[OSList] "Building Self-Management Muscles"

Fri Jul 24 06:59:33 PDT 2015

Thank You Christine! Suzanne Daigle was a big help in pulling this story
out of me.

Regarding your story about the non-profit, the issues of silos and lack of
clarity are very interesting. I find myself wondering, is the problem a
lack of self-management understanding, a lack of strength in using
self-management, mis-communication, or maybe something else all together.

I don't have any non-profit stories of my own but I have worked in teams of
150 people that were completely self-managed. One of those teams did go
through a very large change in strategic direction and the issues of silos
and clarity where certainly present. Even in teams where the principles and
practices of self-management are deeply embedded, mis-communication can
still reek havoc.

Without sharing the details, I'll try to tell the story.

A collection of individual product lines that were for many years or even
decades all stand alone businesses with their own P&Ls and cross-functional
teams were facing an issue of long term viability of each stand alone
business. There was a need to do something different because the current
direction was not sustainable. But how to shake up a collection of
businesses that are all self-managed. It started by coming together around
the issues and opportunities. Just like we do in Open Space. It some cases
it became clear that some products or businesses needed to go. The
challenge was how to make the change without sinking the whole ship alone
with it. By involving people at all levels in the realities of the
situation, it became clear to some business leaders that they needed to
slow down and eventually close their business. It is hard when certain
people who all like each other and have been working together for a long
time have to face the realization that what they had is not going to last.
But even when you all know that something needs to change, the path forward
is still not clear. It would be easier to just put someone "in-charge" and
have them sort it all out. But since you don't have that in
self-management, you have to work through the issues together. It is tricky
because for many people what was clear before about how the organization
worked (in SM it is about knowing who to go to) is not so clear anymore.
Some people band together into "silos" because they don't like what's going
on. Some people are frustrated but understand the need for change and are
willing to deal with the uncertainty. Some are championing the change and
have the unique issue of needing to communicate. But communication can be
very hard when you don't know how things are going to look in the future.
So what do you do?

What everyone on this list already knows. You just keep opening the space.
One-on-one. In groups. Everymonth. Everyday The path forward will expose
itself.

Kevin

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 11:22 PM, Christine Whitney Sanchez via OSList <
oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:

> Nice job, Kevin!  Take a look, everyone...
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/great-work-cultures/building-self-management_b_7859320.html
>
> Yesterday, I had a conversation with one of my long-time clients, the COO
> of a nonprofit org, who teaches nonprofit management at a couple of
> universities.  In her organization, they have a team-based culture that
> supports some self-managed teams and some teams with supervisors, depending
> on their level of development according to some collectively created
> criteria.
>
> She commented that in an organization with a relatively small number of
> paid staff (70 FTEs, 55 Seasonal Staff, 2,000 volunteers) one of the
> challenges of self-managed functional teams is how quickly they become
> silos.  From her perspective, self-managed cross-functional teams tend to
> spend too much time trying to understand what everyone does - these often
> don’t feel like teams but more like gaggles of loosely connected colleagues
> .
>
> I would love to hear stories from any of you in our global community about
> successful self-managed teams in nonprofit orgs or in any type of org with
> under 100 FTEs.
>
> Warm wishes from a toasty Phoenix evening,
>
> Christine
>
> Christine Whitney Sanchez, M.C.
> Phoenix, AZ, USA • +1.480.759.0262
> www.innovationpartners.com
> www.christinewhitneysanchez.com
>
> Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/ChristineWhitneySanchez> | LinkedIn
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>
>
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