Self-steering teams and an Experimentation approach to Organization Design

I’m introducing a blog series about Organization Design. How can we apply the human-centred and entrepreneurial innovation processes to redesigning organization? What kind of Organizational structures enable creativity and innovation? And, how does Organizational Change lead to Employee Happiness?

For my first blog I talked to Edwin van der Geest. After working for IT Company Incentro for 7 years, of which 5 as a Managing Director (a role later he made obsolete), he now started his own company: Edition. With Edition Edwin aims to help organizations to increase employee happiness.

Why Incentro splits up their company for every 60 employees

At Incentro, there are two clear goals: employee happiness, and company success. With a mission of ‘Digital Happiness’, they empower both their clients as well as employees. If this is your goal, there is a lot of space for experimentation to achieve these goals. As long as employees are happy, and the company makes profit, there is a lot you can do. Right?

Right! And even more interesting, Incentro adapted a new model, they split up when the organization is bigger than 60 people. Which resulted in 9 Incentro Offices, all autonomous and with their own managing team. Edwin was Managing Director of the Rotterdam office. They had their own salaries, organization design and the freedom to experiment with anything.

Edwin explains that people that are working in primary processes are happiest. When a company grows, the organization becomes more complex, leading towards more processes that all cost valuable time of your team. Keeping teams small ensures that everyone can focus on their job, on what their good at and what they enjoy doing.

Making yourself obsolete as a manager

Edwin explains, “When I started as Managing Director of the Rotterdam Office, there still was some hierarchy. There was still a distinction between being a consultant, and being a manager. I asked myself ‘what is it that I do as a manager, that other people could do too’?” Soon they started to experiment with handing over their ‘managing tasks’ to the teams themselves. Their role would shift towards a coaching role, coaching their colleagues to become high performing, entrepreneurial teams.

This idea sounded nice, but in practice it’s not easy so implement. They started too big, wanting to change the whole Rotterdam Office in one time, which led into some objections. It was still too much of a ‘top-down; approach, and not everyone accepted this change.

They had to take a couple of steps back, and interestingly so, the reaction of the teams was more inclined to ‘hey, this is a nice idea, but let us define how it works in practice’. One team started to experiment with being completely autonomous, and soon became ambassadors of the approach of ‘self-steering teams’. Other teams saw their success and slowly started to adopt this new way of working as well.

‘It’s about being capable of making the best decision, in which you are most productive, and/or have the most impact on the organization you work for’

An Experimentation approach to Organization Design

Instead of going Cold Turkey on their Managing Role, Edwin and his peers adopted a ’Situational Leadership’ style, starting one team at a time. They worked in three steps. First, they would steer the team. Second, they’d let them take over some tasks and coaching along the way. And third, after trust has been build on both sides, they would leave the team autonomous and focus on coaching.

Experimenting in this way allows you to learn which information and processes you need. Like in Lean Startup, a method that is widely used for product development, using this experimental approach towards Organization Design is all about testing your assumptions small, fast and cheap, before implementing and scaling up.

Edwin took this to another level; he created a new program called the ‘Organization Design Sprint’.

Are self-steering teams for anyone?

This is a question I often ask myself. I believe in the benefits of self-steering teams, however I can also see why it wouldn’t work for everyone. Edwin tells me that ‘in each type of organization there is some sort of success story on this world’. Edwin himself however, has only experienced this in creative organizations. But, there are some great examples, like Dutch factory Martens that have successfully implemented a non-hierarchal way of working.

Above all, becoming a self-steering team requires that you get to know yourself. You need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and to be able to reach out for help. An organization needs clear guidelines that everyone agrees on, and a purpose that we all believe in. Edwin himself thinks ‘self-steering’ teams is not a good term. It’s more about autonomy: ‘It’s about being capable of making the best decision, in which you are most productive, and/or have the most impact on the organization you work for’.