Connected-Era Responsive Organizational Practices — What Are They Like? Part 1
To thrive in the connected age the ResponsiveOrg Manifesto suggests organizations to balance tensions between:
More Predictable <-> Less Predictable
Profit <-> Purpose
Hierarchies <-> Networks
Controlling <-> Empowering
Planning <-> Experimentation
Privacy <-> Transparency
The concept of the connected organization contains two things: first, trying to handle the complexity that comes with the interdependent operating environment and second, the new opportunities provided by the connectedness of the networks we operate in. In speaking about Responsive Organizations, these are cornerstones. But what does an organization have to do to become responsive?
One of the best resources to understand complexity is the Cynefin Framework by Dave Snowden which contrasts different types of ontologies (world views or rather, in this case, dynamics of a given domain) and subsequent epistemologies (ways of knowing — and doing). The framework is made out of five domains: complex, complicated, chaotic, obvious and disorder which refers to the impossibility to determine the dynamics of the given domain.
The industrial-era organizations, which most of our traditional management thinking is based on, had the luxury of operating in complicated and obvious operating environment in which change was more gradual. Thus the practices related to these domains can be described by the underlying values of predictability and control.
Operating in today’s connected and highly interdependent environment requires adding another toolset. The complex and chaotic domains which are often described by the acronym VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) require operations to be learning and adaptable.
The key takeaway from Cynefin is that the practices, routines and structures of a single domain rarely get us where is needed but rather require additional toolsets to tackle the dynamics of each given contextual domain. Excluding the standardization of simple routines (the dive from complicated to obvious), Cynefin dynamics and cadence describe practices that move between the different domains and are able to sense the VUCA phenomena sufficiently for organizations and teams to respond to them. When we speak about responsive organizational and work practices, we refer to these domain-transitioning practices.

Because of the transitional and contextual quality of complexity, there is no single ideology or set of practices that helps deal with it. In his great book Team of Teams — New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, consultant and retired general Stanley McChrystal of the US Army, describes the approach the traditionally hierarchical Joint Task Forces developed to tackle the challenges of the distributed Al Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal describes complexity as having to do with the fast rate of speed within a ever-changing environment and the interdependence of people and events. To promote the adaptability needed to deal with these challenges, the Joint Task Forces adopted practices for empowered execution and shared consciousness.

Shared consciousness is about sharing information openly so that any actor in an organization or network is able to act given sufficient information. This type of open practice related to information is a stark opposite to the closed need-to-know approach to information that has been part of our industrial-era organizations in which communication technologies were not as advanced as today.
Empowered execution enables decision-making closer to where the actual about situations information is. McChrystal describes the successes related to this type of practice:
“When we tried to do the same things tighter and faster under the constraints of the old system, we managed to increase the number of raids per month from ten to eighteen; by 2006, under the new system, this figure skyrocketed to three hundred. With minimal increases in personnel and funding, we were running seventeen times faster. And these raids were more successful.”
“We had decentralized on the belief that the 70 percent solution today would be better than the 90 percent solution tomorrow. But we found our estimates were backward — we were getting the 90 percent solution today instead of the 70 percent solution tomorrow.”
The underpinnings of these practices are trust and common purpose in which people are trusted to be able to make correct decisions and act based on them when working together towards a common purpose. In terms of enabling such practices, McChrystal describes changing his role from manager to a leader:
“I was most effective when I supervised processes — from intelligence operations to the prioritization of resources — ensuring that we avoided the silos or bureaucracy that doomed agility, rather than making individual operational decisions.“
Jos de Blok, the leader of another self-managing organization, Buurtzorg, reflects on similar behaviors:
“When we asked him about his most important role as a leader of Buurtzorg, he simply answered ‘I’m here to keep the principles alive’. This includes communicating the vision, leading by example, and being in service of the organization and its purpose.”
In his talk at Responsive Conference 2016 Chris Fussell, one of the co-authors of Team of Teams, compares organizations geared towards complicated and complex environments. Both of them have their upsides: industry-era organizations are highly successful at efficiency and predictability whereas connected-era add the capabilities related to thriving in uncertainty and being adaptable to a changing environment. The trick to being responsive to each ontological domain by which I mean being able to be efficient or adaptable as the situation demands.

With what type of practices can organizations then use to become responsive and more adaptable in the face of complexity? Tune in for these in Part 2 of “Connected-Era Responsive Organizational Practices — What Are They Like?”

ResponsiveOrg Finland on avoimesti toimiva, oppiva ja tekevä verkosto, joka pyrkii kiihdyttämään työn ja organisoitumisen uudistumista. Toimimme paikallisena hubina globaalisti toimivalle ResponsiveOrg-verkostolle. Kutsumme luomaan ja edistämään toimintatapoja, joiden avulla organisaatiot voivat kehittää responsiivisuuttaan muutoksille, ihmisille, tulevaisuuksille ja verkosto-organisoitumiselle.
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