation to actually do it.
I started just before Thanksgiving and slowed down the gain that first week. During the 3 weeks after that, I lost 10 pounds. Seems like a lot but I am a big guy so this might be more like 5 or 6 pounds for someone else. Most days I meet my goals in calorie intake, and my goal of 10,000 steps and 10 flights of stairs. I feel so much better. My physical fitness has noticeably improved. Better yet this system feels like something I can maintain for a very long time, ideally a permanent lifestyle change. High in micro nutrients and low in calorie measure diet with goals/feedback in a walking program.
My take away from this experience is that to be effective in making a change in your life, business, anything at all; is to dynamically steer with a constant cycle of measure, adjust, do, measure, adjust, do...
PS, just got this out before the Mayan calendar expires.. ;-)
These two came together recently for me in the area of weight loss. I have been on a steady uphill slope with my weight and became very dissatisfied with how I felt, how out of breath I became and of course not liking looking like a stuffed sausage. I have heard the story: "I keep reading diet books but I am not losing weight". The punch line is that you cannot lose weight by trying to understand the process, but only by actual practice.
But what is practice? It seems to me to be a loop of measure, do, measure, do...
Back to my weight. Several months ago I saw a program by Dr Joel Furman about changing eating habits (life style change) to focus on consuming a diet high in micro nutrients (vitamins, phyto-chemicals, anti-oxidants, etc) but low in the macro nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, protein). One premise is that we over eat because the body craves micro nutrients but the western diet is high calorie but low in micro nutrients. Thus we over eat and get obese.
So I increased my intake of micro nutrient rich food and watched my high calorie foods. Weight kept going up. So I began to understand that the phrase "watch what I eat" means exactly that; observe the food as it move from my plate to my mouth. It is not a measurement technique, but a placebo in place of actually doing anything to moderate my input.
So with the micro nutrients, my hunger was well contained and my body felt healthier, and I was actually doing something in the right direction, but I did not have any handle on calories. What I was missing was any real measuring.
A couple of months ago one of my best friends at work came in with a high tech pedometer and an app on his smart phone, raving about how measuring his steps and logging his food was helping him lose weight. The device and app came from a company called Fitbit.
I looked into it. The system was very easy to use and fairly automatic. They had a tracker device that would measure steps, stairs, distance, calories burned and if worn on your wrist at night, how well you slept. It would automatically sync through a blue tooth connection to your online account. They also had a wifi connected scale that measured weight and fat content; which also automatically synced with your account. Just wear the tracker and step on the scale every day. The only piece of the puzzle that was not automatic was logging food consumed. With the phone app, you always have a tool at easy hand to do that.
Automatic enough that I would stick with it, I bought the set. I now have the measurement tools with historical graphs, etc. I need to understand what to do and the motivation to actually do it.
I started just before Thanksgiving and slowed down the gain that first week. During the 3 weeks after that, I lost 10 pounds. Seems like a lot but I am a big guy so this might be more like 5 or 6 pounds for someone else. Most days I meet my goals in calorie intake, and my goal of 10,000 steps and 10 flights of stairs. I feel so much better. My physical fitness has noticeably improved. Better yet this system feels like something I can maintain for a very long time, ideally a permanent lifestyle change. High in micro nutrients and low in calorie measure diet with goals/feedback in a walking program.
My take away from this experience is that to be effective in making a change in your life, business, anything at all; is to dynamically steer with a constant cycle of measure, adjust, do, measure, adjust, do...
PS, just got this out before the Mayan calendar expires.. ;-)
Monday, December 3, 2012
Over the Cliff
We hear a lot about the fiscal cliff now, not quite as much as we did for the Presidential election and particularly no flood of ads. However I think that all the rhetoric about how we have to avoid going over the cliff, how the politicians in Washington have to solve this problem before the end is a bunch of hot air.
No need to worry about it. I predict that we are going over. I believe that it is pretty much a done deal.
First it is to big a problem to solve in one month. The politicians are so out of practice in compromising that it will take longer. The same conditions that caused them to set up the cliff still exist. All the politicians are still saying that they will only accept everything they wanted a year ago.
Secondly, and probably a bigger issue, is that preventing going over the cliff is to neither Republican's or Democrat's political advantage. In fact any move to solve it will bee seen a weakness and be a major political defeat by anyone who blinks.
