What is a self-organizing team?
"The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams ," says the Agile Manifesto. This raises several questions: What is a self-organizing team? Why do we need them? What is the difference between self-organizing teams? How can we support self-organization? Is there any way to help this particular type of collaboration emerge?
Surprisingly, there isn't much data on self-organizations and how to make them more efficient. Organizational behavior development consultant Sigi Kaltenecker and agile coach Peter Hundermark have written a thin little book titled "Leading Self-Organizing Teams," which will be published on InfoQ later this year.
This is the first in a series of articles on the topic, beginning with "What is a Self-Organizing Team". We'll continue to bring you "Why We Need Self-Organizing Teams" and "Everything About Leading Self-Organizing Teams" in the coming weeks.
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What is a self-organizing team?
" Knowledge workers have to govern themselves. They have to have autonomy , " says management guru Peter Drucker in his book "Management Challenges in the Twenty-First Century."
This goes hand-in-hand with agile thinking, where the Scrum guide says "self-organizing teams decide how best to do their work, not other external teams." But what is a self-organizing team? ? What does a self-organizing team involve? What are the specific conditions for a group of individuals to be called a team?
Let's start with the last question first. What is a team? According to team expert J. Richard Hackman, we found the concept to be completely unsettled. Defining the term is a bit like the Rorschach test: people add their own expectations to their understanding, and they think and talk about "teams" differently. In many cases, a real team is indistinguishable from a cohesive organization. However, a joint organization of everyone does similar work together, but their work does not depend on the work of others alone. A real team has the following four characteristics:
- First, to accomplish a great mission together ;
- Second, there are clear boundaries in the flow of information that are aligned with other organizational units, resources or decision-making policies;
- Third, the right to self-govern within these boundaries ; and
- Fourth, maintain stability within a reasonably arranged period .
When making decisions within the purview of a team, one must consider four functions that any organizational unit must perform, and who is best equipped to handle each of these functions:
- Setting direction for the team , that is, setting the organization's goals, main purpose, and tasks, which will spawn countless smaller tasks;
- Execute the unit's planning and prepare for organizational support for the work, that is, structuring the tasks, deciding who will do the work, determining the standards by which the work will be performed, and ensuring that the team has the resources and resources needed to carry out the work. assist.
- Monitoring and management of work processes , that is, collecting and interpreting data on work in progress and taking corrective action if necessary;
- The performance of work , that is, the use of physical or mental energy to accomplish a task.
By examining these core functions of management or team responsibilities, Hackman provides us with a power matrix that can be used to distinguish four levels of team self-organization. (Chart 1)
Figure 1 : Power Matrix
The real world has never been so absolute in black and white, and the self-organization we see has more than one form. For us, self-organization is an umbrella term that covers all levels of self-organization.
- Manager-led teams that only empower team members to perform tasks, while managers monitor and manage workflow, plan the environment, and set direction. In our view, many expert groups and traditional project management "teams" in functional silos are examples of such organizations.
- Self-managing teams , where members are not only responsible for the execution of tasks, but also manage their own processes. In the IT industry, we have seen many Kanban teams apply this method to focus on team tasks or communicate value streams;
- Self-planning teams that empower members to plan the team and/or the organizational context in which they operate. Most real management teams and some Scrum teams (especially when Lean or Agile are scalable) are at this layer.
- Self-governing teams , corporate boards, partners or startups are responsible for all four of these core functions as shown.
Although these are structurally different, all types of self-organizing teams share some common standards. According to Francis Heylighen (author of The Science of Self-Organization and Adaptive), all self-organizing systems have the following characteristics:
- Decentralized control , that is to say the opposite of centralized control,
- continuously adapt to the changing environment,
- Structures that emerge naturally from local interactions ,
- feedback , both positive and negative
- Resilience , comes down to the ability of the system to repair and adjust.
In order to help us understand, Heylighen quoted cybernetics expert Ross Ashby's original exposition in "Principles of Self-Organizing Dynamic Systems" in 1947. Self-organization is a natural process, a local interaction between chaotic and disordered system components. The overall order established under the action. However, self-organization is a general phenomenon, not an abnormal systemic manifestation. Even in the agile world, it is neither "something refreshing people" nor "some secret recipe".
Setting aside the popular metaphors, self-organization is a statute that applies to many different systems . There are many, many examples from neuroscience, physics, chemistry and biology: the brain is connected by all neurons, it forms a mental model and does not depend on individual controls; plants like aspen forest, it is The largest known organisms on earth, each tree is connected to each other by the same underground root system; flocks of birds, elk, sheep, which are able to complete their migration in a synchronized manner, like an animal, especially to avoid danger And when changing direction; another example, the ant colony creates a mechanism to find food, but it looks like they are moving randomly.
What conclusions can we draw from these reflections? What does a systematic code of conduct mean for self-organization in a business environment? First, we should remind ourselves that it is impossible to become a self-organizing team overnight . Neither is self-organization, something happens by chance and is within the exact same boundaries. In fact, the process of teaming and self-organization is never-ending. They must be continually reconfigured in cognitive-response ways to change appeals and circumstances. In other words, self-organization is an ongoing process: every time the organization changes, the organization and the team need to repeat the entire process.
Self-organization is not just about including entire teams within a specific organizational context. When each team member faces the problem of what to do and how to do it, they must also solve it in a self-organizing way . And every day, everyone on the team has to coordinate his or her self-organization with the rest of the team. To keep things in sync, we hold regular meetings like "daily stand-ups," "operations reviews," or "retrospectives."
