What does your organisation taste like?
Have you ever considered the flavour of your organisation?
I’m a baker, I bake both in the kitchen and in the office. I like to help bake organisations, like I bake bread…
Over the past five years I’ve witnessed (and created) some unhealthy behaviours in various organisational kitchens and tasted some organisational bread that really was not that nourishing. Like the odd binge out on unhealthy junk food and the odd cake that flops, it’s not bad if it happens every now and then. But I’m convinced that if we don’t address the core ingredients of our baking or question the recipe we are using — our organisations will continue to have a funky taste.
So I’ve been thinking about the lessons I’ve taken from these experiences and how perhaps my passion for baking can give some insights.
Me as a baker
This is my current bread recipe, I inherited it from my mother, and I’ve already messed with it to make it my own.
And here is Gina’s and my sourdough breads, both of us use the same recipe (from mum), both breads ended up pretty different.
I don’t see recipes as a dogmatic thing to follow, they are a record of a past success, not the definition of your future creation.
Over the last four years I’ve been working within the Enspiral network. I’ve Co-Founded an organisation (Chalkle Ltd), helped transition a project into an organisation (Lifehack Ltd) and helped restructure an organisation (Enspiral Academy Ltd). I’ve also set up a team (OS//OS conference organising team for 2015 and 2016) and I helped refactor Enspiral in early 2016 . Additionally I have been a Director of the Enspiral Foundation for those four years too.
Recipes
A recipe is a story of how someone else did something in the past. Mum’s sourdough recipe is how she has made sourdough. It shares both the basic principles, but also her unique approach. Thus when I read her recipe it’s crucial for me not to see it as some dogmatic definition — instead I need to aim to understand the core principles.
So imagine if we saw business books/theories as the record of someone’s past success, and not the definition of our future organisation?
At this point I’ll have to admit that I’ve never read a business book from cover to cover. I’ve dabbled in heaps, I’ve explored plenty , but I have not read a business recipe from start to end.
I don’t think it’s good to become dogmatic about any way of growing an organisation. Self-management might be a new craze, but it is not an appropriate recipe for every organisation. Hierarchy can limit so much in many organisations, but in acute situations it can be needed. And then there are so many shades in between: a hierarchical structure with true servant leadership and clearly mandated responsibilities can create a more empowered culture than hidden hierarchy in a proclaimed self managed organisation. Named power is better than unnamed power.
And just because one recipe created an awesome organisation, it does not mean it can be copied for another. I think key failures can happen when we copy recipes or when we become dogmatic in our “new” innovative ways of working.
The Enspiral network is filled with a wonderful suite of recipes:
- A work owned Coop: Loomio
- A small business with three directors: EXP
- A not for profit company: Lifehack
- An incorporated society owning a business: ActionStation
Ingredients
Most recipes contain some basic ingredients that are treated with some basic principles (from the recipe).
All breads have flour, some sort of rising agent (yeast, or ‘wild yeast’ in sourdough or other bugs), something sweet to keep the yeast happy, salt (to keep the yeast under control) and some water, and then it is baked in some sort oven, electric, wood fired or solar, fast or slow…
All organisation have ingredients too: a vision, people who work in that organisation, money that flows through the organisation, and systems and processes which make it all tick and stick.
Yet many companies have inherited their key ingredients with little critique. They have not questioned why yeast is needed in bread and if a sourdough bug would be better. What purpose does this ingredient serve? What role does money play in your organisation? How does governance connect with operations? Who ultimately owns the organisation?
I’d invite you to think about some of these ingredients in your organisation and what purpose they serve for your recipe:
Finances.
- How are budgets set? Could you put 10% of your organisations budget into CoBudget?
- Who decided to buy the staff a new coffee machine? How?
- Who has access to the finances?
- Who is worried about running out of money? Why?
- What is the financial literacy in your organisation? Can everyone read a P&L?
- How are pay rates set?
Information.
- Who knows what, when?
- Who makes which decision, and how do decisions flow through your organisation?
- How open is your information? How accessible is your information?
- Would everyone in your organisation draw the same org chart? Can you publish your org chart publicly?
- Do you have policies? Do they create bureaucracy or safety?
Accountability, Support, Management.
- What does support look like?
- Do all your staff have employment contracts? How are these set and negotiated? How are they reviewed?
- What happens if something fails? What if targets are not met?
- How does learning flow through your organisation?
Ownership.
- Who owns your company?
- What does ownership mean? Have you actually discussed this with the whole team?
- What does being a founder imply? What power does it come with?
Having your cake and eating it, too
Then for me the most important part of baking in the kitchen is sharing the meal afterwards. Think about that satisfying moment when you open the oven door and smell the fresh bread. What is that moment in your organisation? Is everyone, from the developers to the administrator to the founders, connected to that moment?
I’m beginning to think that in an organisation that moment is the learning cycle, the feedback loop, the reflection time. Have you “tasted” your organisational cake recently? How was it? Sweet? Sour? Healthy? What did you learn from that?
As a baker in the kitchen I’m constantly learning and improving — my sourdough this weekend went slightly ‘flat’... So as a baker in an organisation I’m also trying to learn. What in the recipe needs attention? Which of the ingredients needs questioning and attention?
Happy baking fellow cooks!
These idea were triggered while preparing two talks that I gave in Perth and Zurich — the slides can be found here.
