Being a great place to grow
Week nr 3 of this course was about growth. For your organisation, Deliberately Developmental Organisation (DDO), and for yourself. A very interesting view on organisations and people in it. Organisations should not be focused on happiness, but on growth. In a self managed organisation you, as an individual, have to know yourself even more. Otherwise it’s very hard for you. The focus on this week was on your personal growth.
Doug Kirkpatrick — Morning Star
Again we had a very interesting visit. This time from the co-founder of Morning Star. Morning star was founded based on two principles: 1) People shouldn’t use force against each other. 2) People should keep commitments. Especially the second one, we pointed out.
Commitments
Commitments are very important in all organisations, but in traditionally hierarchical organisations you can hide behind a lot of stuff. Like managers, job descriptions, targets and goals. In Self Management, Commitments are even more important:
It’s all about the ability to make and keep commitments. Without that, there can be no trust.
Morning Star has an organisational ‘heat map’ of commitments, called RAG status. Commitment fails because they are not clear about what to expect. As also discussed in the role descriptions, the responsibilities must be as clear as possible.
We also talked about the discussion that managers are most of the time the ones who are working against the movement towards self management. Doug said a very true line:
It’s not about firing managers. It’s about finding people for the roles/work you have.
Personal growth
The assignment was to fill in the Immunity map for yourself, discuss it with a peer in your group and then redefine it. The immunity map is focused on finding your improvement goal. But only as a starting point. Then you dive deeper into your behaviours that work against your goal, your worries and competing commitments.
Wow. This was a hard part for me. Taking time to deep think about myself and really type what I felt. Normally talking with someone on a deeper personal level, I tend to talk about the other one, not myself. But this time, there was no hiding for me. The immunity map was a very helpful tool to find the things holding me back to reach my goal.
The meeting with Guita (my counterpart) was very helpful as well, she managed to ask exactly the right questions for me to dive deeper. And it was a lot easier to fill in the map, after these questions. So again, a proof that discussing with others helps. But it feels very vulnerable.
Also in the Friday meeting I recognised a feeling in myself. The same ‘blocking feeling’ I described in my immunity map. And also the same feeling I had when I was younger and less self confident. Normally in meetings I don’t have this feeling anymore. But this time it gets personal, very personal. It’s about my flaws. That’s hard for me. I felt very vulnerable this week, as I’m feeling right now publishing this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16B6CN4I3k8HVwtqTFdytu6HwyOt8fsN2Y26EQ4C_b-U
Reflection
Again a week with lots of learnings. This time more on a personal level! As I wrote before. But
- I would love to create a culture in a company, with the level of trust that everybody shows it’s immunity map.
- The checkin rounds are a very low level way to open up the group in a personal way. The first response sets the level for the rest.
Alright, off to success now! (feels safer for me)
