What to expect when you’re part of August.
Our overview of self-management and self-organization that we share with new members.
Welcome to August. We’re a self-managed, self-organized company, and we’re excited to have you as one of our new team members!
What does self-managed, self-organized mean, you ask? Our system is unique. We pull from various organizing systems, including, but not limited to, holacracy, sociocracy, lean and agile, but largely, we’re curating and crafting our own way of governing and being governed. Therefore, we wanted to take the time to share how we’re different, our expectations of you as a team member — and what you can expect from us!
We expect a lot — because you can do a lot.
What you can expect
Our system is organized in nested teams with authority distributed across those teams.
Some key definitions before we dive in:
Domain: A domain specifies something a particular team or role has exclusive authority to shape and decide on behalf of the organization.
Role: A set of accountabilities towards a specific purpose. A role is not equal to a job description; a job description often describes multiple roles. We often hold multiple roles. One role can have multiple people filling the role. Roles vary in time commitment required.
Circle: A team.
Tension: “…a gap between how things are and how they could be.”This includes challenges and opportunities.
Power in our system is intended to be vested in structure, roles and process, rather than specific individuals. Each circle or role within the company holds a domain- a piece of work that they have explicit authority and decision-making rights over.
When something falls within your domain and responsibility, you have the full authority to make that decision. No one else can decide for you how to go about work if it is in your domain. That sounds weird, right? Well, it’s because we trust you! We also trust each other, and we trust the system. When we, as individuals within a team, feel like something could be better, we address it by changing it directly, or if we don’t have the authority to change it, we change the system!
With this great trust comes great responsibility. As a new team member within our system, the first thing you’ll have to learn is how to articulate and recognize tensions (aka a problem, opportunity, challenge or gap) — and then turning that into organizational change.
What does that mean? It means that if you identify a tension, there’s an expectation that you proactively bring that to the team and create a proposal designed to solve the problem and drive change. You can propose to create or revise a role, policy or team within the organization, and while we will share our questions, reactions and advice, it’s ultimately on YOU to take our input, adjust or revise the proposal accordingly, and create something that has an impact on our business.
This way of working also impacts how you “fill” your roles (which is a whole other thing I’ll get to soon). You’re responsible for prioritizing your own work, across different roles, and within whatever responsibility and explicit decision domain you own, you can make your own decisions and execute on them right away. If you’re unsure, or if it’s a decision that will impact the team more widely, you can and should ask your team members for advice, and they will give input and have an impact on your decision. But ultimately, if you own that responsibility or domain, you make the final call. Since you’ve been elected to have that role, your team members have essentially consented in advance to your decisions — and there will definitely be times where you won’t integrate their advice. The same thing will happen to you.
The bar for someone actually “blocking” a decision that you make is very high — specifically, only if they have evidence that letting the decision happen will cause harm to the business, or isn’t safe to try. Think about that — sure, there are a lot of decisions which might not be the best idea to move forward with (in your opinion or in others’ opinions), but there are few that would actually cause real harm. It’s an entirely different way of looking at responsibilities and how we function as a team.
What we expect
What does all of this mean for you? Well, chances are that if you’re starting at August, you’re someone who has a proven record of taking initiative and having a bias for action. You’re creative and flexible; someone who has fought for change within big companies and knows how to navigate complex systems. And you’re going to need every one of those skills here! The key to success is to advocate for yourself, express your tensions, and most importantly, find ways to resolve them.
We expect that you’ll flex your creative energy in both our client work and also in coming up with policies, roles and strategies that address identified tensions. You’ll have to understand the complex dynamics of team structures and organizations to know how to navigate our unique system and the more traditional systems of our clients. And you’ll have to ultimately place your trust in our team — in our ability and judgement to make decisions that impact you and progress us forward as a business.
Sounds like a lot of pressure? It can be, and it takes work to get good at it, but it’s also exhilarating in its own way! We’re guessing that so far, when you’ve had a problem at work, it often felt like solving that problem was out of your hands. Well, at August, it’s in your hands — and we expect you to use that power wisely.
Get ready to flex — and share.
What you can expect
We bet your friends are asking — “so, what’s your title?” And you probably said ”Umm…I don’t really have one?” Good answer. A better answer is that you don’t have just one. As a self-organized system, we don’t believe in static jobs, titles, and assigned responsibilities. Our business is continually changing and evolving, and in order to be “responsive” to these needs, our team members need to be flexible and able to continually evolve their work. You will probably never be able to tell people on the outside exactly what your “job” is — at least, not in a way that they fully understand.
However, don’t mistake fluid structures for chaos (although that certainly can be the case when self-management goes awry). You’ll find that in order to maintain our flexibility, we try to be as explicit as possible about specific responsibilities, decision domains, and larger governing structures — much more so than you might be used to. All of our work is structured in a regular cadence, so that we know exactly what is expected when and when we can expect what. And we work as transparently as possible, sharing all of our work (even if it’s incomplete), leaving our team communications open to the entire organization, and continually signaling our intentions and decisions. Being open and explicit is the key to our flexibility — only by defining what exists, can we know what to change.
And, change will occur! You’ll feel the impact of big changes to roles, structures, and client engagements much more quickly — but that only reflects the fact that big change is also an inevitable part of life. Responsive ways of working is all about reflecting that reality.