Most of the Republicans got elected by their district on the promise of never voting to raise taxes and reducing the cost of government. Many Democrats got elected on the promise of raising taxes on the rich and not reducing the entitlement programs. If either blinks, then they lose their job next election. And that is what is closest to the heart of a politician (and of course most of us) keeping their job.
But falling off the fiscal cliff solves all of those political problems!
After January 1, the baseline is drastically changed!
Taxes are higher and government expense is reduced. It is a much better political position to negotiate from. You can reduce the taxes for one segment of the population without voting for an increase in another. As far as government spending, it requires some justification to increase any budget. No one has to vote to reduce a budget and budgets don't just automatically get grandfathered at the old high levels. Everyone politician can claim to be a hero back home where they get elected.
Of course this political victory come at a cost to the economy. The greatest is the level of uncertainty business and people will feel for the next month and as long as it takes to come to a settlement. In uncertainty, business will avoid growth investment. So employment will take a hit. People will not know how to plan for 2013 taxes. If they can save for higher taxes that reduces spending. If they cannot afford the higher taxes, depression and panic sets in.
Given that all of this is pretty obvious and politicians are pretty savvy about protecting their political interest is why I say that going over is pretty much a done deal. I would not be surprised if this is already recognized in backroom deals and that any negotiation that is happening is already using Jan 1 as the baseline. The question is how fast after Jan 1 will they be able to act.
Even with all this as a back drop, progress can be made if they try to create a number of smaller bills get the low hanging fruit were everyone pretty much agrees and not try to get one huge bill perfect. I have heard some thoughts in this direction, but it would be a new way for congress to operate.
I will check back to this blog entry early January and add some though about how I think I did.
No need to worry about it. I predict that we are going over. I believe that it is pretty much a done deal.
First it is to big a problem to solve in one month. The politicians are so out of practice in compromising that it will take longer. The same conditions that caused them to set up the cliff still exist. All the politicians are still saying that they will only accept everything they wanted a year ago.
Secondly, and probably a bigger issue, is that preventing going over the cliff is to neither Republican's or Democrat's political advantage. In fact any move to solve it will bee seen a weakness and be a major political defeat by anyone who blinks.
Most of the Republicans got elected by their district on the promise of never voting to raise taxes and reducing the cost of government. Many Democrats got elected on the promise of raising taxes on the rich and not reducing the entitlement programs. If either blinks, then they lose their job next election. And that is what is closest to the heart of a politician (and of course most of us) keeping their job.
But falling off the fiscal cliff solves all of those political problems!
After January 1, the baseline is drastically changed!
Taxes are higher and government expense is reduced. It is a much better political position to negotiate from. You can reduce the taxes for one segment of the population without voting for an increase in another. As far as government spending, it requires some justification to increase any budget. No one has to vote to reduce a budget and budgets don't just automatically get grandfathered at the old high levels. Everyone politician can claim to be a hero back home where they get elected.
Of course this political victory come at a cost to the economy. The greatest is the level of uncertainty business and people will feel for the next month and as long as it takes to come to a settlement. In uncertainty, business will avoid growth investment. So employment will take a hit. People will not know how to plan for 2013 taxes. If they can save for higher taxes that reduces spending. If they cannot afford the higher taxes, depression and panic sets in.
Given that all of this is pretty obvious and politicians are pretty savvy about protecting their political interest is why I say that going over is pretty much a done deal. I would not be surprised if this is already recognized in backroom deals and that any negotiation that is happening is already using Jan 1 as the baseline. The question is how fast after Jan 1 will they be able to act.
Even with all this as a back drop, progress can be made if they try to create a number of smaller bills get the low hanging fruit were everyone pretty much agrees and not try to get one huge bill perfect. I have heard some thoughts in this direction, but it would be a new way for congress to operate.
I will check back to this blog entry early January and add some though about how I think I did.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Kanban
Recently, I attended a webinar by Net Objectives titled "De-mystifying Kanban." It was a very well done presentation discussing the basic principles and practices of a Agile software development variant called Kanban. They did a good job relating Kanban to the Agile software development practice of Scrum and also to the more general practices of Lean. There was a good discussion on how to use Lean's value stream analysis to organize the flow of the work. This post is not intended to be a full review of Kanban or the presentation. This opening paragraph is to set the context for a couple of points I would like to discuss.
Most of Kanban fits in the tactical organizational space. As in most Agile software practices Kanban emphasizes breaking software development into small distinct chunks usually expressed as a story and progressing them through various steps of development such as design, coding, unit testing, integration, etc. depending on what makes sense for the particular particular organization.
