A suggestion for how to design a responsive Professional Services team
Moving away from an out-dated top-down approach that resembles command-and-control and puts people in boxes
Managers may not like this, because they are becoming far less relevant. The good news is they have a greater opportunity, as does everyone, to become a Leader.
Now that organizations have the internal social networking tools that enable people to self-organise, we have the opportunity to shift from a top-down, siloed and hierarchical approach, towards one that is more networked and responsive to continuously changing needs. A practical example of an organization that takes a responsive approach is GitHub:
“Unlike traditional companies where projects are assigned top-down, GitHubbers tackle whatever projects they want, without any formal requests or managerial interference.”
Here’s how it could work for Professional Services teams:
- Forget which sub-team people sit in — remove these labels and silos. To me the cost of the confusion and getting agreement about what people work on and where they sit in the organisation is not worth the benefit. Just have everyone as Consultant (or appropriate similar, single label). If some people want to be called a certain title because it helps them do a better job, then that’s fine, and people may use the title sometimes and other times they may choose not to. Title need not, and should not, reflect seniority. It can, for example, reflect experience, skill or desired outcome.
- Ensure everyone has a People Manager — ideally empower people to choose their own, and Senior Management can help resolve any conflicts or mismatches if necessary. The point is enable people to have a say and indicate their interest. Senior Management can still make the final decision, and if they explain why, this will help build trust in the way decisions are made.
- Senior Management let the team know the high-level goals the organisation is trying to achieve
- Empower individuals of all levels to decide which projects/programs they work on. From what I’ve been learning about ‘responsive orgs’, I believe if Management set the projects/programs, this is too top down. Management should set the high level goals, and then should empower and trust individuals within the team to work on whatever they like. This is possible because the high level goals are clearly stated, and people can work out loud so Senior Management or People Managers can step in if necessary, but only after observing/nurturing emergent behaviour. I think this is when we’ll see the power and benefits of peer-to-peer flocking behaviour (hat-tip Steve Somers), as people follow their natural energy and intrinsic motivation (rather than the projects/programs set by Managers). The experiment I’d love to see organisations to try is to just let people work on what they like, and see what happens after, for example, 3 months. This will give people the opportunity to succeed and fail — which I believe is imperative.
- It will turn out that some people will work on ‘customer facing’ stuff, and some will work on ‘internal’. And people can change when they want to. If we see there are not enough people to meet the demand of one area, they can look to understand why. For example, asking: Is there more demand from a certain area? Do we need to develop/hire certain other skills/experience? Do we understand enough about people’s motivation? Are we involving people outside our organisation enough? etc…
The approach can be continuously iterated based on what’s observed. Want another example of an organization that lets people choose what they work on? Check this out…
“There’s no ‘transfer process’ to go through when an employee decides to move to another team. They just move. This is symbolized by placing wheels under each desk. People are free to move as they are capable. Employees are trusted with their time and energy. And it works.”
My previous posts:
My suggestion for how we spend our once-a-year global in-person team meeting
Why I started #SpotlightSnippets
Why I don’t tell people to come with solutions rather than just problems
Why I don’t tell people to close their laptops in meetings
8 tips for improving employee engagement
7 tips for improving your communication style on internal (enterprise) social networks