What we expect
If this all feels a bit intimidating — well, we totally feel ya. We’ve been there too! Chances are, much of this way of working is new, and we know that at first, new members can get a bit overwhelmed with the uncertainty and feel very vulnerable in the process. We get that what we’re doing here at August is different, and we want to give you that space during your onboarding time to slowly adapt to the way we work. However, we do expect you to maintain an open mind, ask lots of questions, and yes, challenge us when you think that something is at odds with our greater goals and mission. We are all members (and soon, you’ll also be an owner) of this business, and we’re all in this together. Feedback and continuous learning are a critical component to our evolution and successful path forward.
Team even over individual
What you can expect
You’ll often hear us say, “team even over individual,” and it’s a big part of the mindset we adopt when approaching our work together. As a member of our self-organized team, you can expect to continually have opportunities to share your ideas and feedback — but you can also expect that your ideas will be ripped apart, added on to, objected to, and then integrated into a solution that brings together many parts of all our ideas. In the world of self-management, there are no best or right ideas — the assumption is that the starting place is always wrong. And if a team member “owns” the decision rights for a domain or is the one making the proposal, it’s perfectly in their rights to not take your ideas into consideration. So be ready for some uncomfortable moments where you’ll have to put your ego aside and “consent” to something that you might disagree with. On the flip side, if you sense tensions within the system or believe that something isn’t safe to try or will cause harm, be ready to bring that perspective forward and make a case, even if you are the only one holding that perspective.
As a team, we will come together on a regular cadence to reflect and “edit” ourselves in service of meeting both the individual and collective needs of our team. Feedback is critical to our system maintenance, and you should expect to continuously both give and receive feedback to your team members, both in a group setting (via our “retrospectives” and team feedback sessions) and 1:1. We can’t promise that you’ll never have to deal with “politics” — after all, politics exist anytime there’s 3 or more people — but we can promise that we’ll collectively work to make the “politics” as transparent as possible so that it doesn’t stand in our way as a team.
What we expect
First off, put your ego aside. Cool. Now that that’s done, we want you to dive in! Actively engage, participate, feed into the discussion. Also know that you always have permission to pass if you have nothing to say (please don’t talk for the sake of talking). Given that you’re a smart, thoughtful individual who wants to fundamentally change how teams work — we’re guessing that you have great things to contribute, and we’re excited to hear them! We also recognize that silence and listening is a legitimate and important way of participating, and we’re excited to see you engage in that as well.
And, don’t be afraid to be honest. We suggest that you use a feedback framework (we have a few that we like, or feel free to share your own), in order to be as constructive and effective as possible, but within those frameworks, nothing is off limits. Really. And if it seems off limits, please feel free to question why that is. We can only thrive as a team if we can cultivate an environment of trust and mutual respect, and part of that is being honest with one another. Even if it hurts.
That being said, we are people, and people take time to change. So please be patient with us, and we’ll do the same for you.
And this brings us to…leadership.
What you can expect
But wait — why are we diving into leadership, when in a self-organized system, “bosses don’t exist?” Well, we may not have bosses, but we do have leaders. Leadership may be formally defined (for example, our founding team plays a critical role in ensuring we stay true to our long-term vision and goals) or informally defined, based on personal interests, strengths, skills, or client relationships. As outlined above, you have autonomy to decide how you do your work — but leaders are a critical resource for helping shape your decisions and give input on how you can align your work with the rest of the organization.
A leader, in our context, is defined by expertise and depth of knowledge and input. When something falls in a category of one person’s particular strength, we look to them for input. In this way, leadership is emergent- we step up and step back often to allow our genius to flow. In that sense, we are a leader-full organization.
Our leaders are also responsible for staying attuned to changes “on the ground” of how the organization is organically evolving and building that into our long-term strategy. There’s a difference between influence and authority within our system, although the line is not always clear. We try as much as possible to make the location of authority as explicit as possible to avoid confusion, but in an ever evolving system, there will always be gaps. And in those cases, we encourage you to highlight those gaps so we can make it explicit.
What we expect
Chances are, you’ve been a leader, or even a boss, in the past. And you know what it’s like to manage, tell people what to do, and be listened to. Well, it’s going to be a bit different here — but we’re guessing you already knew that. Your authority will be gained by earning the trust and respect of your team members and by showing that you’re willing to get just as down and dirty as the rest of us (yes, that includes scheduling, event set up, and photocopying). We’ve put this system in place so we don’t have to worry about whether our team members will get their work done, if they’ll do it right, if we’ll get blamed if they fail. We’re here because we want to be free to do the best work of our life, and free up our work in the process. So get ready to get down to work — and know that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to lead in an entirely new way.
What next?
Hopefully (if you’ve made it this far), you have a little taste of what to expect — now it’s time to dive in! Ask us questions, check out our resource page, create a policy in your first month — all is up for grabs, and all is available to you. Just remember, it’s likely that the things that made you successful thus far in your career may not guarantee your future success. So take it easy on yourself as you make your way in this weird and wacky world — if you keep an open mind and an open heart, everything’s gonna be alright.
This document reflects the builds, inputs, and add-ons of the following:
Initial content generated by Emily Hebner, Usha Gubbala, Mark Raheja and Justine Lai; Synthesized and written by Justine Lai
Edited by Usha Gubbala and Mike Arauz
Commented on by Krys, Jesse Punia, and CPJ
Welcome to the world of self-organizing and self-management at August!