The Agile software development systems tend to emphasize cross training so that most everyone in the team can execute in all steps of development. Emphasizing predominately a team of generalists. There are some specialists for certain activities, such as database or build specialists, but the emphasis is on generalizing the roles so that any team member can, for the most part, pickup any story at any point in its development or even work in pairs in a fast paced test driven development pair programing model, switching back and forth between the tester and coder roles.
This emphasis on generalizing of roles in Agile software development seems to me to be different from the emphasis I see in Holacracy of differentiating and separating roles to focused onto an individual. While this seems to be Holacracy"s emphasis, Holacracy works very well with teams focusing on role generalization in their operational activities. There are a number of examples of Agile teams using Holacracy very successfully.
Back to the webinar, I heard many times the phrase "Kanban opens up the opportunity to have a conversation" on defining policies, roles, relationships, etc. It was always left at "having a conversation." No idea as how to structure the conversation. This is where the Governance practices of Holacracy really shine. The purpose, inputs, outputs, and meeting practices are very well structured and defined in Holacracy. This leads to very clear results and a clear way forward from these "conversations". Leaving the conversations undefined in Kanban, still leaves a lot of room for stalemates, politics, unclear definitions and directions, unproductive meetings.
I feel that Kanban has very strong operational characteristics for work that can be structured in such a way to effectively use it. Kanban should be well understood by many organizations as it can be surprising how often it can be useful. But it is not sufficient in itself, Kanban needs the governance practices offered in Holacracy to develop clarity for the Kanban practices to be as effective as possible.
Most of Kanban fits in the tactical organizational space. As in most Agile software practices Kanban emphasizes breaking software development into small distinct chunks usually expressed as a story and progressing them through various steps of development such as design, coding, unit testing, integration, etc. depending on what makes sense for the particular particular organization.
The Agile software development systems tend to emphasize cross training so that most everyone in the team can execute in all steps of development. Emphasizing predominately a team of generalists. There are some specialists for certain activities, such as database or build specialists, but the emphasis is on generalizing the roles so that any team member can, for the most part, pickup any story at any point in its development or even work in pairs in a fast paced test driven development pair programing model, switching back and forth between the tester and coder roles.
This emphasis on generalizing of roles in Agile software development seems to me to be different from the emphasis I see in Holacracy of differentiating and separating roles to focused onto an individual. While this seems to be Holacracy"s emphasis, Holacracy works very well with teams focusing on role generalization in their operational activities. There are a number of examples of Agile teams using Holacracy very successfully.
Back to the webinar, I heard many times the phrase "Kanban opens up the opportunity to have a conversation" on defining policies, roles, relationships, etc. It was always left at "having a conversation." No idea as how to structure the conversation. This is where the Governance practices of Holacracy really shine. The purpose, inputs, outputs, and meeting practices are very well structured and defined in Holacracy. This leads to very clear results and a clear way forward from these "conversations". Leaving the conversations undefined in Kanban, still leaves a lot of room for stalemates, politics, unclear definitions and directions, unproductive meetings.
I feel that Kanban has very strong operational characteristics for work that can be structured in such a way to effectively use it. Kanban should be well understood by many organizations as it can be surprising how often it can be useful. But it is not sufficient in itself, Kanban needs the governance practices offered in Holacracy to develop clarity for the Kanban practices to be as effective as possible.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Leadership
Recently, HolacracyOne posted on Facebook:
There is a lot of buzz about "Leadership Development". Enlightened leaders are indeed needed to make up for the lack of organizational capacity to digest whatever comes from the environment. Holacracy precisely helps building this organizational capacity, making leadership development much less necessary.
This comes at a time when I have just finished the book "The End of Leadership" which talks about the Leadership industry. The book and Holacracy tend to agree that the current offerings of Leadership development are not what they should be. The book says that the leadership industry is failing us and is a self perpetuation sham. The book contains many pages of real world example. Holacracy says that leadership is not need to the level that our organizations think that it is needed. Both seem to me to shed good light on the issue, but I have a slightly different view.
My knowledge about the material taught in the current leadership training is about how a single person leads and motivates groups of small to very large people to do what the leader wants.
From the examples in the book, even with current organizations this has not worked very well but since it is very attractive to leaders in organizations, it really strokes their egos to think that everything revolves around the leader, leadership consultants teach what brings in the money. And it is a lot of money, to the tune of $50 billion a year.
