Two months of TEAL

Short version: TEAL is exciting. It really works. But it’s not as easy as I thought it would be, and we still have a long way to go.

Long version

It’s been two months since I joined Kugghuset. Two months of experimenting with TEAL. Two months of getting to know the company. Two months of getting to know my colleagues. And two months of getting to know myself. Add them all together and it feels like I’ve been here eight months already (math was never my strong side). But no matter how you count, the least I can say is that it’s been two very interesting months:

• I’ve been involved in developing a lead generation app for a client in less than 3 weeks (Ping me if you need app development)
• I’ve been involved in creating an excel course where we help our customers become data wizards (Ping me if you want to learn excel)
• We’ve experimented with Virtual Reality, by making it available to the public (and later shut down the project, as it didn’t fit our purpose)
• As a company we’ve delivered lots of Business Intelligence work for very exciting clients. (I’m even getting a little excited about how we can help customers visualise their data)
• We’ve hired our second developer (We’re now 9 full time employees)!
• We’ve had our best month ever!!
• We’ve agreed on how to use the advice process to set our own salaries (Three members of the organisation have already adjusted their salaries, including me)
• We’re working on an emission to split equity among ourselves
• I’ve decided to take TEAL Tuesday’s where I’ve stopped going to the office, and instead spend my day in nature focusing on self development
• I’ve held my first TEAL class at Everyday School. Sign up for the next one here!
• I’ve participated in a myriad of TEAL events and networks
• The list goes on…

But it’s not all been good. We’ve defined our purpose as being a workplace where people can do interesting work and have fun. But during my two months we’ve had three serious incidents where colleagues have felt bad. One was overworked, a second felt stressed about too many responsibilities, and a third felt powerless and unappreciated.

I write “serious incidents” because even though this may be normal in many organisations, they are unacceptable to us. It’s our individual and collective responsibility that we all feel safe, valued and appreciated at work. We need to identify symptoms before they become problems, and we need to have the courage to address them even if it’t easier to look the other way.

Experimenting with TEAL

But let’s take a step back and look at how we’re experimenting with TEAL. What are the things we do different from other organisations?

Self Management

If we start with Self Management I think our most obvious application is the Advice Process. With the Advice Process we have stated that anyone can make any decision (including their own salary) as long as they have considered the data and sought the advice of team members who are impacted.

I think a good example was two weeks ago when I ran an advice process for two decisions:

1. To increase my salary from 27.000kr to 40.000kr, and
2. To stop ‘working’ Tuesdays, and thereby reduce my new salary by 20%

I started by reviewing everyones salaries (which is open to everyone in the company), and looked at our financials and forecasts. My gut feeling told me that 40k felt about right, but that we couldn’t really afford it over the summer. I therefore thought summer could be a good period to test TEAL Tuesdays. I discussed this with four colleagues, who agreed that 40k seemed fair. I got high fives for the Tuesdays, but with varied input on the 20% reduction. Half thought it seemed fair to earn less with less worked hours, but the other half felt that my Tuesdays would help Kugghuset in the long run, and shouldn’t impact my salary. Armed with this feedback I made the decision to increase my wages, and to temporarily take a cut over summer, which we will review again in August. Oh, did I mention that all of this was done in the same day?

I think my key takeaway here is that people can be entrusted to make good decisions, even in complex situations. But for this to be possible you need transparent information, honest feedback, and the ability to balance your ego with the needs of the organisation.

But self management also has it’s drawbacks. We’ve grown to a size now where it’s difficult to know what everyone is doing. Some feel overworked, while others under stimulated. Having no managers we don’t know who’s responsible for what, and things fall between chairs. In a team of four or five this seems to sort itself out, but now that we’re nine I feel we might need a little more structure. We’ve looked at Holacracy’s role descriptions, but find the process a little restrictive. Perhaps a middle ground could work.

Wholeness

Moving on to Wholeness, I think this is more evident in who we are than in particular practices. Yes, we start our Mondays with a team breakfast where we share good news from the weekend, but I think a much better example is Konrad bringing his kids to work, and having them crawl all over a sales meeting. Or Sofia bringing her awesome paintings to the office.

Art by our colleague Sofia Järrestedt, now proudly on display in our conference room

Another observation on Wholeness is related to how we make decisions. We always look at data (we’re data wizards after all), but a decision is owned and made by someone who cares about it, taking equally into account our qualitative input, our gut feel, and how much fun we think it will be.

That said, we still have far to go in regards to Wholeness. We are so used to the ‘normal’ way of working that it’s difficult to be one self. Just the other day a colleague who was working through a difficult issue broke down in tears, but tried to hide it, saying that work was no place for crying. We switched away from the topic and instead discussed Teal and Wholeness, and how bringing our full selves to work is better for everyone as we feel better as individuals and can make smarter decisions base on our gut feel. Baby steps.. but we’re getting there.

Evolutionary Purpose

Ohh.. now this is a tricky one. We’ve loosely defined our purpose as being a workplace where people can do interesting work and have fun. But what does this mean? And how does it guide us in our everyday work?

I think initially it was a good purpose to attract people. Having fun at work is a good break from the typical ‘being miserable at work’. But long term I’m not sure if it’s enough. It’s opened up for trying different ideas (like VR), but has scattered our focus, and made us run in different directions.

A (boring) alternative version could be ‘ Help customers understand their data’ . This describes “What”, but not the “Why” or “How”.

I think what we really need is something to believe in and fight for. Something that unites us as a team, and helps prioritise our time towards something that really matters, and gives meaning. Why do we do what we do?

Currently I think this is where we have the most work to do. TEAL ‘promises’ engaged teams doing meaningful work together. But some days it feels like we’re just doing work next to each other, not entirely sure what the other one is doing. Yes, we’re getting interesting stuff done, and most of the time we’re having fun.. But I’m sure we have more potential.

So we’ve decided to give it another shot. This weekend we’re off to the archipelago to get to know each other better in a social setting. We’ll have teambuilding activities, sessions on purpose, and exercises around structure. Or in other words we’ll spend quality time together to develop Self Management, Wholeness and Evolutionary Purpose.

Sounds like a topic for my next blogpost!

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