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Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Twelfth Principle

December 14, 2015
Agile, Antimatter principle, Community, Culture change, Product development, Software development
7 Comments

The Twelfth Principle

There are four values and twelve principles connected with the Agile Manifesto. As the folks at 12thPrinciple say,

“the four values and eleven of the twelve Agile principles do not address the wider organization at all.”

This is one of the key reasons why so many Agile adoptions (circa 80%) fail to deliver on the Agile promise.

I have this weeks added my name to the list of signatories at 12thprinciple.org.  Not because I totally and wholeheartedly embrace the “Twelfth Principle” in its current form. But because I wish to lend support to the idea that it’s the wider organisational context that utterly determines whether any kind of progressive change effort or initiative succeeds or fails.

The Twelfth Principle (n.b. actually appearing fifth in the list of Principles behind the Agile Manifesto) reads:

“Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.”

I see some basic flaws in this, but it does serve to highlight (at least, implicitly) the role of the wider organisation.

Here’s my take on these “flaws”:

  • Projects. I see little point in using projects to frame development efforts. Personally, I subscribe to #NoProjects, and FlowChain as a practical means to replace the whole idea of projects, in favour of product development flow.
  • Individuals. Yes, teams consist of individuals. But Man is a social animal, and collaborative knowledge work – such as software and product development requires society, not individuals. I get the idea that we’re really taking about a focus on people, here. As opposed to say structure, hierarchy, process, or what have you.
  • Give. Not so much give as in charity or largesse, but give as in make available, enable.
  • Them. Shades of them and us? Unfortunate choice of pronoun.

With a free hand, and the awesome benefit of hindsight, I might represent this principle thusly:

“We accept that collaborative knowledge-work proceeds best when we place people at the core of our focus.
We recognise that people do best within a supportive environment,
where needs are shared and attended to by all.”

How might you rephrase this principle?

– Bob

 

 

The Healthful Alternative To Management

December 4, 2015
Management, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy
4 Comments

The Healthful Alternative To Management

“Everything is a fiction.The only thing that really matters is which particular fictions we choose to believe.”

Most businesses choose to believe in the fiction labelled “management”. They choose to believe that there is value in having people, most often called “managers”, “in charge” of other people, most often called “workers”.

Some businesses, though, are reexamining that belief. Especially in the light of the demands of collaborative knowledge work, and the need to operate under volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions.

Purpose

Reexamination suggests we take a fresh look at the purpose of management. Definitions abound. Most look like shopping lists of all the things managers do on a daily basis. I’m going to go with a definition I feel particularly suited to the management of collaborative knowledge work:

Management exists to create and sustain the conditions under which effective work can happen.

Or, as Peter Drucker observed: “effective management consists in making it easer for people to do good work, to be productive”.

Alternatives

So, any viable alternative to the traditional management + workers setup needs to serve the same basic purpose: To create and sustain the conditions under which effective work can happen.

Various alternatives have been and continue to be explored: Holacracy, sociocracy, lattices, network organisations, wirearchies, industrial democracy, self-organisation, … the list grows longer every day.

All of these alternative have one thing in common: A recognition that work is, in essence, a social phenomenon. A phenomenon involving people, and their human relationships. Few of these alternatives, however, do anything explicit about the health of the societies they claim to value.

Organisational Psychotherapy

Can we conceive of alternatives to the traditional management + workers setup? Alternatives which do explicitly serve the health of our workplaces, of our societies-of-work, of our organisations?

Organisational psychotherapy is one such alternative. Its primary and explicit focus is the health of the organisation. Healthy and flourishing organisations create and sustain the conditions necessary for effective work. When an organisation has the means to provide therapy to itself, any need for the traditional management + workers setup diminishes and disappears. Contrived alternatives such as holacracy or lattices become moot.

How Do We Get There?

Can we expect today’s organisations to transform themselves? To acquire from their own resources the necessary capabilities for self-therapy? Some very few, very determined ones may be able to achieve that. For all the rest, some help may be useful. That’s the role of the external Organisational Therapist. To help organisations begin their journeys. To walk with them as they take their first fearful, stumbling steps towards improved health and joy.

– Bob