Holacracy proposes a radically different distributed power system from conventional organizations in which this leader centric training has very little value. There is still leadership, it is just radically different.
My proposition is that leadership training is very important, but not the leadership training that is currently being promoted by the industry today.
With current organizations the leaders at the top are usually very autocratic. They give the orders and everyone below marches always looking over their shoulders in case the leader does not like the way they are marching. Holacracy turns this on its head. Purpose flows down from the top, but how each marches is determined autocratically by the person doing the marching.
As everyone in the organization is an autocrat over their own identified scope, they do need leadership training on how to lead that scope effectively. As I indicated before, this leadership is fundamentally different. Instead of learning how to get others to do what you want, you must learn how to get yourself motivated, how to stay organized and focused to do what is needed by the purpose guiding that scope. Self-leadership is also need to effectively act a organizational sensors, to know how to recognize the tensions, how and when to speak-up to the organization, and how not to be personally attached to your idea as to how to resolve the tensions that you sense.
I see many people working in a conventional organization that will do nothing unless directly motivated and directed by the leader. This approach will not work in Holacracy. If a person executes a role with this do nothing unless externally directed approach, nothing will get done and after a while the holacratic organization will eject them as not being suitable for the role.
This failure is not a fundamental human weakness. All humans are capable of working is such a system. Instead, it is a weakness in training and socialization of the person. Most of the skill are not taught at all or even worse suppressed by the more effective conventional leaders. It is a positive feedback loop, the more effective the conventional leader, the more repressed and dependent the follower.
These self leadership skills are the skills needed in leadership training for the future. Even more, most people will need this training and refresher courses throughout their lives. This new direction would seem to be a larger industry than the current leadership industry, providing more revenue if teachers and consultants can get past the sunk cost put into the existing models and experience. Further more, the new direction would meet the real needs of organizations instead of simply massaging the egos of the leaders and repressing the lead.
There is a lot of buzz about "Leadership Development". Enlightened leaders are indeed needed to make up for the lack of organizational capacity to digest whatever comes from the environment. Holacracy precisely helps building this organizational capacity, making leadership development much less necessary.
This comes at a time when I have just finished the book "The End of Leadership" which talks about the Leadership industry. The book and Holacracy tend to agree that the current offerings of Leadership development are not what they should be. The book says that the leadership industry is failing us and is a self perpetuation sham. The book contains many pages of real world example. Holacracy says that leadership is not need to the level that our organizations think that it is needed. Both seem to me to shed good light on the issue, but I have a slightly different view.
My knowledge about the material taught in the current leadership training is about how a single person leads and motivates groups of small to very large people to do what the leader wants.
From the examples in the book, even with current organizations this has not worked very well but since it is very attractive to leaders in organizations, it really strokes their egos to think that everything revolves around the leader, leadership consultants teach what brings in the money. And it is a lot of money, to the tune of $50 billion a year.
Holacracy proposes a radically different distributed power system from conventional organizations in which this leader centric training has very little value. There is still leadership, it is just radically different.
My proposition is that leadership training is very important, but not the leadership training that is currently being promoted by the industry today.
With current organizations the leaders at the top are usually very autocratic. They give the orders and everyone below marches always looking over their shoulders in case the leader does not like the way they are marching. Holacracy turns this on its head. Purpose flows down from the top, but how each marches is determined autocratically by the person doing the marching.
As everyone in the organization is an autocrat over their own identified scope, they do need leadership training on how to lead that scope effectively. As I indicated before, this leadership is fundamentally different. Instead of learning how to get others to do what you want, you must learn how to get yourself motivated, how to stay organized and focused to do what is needed by the purpose guiding that scope. Self-leadership is also need to effectively act a organizational sensors, to know how to recognize the tensions, how and when to speak-up to the organization, and how not to be personally attached to your idea as to how to resolve the tensions that you sense.
I see many people working in a conventional organization that will do nothing unless directly motivated and directed by the leader. This approach will not work in Holacracy. If a person executes a role with this do nothing unless externally directed approach, nothing will get done and after a while the holacratic organization will eject them as not being suitable for the role.
This failure is not a fundamental human weakness. All humans are capable of working is such a system. Instead, it is a weakness in training and socialization of the person. Most of the skill are not taught at all or even worse suppressed by the more effective conventional leaders. It is a positive feedback loop, the more effective the conventional leader, the more repressed and dependent the follower.