Another pillar of all self-organizing teams is based on a delicate balance of similarities and differences . It feels a little paradoxical to say that in order to effectively dig out these differences, team members need to fully share similarities. A thinker of the German system, Diether Gebert presents his investigations of innovation teams, which are data-driven and initially have to grant a certain amount of trust to each other. Without a certain amount of trust up front, they can neither figure out the background of the individual nor examine and adapt to the current workflow. Later on, the right balance of praise, rewards, and fair play becomes an important factor in self-empowerment. Disrespect hurts self-organization in a similar way to social slack.
It is well known that self-organizing teams require healthy interactions to realize their full potential. What this means for teams, Russell Ackoff summed up in one sentence: its efficiency "is not simply the sum of all the individual efficiencies, but the chemical effect between them." However, we have understood that self-organizing teams do not It doesn't mean that the team decides everything by itself. Self-organizing teams are not without boundaries. Quite the contrary, there must be a clear set of expectations and responsibilities that govern self-organization. In Glenda H. Eoyang's landmark article "Conditions of Self-Organization in the Human System," she proposes three conditions that must be met for self-organization processes to form a coherent pattern:
- A closed (C) boundary , which locks the confines of the system to define its character. Simply put, without a clear separation of the non-self, there is no clear self. Such controls rely on organizational pillars such as a clear mission, a grand mission, challenging goals, operational guidelines, and a clear decision-making strategy.
- Significant differences (D) , such as different knowledge, experience, education, age, gender and cultural background. Effective teams know how to recognize and embrace their differences, and know how to build on them to create difference.
- Communication Transformation (E), which guides interactions within the team and its environment. According to Eoyang, the transformation of information, mental or material between interdependent people or units is the key to the ability to drill down to system-level self-organization patterns.
Boundaries are not pure constraints at all, they are always defining moments of communication. By itself, the boundary has an effect on both internal and external directions. In the words of Margaret Wheatley: "If people are free to make their own decisions, guided by clear organizational characteristics, the development of the whole system will be more coordinated and robust. Organizations will be more orderly without too much control. ."
As part of a larger system, each unit of the CDE model depends on a supporting environment. Hackman has a metaphor that goes like this: "If a well-designed work team is a seedling, then the organizational environment is the soil in which it was planted, and the environment provides it with the nutrients it needs to produce and bear fruit." According to Hackman, non-rhetorical In other words, the environment's support for self-organizing teams consists of the following four subsystems:
- Information - Teams that provide data, whose members need to be competent to plan and execute
- Infrastructure - The right physical space (many co-located teams struggle with this), technical facilities, and money.
- Education - training, coaching or technical assistance the team may need
- Rewards - Provide positive, financial and token rewards for good team performance.
Going back to Eoyang's self-organizing model, we can now simply draw a diagram to illustrate how constraints, differences, transitions, and environments all work together to transform and influence each other:
Figure 2 : Expanded CDE Model
The central area of Exhibit 2 has a collection of elements of different sizes, shapes, and colors, representing team members with different backgrounds, strengths, and skills. As shown by the connecting arrows, members are connected to each other, and they create a cross-functional team by communicating or communicating with heart. The interaction of the entire team is defined by boundaries, which to a certain extent indicates that this is an open rather than a closed system. Its environment is by no means a traditional black box, and teams depend on its environment. They need the support of the environment, that is, the support of the previously mentioned subsystems such as infrastructure, information, education and rewards. Also, they need an external agent (indicated by a snowflake symbol) who is responsible for these supports. This is the role of an immediate boss.
Although trust between teams is not drawn in order to simplify this diagram as much as possible, its connectivity in terms of value streams, necessary customer focus, and organizational rewards is key to all self-organizing processes.
in conclusion
We found that true teams have great missions, clear boundaries, self-organizing power and stability. We found that self-organization in teams is built on a delicate balance of similarities and differences among team members; self-organization requires clear boundaries and a supportive environment; self-organization is characterized by decentralized control, continuous adaptation , naturally occurring structure, feedback and resilience. In the end, we found that self-organizing teams are in no rush.
The next article in this series will explore the next question, "Why do we need self-organizing teams?"
References
- Beck, Kent, et al.: The Agile Manifesto (2001). http://agilemanifesto.org/
- Drucker, Peter: Challenges for 21st Century Managers. Harper Business (2001).
- Eoyang, Glenda H.: The conditions of self-organization in the human system (PhD dissertation, 2001). http://www.hsdinstitute.org/about-hsd/dr-glenda/dissertation.html
- Hackman, J. Richard: Team Leaders. Harvard Business School Press (2002).
- Hackman, J. Richard: The Wisdom of Collaboration. Berrett-Koehler (2011).
- Heylighen, Francis: The Science of Self-Organization and Adaptivity (2001).
- http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/EOLSS-Self-Organiz.pdf
- Wheatley, Margaret J.: Leadership and the New Science. Berrett-Koehler (2006).
About the author
Sigi Kaltenecker is Co-Managing Director of Loop Consulting in Vienna, helping individuals, groups and organizations successfully conquer their professional challenges. He is a certified Scrum Master, Kanban Professional Coach and Co-Editor of PAM . Co-authored with Sigi Kanban in IT: Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement, which will be published in English in 2015. He can be reached at @sigikaltenecker.
Peter Hundermark is a certified Scrum Coach and Instructor, and a Kanban Coach for Scrum Sense . He focuses on organizational development, change management and leadership development to help bring more agility to work. He is the author of the book Better Execution of Scrum. He can be reached at @peterhundermark.
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