We Need You To Show Up
Self-management as a salve for our organizations, and maybe even our world
2020. I don’t think I am alone in this feeling of powerlessness. A fog so thick that some days it feels hard to move. Covid-19, relentless murders of black people, institutional systems steeped in inequity, climate crises, democracy slipping away. And conversations with people, siloed at best, toxic and vitriolic in our inability to call upon shared humanity. We feel helpless in our ability to make change, to cast a vote that ripples beyond our bubbles, to march on the streets to influence change. Even our formerly go-to tools of what we considered ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ have been stripped of all power.
As I study the practices of self-managing organizations with such a thirst, I wonder — is it more than just the inadequacies of green and orange organizations that resonate with me? I have growing clarity that my attraction to self-managing organizations is not just about addressing organizational deficiencies. It’s also about addressing the world around us, as we struggle to feel any sort of power amidst an overwhelm of tragic decisions, self-interested power grabbing, and the mass suffering that follows.
In unhealthy organizations, we see recurrent themes of dysfunction, power abuses, and helplessness. The person who destructively talks about someone else behind their back. The staff incredulous at leadership’s poor and uninformed decision-making. The individual who loses all fire for their work or is drowning in a position that does not maximize their skills. Flagrant power slinging that drowns out other voices in the room.
Self-managing organizations seek to overcome these dysfunctions by starting with the premise of the power of the individual in community. Many foundational self-managing practices call individuals to take active postures in their organizations, and to engage directly with their own patterns of interaction, communication, and power.
Example 1 — Social contract: an explicit agreement that outlines ground rules for how team members will and should interact with one another.
Social contracts give individuals the power to co-create a dream team — one that communicates, ideates, makes decisions, and relates with each other in ways that allow members to embody their best selves. Created by the team itself, each individual is an actor in social contract design, evolution, and holding each other to account.
Example 2 — Role design: in self-managing organizations, there are no fixed jobs. Instead, there are evolving roles, born out of the needs of the company. Team members opt to commit to these roles based on their skills and interests.
The role design process (see here for an example) asks each team member, in relationship with the broader team, against the backdrop of the organization’s needs — to be actors in the design and implementation of individual roles. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to figure out where and how they will best thrive and how they will make the most of their role/s. There is no one to blame when they do not perform (You can change roles! Redefine the role! Maybe move companies! It’s all in your hands!).
Example 3 — A map for communication: many self-managing organizations opt for extensive protocols that nurture, regularize, and formalize transparent communication and feedback habits.
Communication practices like this one at Fitzii seek to habitualize feedback, unearth tensions, celebrate growth that comes from feedback, and build transparency into the full process. They explicitly resist silos, chasms between individuals, gossip, and the toxicity of unexpressed frustrations.
If you take these three building blocks — only glimpses into the world of self-managing organizations — they offer a hint of an antidote to this societal powerlessness. We are both the clay and the molders of that clay. We are constantly evolving, trying to be and do our best, with the power to be architects of our futures. Perhaps this is Pollyannaish — but there is a draw to this construct, for me, in 2020, as we watch so much crumble around us. As I was writing this, a quote from U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared in my Twitter feed, expressing these principles in a wider societal frame.
“No one politician is the answer. No one president is the answer. You are the answer. Mass movements are the answer. Millions of people are the answer. You are the answer. I need you to show up. We need you to show up.”
We are all trying to wake from this dream, out of this stupor of passivity. For me, self-managing practices provide a starting point: they call upon us to become actors in designing the organizations — and the world — in which we want to live.
Part 1 of a series of reflections during my participation in the Practical Self-Management Intensive with Better Work Together.