These self leadership skills are the skills needed in leadership training for the future. Even more, most people will need this training and refresher courses throughout their lives. This new direction would seem to be a larger industry than the current leadership industry, providing more revenue if teachers and consultants can get past the sunk cost put into the existing models and experience. Further more, the new direction would meet the real needs of organizations instead of simply massaging the egos of the leaders and repressing the lead.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Spreading a Practice
Holacracy is the most useful organizational practice that I have seen in my over 50 years in organizations. If you are not familiar with it, head over to holacracy.org and explore the links on the slide show.
As Holacracy is often on my mind, I have been thinking about how to spread it. This post is a brain dump to get the ideas out of my head to free up space for other things. Many of the ideas here have been action-ed by H1 and others in the community to some extent. This just allows me to get it out of my head and down on paper at overview level of the landscape. Each paragraph could be expanded into a much larger discussion, but this is enough for now. Hopefully, this describes a reasonable structure to the issue.
Most of our modern organizations are structured in a hierarchy with most of the power and control at or near the top. Holacracy is a true distributed power and control system. Thus, to move an organization towards a distributed system like Holacracy, you need to introduce it, either, when the organization is small before it grows and becomes fixed with power and control at the top of a larger structure or introduce it from the top down starting with the current power holders of the organization driving the transition. These are the two focal points to effectively spread Holacracy, such that implementations happen. Strictly informational opportunities would not be very helpful unless they influence the two identified focal points.
With fledgling or small organizations the keys are to identify and educate founders while providing a low enough cost of entry that these organizations can afford to adopt the well documented Holacracy practice instead of the normal an ad-hoc, seat of the pants, keep everything in your head approach most start-ups or small organizations use.
First we need to identify these small organization founders. If you want to hunt ducks, you go to a duck pond. For small business, one great place is small business expos. The cost seems reasonable to setup a booth, handout pamphlets, and engage face to face. Face to face time often has the most effect in infuencing a person and any opportunity to engage a person when they are in the correct frame of mind should be taken.
Keeping the costs in line for the available budget of a small organization has some challenges. The cost of bringing in a consultant can be beyond the means for many, so this leads to a predominately self help approach. Sending one person from the organization to the Holacracy Practitioners training can infuse a lot of knowledge to a small group at a reasonable cost. Joining the Holacracy community of practice opens up more resources and a place to ask questions. One possibly to consider is creating an identified Holacracy Hotline either manned or voice mail that gets responded to on a daily basis.
Big organizations can be a big challenge. While the resources can be sufficient for a well supported implementation using consultants, getting the attention of those in power can be very difficult. It is almost impossible to get face to face time with an executive unless you already know them or they are seeking you out. Past history indicates that the most productive entry is through organizational consultants all ready in a relationship with the leaders of an organization. The key here is to identify and educate organizational consultants and entice them to propagate Holacracy through their organization contacts.
Again where to catch the organizational consultants attention? There are a number of organizational forums and conventions where Holacracy can be presented. Also, there are a number of periodicals which may accept Holacracy articles. We also need to think carefully how to entice them to add/change to Holacracy in their offerings. Looking at the problems in the world today, mainstream approaches to leadership and organizational consulting are not working. The problem is how to get the consultants with years of vested interest in these systems to see, accept and embrace a new way. Most people with a vested interest turn a blind eye to anything contrary to the vested interest.
We also need to explore the various sets of motivations organizations have for adopting Holacracy.
The traditional areas of efficiency, productivity, profitability are motivators for some leaders. This is a strength of Holacracy that plays well with managers and leaders once you get their attention.
Emerging is areas of work-life balance, employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employee acquisition and retention.This is being driven from the bottom up, mostly from the younger employees. More younger workers are using some of these non-monetary attributes as a filter for positions. Just as the Arab Spring movement towards democracy was driven by the 20 somethings through social media. The principles that are an advantage of Holacracy needs to be spread to the 20 somethings through social media. If the kids coming out of college start asking for these things in their job interviews, companies will have to adapt to get the brightest and best employees. What better motivation can we have to entice the top of an organization to adopt Holacracy. Over time those that do will out perform those that don't.
As Holacracy is often on my mind, I have been thinking about how to spread it. This post is a brain dump to get the ideas out of my head to free up space for other things. Many of the ideas here have been action-ed by H1 and others in the community to some extent. This just allows me to get it out of my head and down on paper at overview level of the landscape. Each paragraph could be expanded into a much larger discussion, but this is enough for now. Hopefully, this describes a reasonable structure to the issue.
Most of our modern organizations are structured in a hierarchy with most of the power and control at or near the top. Holacracy is a true distributed power and control system. Thus, to move an organization towards a distributed system like Holacracy, you need to introduce it, either, when the organization is small before it grows and becomes fixed with power and control at the top of a larger structure or introduce it from the top down starting with the current power holders of the organization driving the transition. These are the two focal points to effectively spread Holacracy, such that implementations happen. Strictly informational opportunities would not be very helpful unless they influence the two identified focal points.
With fledgling or small organizations the keys are to identify and educate founders while providing a low enough cost of entry that these organizations can afford to adopt the well documented Holacracy practice instead of the normal an ad-hoc, seat of the pants, keep everything in your head approach most start-ups or small organizations use.
First we need to identify these small organization founders. If you want to hunt ducks, you go to a duck pond. For small business, one great place is small business expos. The cost seems reasonable to setup a booth, handout pamphlets, and engage face to face. Face to face time often has the most effect in infuencing a person and any opportunity to engage a person when they are in the correct frame of mind should be taken.
Keeping the costs in line for the available budget of a small organization has some challenges. The cost of bringing in a consultant can be beyond the means for many, so this leads to a predominately self help approach. Sending one person from the organization to the Holacracy Practitioners training can infuse a lot of knowledge to a small group at a reasonable cost. Joining the Holacracy community of practice opens up more resources and a place to ask questions. One possibly to consider is creating an identified Holacracy Hotline either manned or voice mail that gets responded to on a daily basis.
Big organizations can be a big challenge. While the resources can be sufficient for a well supported implementation using consultants, getting the attention of those in power can be very difficult. It is almost impossible to get face to face time with an executive unless you already know them or they are seeking you out. Past history indicates that the most productive entry is through organizational consultants all ready in a relationship with the leaders of an organization. The key here is to identify and educate organizational consultants and entice them to propagate Holacracy through their organization contacts.
Again where to catch the organizational consultants attention? There are a number of organizational forums and conventions where Holacracy can be presented. Also, there are a number of periodicals which may accept Holacracy articles. We also need to think carefully how to entice them to add/change to Holacracy in their offerings. Looking at the problems in the world today, mainstream approaches to leadership and organizational consulting are not working. The problem is how to get the consultants with years of vested interest in these systems to see, accept and embrace a new way. Most people with a vested interest turn a blind eye to anything contrary to the vested interest.
We also need to explore the various sets of motivations organizations have for adopting Holacracy.
The traditional areas of efficiency, productivity, profitability are motivators for some leaders. This is a strength of Holacracy that plays well with managers and leaders once you get their attention.
Emerging is areas of work-life balance, employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employee acquisition and retention.This is being driven from the bottom up, mostly from the younger employees. More younger workers are using some of these non-monetary attributes as a filter for positions. Just as the Arab Spring movement towards democracy was driven by the 20 somethings through social media. The principles that are an advantage of Holacracy needs to be spread to the 20 somethings through social media. If the kids coming out of college start asking for these things in their job interviews, companies will have to adapt to get the brightest and best employees. What better motivation can we have to entice the top of an organization to adopt Holacracy. Over time those that do will out perform those that don't.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
On Being Happy
I saw a quote: "The secret to being happy is realizing that everything is already perfect." About the same time a friend on mine said something along the lines of "Stop seeking what you want, It will find you." So for the past few months I have tried to follow these two nuggets of advice. You may have noticed that I have not posted in this blog for a while as most of my posting was about how to make things better. But, if everything is already perfect, I don't need to post anymore. And if I should stop seeking, well what then?
I feel that it has been a partial success. But I find myself constantly stopping myself.
I see someone doing something in a way that I think could be done better. I start to speak, but bite my tongue and don't say anything. Maybe the way I thought was better is not better. Maybe what they were doing was good enough. If everything is perfect, then their actions are also perfect. Maybe they needed to do it that way to learn an important life lesson and if I interfered they would not learn it and get into bigger trouble later. Cool, no stress in trying to explain myself, no resentment from correcting someone, the task gets done and maybe they learned what they needed to learn.
I see something that I would really like to do but I am not in the position to pursue it. My natural instinct is to do everything I can to seek a path to be able to do it. So I stop myself, put it on my someday list and move on. If I had put in all the extra effort to seek the path, what would have been the cost. Maybe I would be exhausted all the time and get sick. Concentrating on that unattainable path would take all my concentration such that I would miss other opportunities that would have been just as interesting and useful without the pain. Some other natural paths that would lead to where I wanted to go may be missed.
However, there is a temptation to take these two quotes and start doing nothing, navel gazing if you will. After a bit of doing nothing, I get very unsatisfied. Is my purpose in this world to do nothing? (This the dark side of stop seeking.) If everything is already perfect I need not do anything. (This is the dark side of always seeing perfection.) Well, what now? How do I resolve this.
For the quotes above there others in the opposite direction just as valuable. I am sure you could come up with many, but some that I like are: "God helps those who help themselves" and "Every journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step.
If everything is perfect, then why do you need to help yourself? If you have stopped seeking, where are you going on the journey. Are we to just wander aimlessly in our life's journey and simply enjoy all the perfection we see? Well kinda but not really.
How wishy-washy can I be! There is a point in here somewhere!
We miss the point when we do as humans are most tempted to do and simplify everything to black and white. What we miss the the infinite shades of gray (and of course the colors.) We miss that there is stuff in the middle. We miss that the tension between the extremes generates an entire universe where everything is perfect, we don't need to sacrifice everything to seek a path, we get what we need (often more) and we have a purposeful journey with many accomplishments along the way. It is not that there is a fixed middle way. The middle way is a dynamic tension created by all the extremes pulling on each other. The middle way is flexible, ever shifting and always playful. It is like surfing, riding the ever changing wave without flipping out into the sky or falling under the water. The exhilaration of maintaining the present moment to stay in tune with the wave is what makes it playful and fun.
For myself, I am looking to be happy riding that wave again after some time off. What wave are you riding.
I feel that it has been a partial success. But I find myself constantly stopping myself.
I see someone doing something in a way that I think could be done better. I start to speak, but bite my tongue and don't say anything. Maybe the way I thought was better is not better. Maybe what they were doing was good enough. If everything is perfect, then their actions are also perfect. Maybe they needed to do it that way to learn an important life lesson and if I interfered they would not learn it and get into bigger trouble later. Cool, no stress in trying to explain myself, no resentment from correcting someone, the task gets done and maybe they learned what they needed to learn.
I see something that I would really like to do but I am not in the position to pursue it. My natural instinct is to do everything I can to seek a path to be able to do it. So I stop myself, put it on my someday list and move on. If I had put in all the extra effort to seek the path, what would have been the cost. Maybe I would be exhausted all the time and get sick. Concentrating on that unattainable path would take all my concentration such that I would miss other opportunities that would have been just as interesting and useful without the pain. Some other natural paths that would lead to where I wanted to go may be missed.
However, there is a temptation to take these two quotes and start doing nothing, navel gazing if you will. After a bit of doing nothing, I get very unsatisfied. Is my purpose in this world to do nothing? (This the dark side of stop seeking.) If everything is already perfect I need not do anything. (This is the dark side of always seeing perfection.) Well, what now? How do I resolve this.
For the quotes above there others in the opposite direction just as valuable. I am sure you could come up with many, but some that I like are: "God helps those who help themselves" and "Every journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step.
If everything is perfect, then why do you need to help yourself? If you have stopped seeking, where are you going on the journey. Are we to just wander aimlessly in our life's journey and simply enjoy all the perfection we see? Well kinda but not really.
How wishy-washy can I be! There is a point in here somewhere!
We miss the point when we do as humans are most tempted to do and simplify everything to black and white. What we miss the the infinite shades of gray (and of course the colors.) We miss that there is stuff in the middle. We miss that the tension between the extremes generates an entire universe where everything is perfect, we don't need to sacrifice everything to seek a path, we get what we need (often more) and we have a purposeful journey with many accomplishments along the way. It is not that there is a fixed middle way. The middle way is a dynamic tension created by all the extremes pulling on each other. The middle way is flexible, ever shifting and always playful. It is like surfing, riding the ever changing wave without flipping out into the sky or falling under the water. The exhilaration of maintaining the present moment to stay in tune with the wave is what makes it playful and fun.
For myself, I am looking to be happy riding that wave again after some time off. What wave are you riding.
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