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The Why of FlowChain: Deliberate Continuous Improvement

February 19, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Deming, Doctrine, Flow, Flow•gnosis, Flowchain, Improvement, Learning, Memeology, Metaflow, Organisational effectiveness, Prod•gnosis, Product development, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Software Delivery, Software development, Systems thinking, Value streams
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The Why of FlowChain: Deliberate Continuous Improvement

In my career, working with hundreds of companies, I’ve almost never seen organisations* take a truly deliberate approach to continuous improvement. It’s nearly always treated as an afterthought or add-on to business-as-usual (BAU). But real transformation requires making continuous improvement an integral and core part of daily work. This is the “why” behind FlowChain – enabling deliberate, in-band continuous improvement.

In other words, applying the same disciplines from product development, delivery, etc. to the business (sic) of delivering continuous improvements  – continuously improving the way the work works.

What Is FlowChain?

So what is FlowChain? At its core, it is a system for managing flow – both the flow of outputs and the flow of improvements to the way the work works, concurrently and by the same means. And by “flow”, I mean the steady progress of work from request to completion through all steps in a process. Flow is optimised when the right work is happening at the right time by the right people. Roadblocks, delays, and waste are minimised or eliminated.

Flow

Optimising flow delivers the following benefits:

  • Increased productivity – less time wasted, more work completed
  • Improved quality – fewer defects, rework minimised
  • Better customer service – faster response times, reliability
  • Higher employee engagement – less frustration, more joy

But achieving flow requires continuous improvement. Problems must be made visible. Waste must be reduced iteratively. Roadblocks must be cleared continuously.

This is why FlowChain incorporates improvement into its regular rhythm. Each cycle follows a deliberate sequence:

  • Plan – Select and sequence the upcoming work.
  • Execute – Complete the work while tackling issues.
  • Review – Analyse completed work and identify improvements.
  • Adjust – Make changes to improve flow.

Unlike most continuous improvement efforts – that are separate from BAU – FlowChain makes improvement an integral in-band activity. The rapid cycles provide frequent opportunities to reflect, gain insights, and act.

Compounding Benefits

Over time, the compounding benefits are immense. Teams develop a “flow habit”, where improving flow becomes second nature. Powerful capabilities like root cause analysis, A3 problem-solving, improvement katas, and change management are honed.

In my experience, this deliberate approach is transformative. Teams gain tremendous agency to systematically improve their own flow. The organisation as a whole cultivates a culture of continuous improvement. And customers experience ever-better service and responsiveness.

The “why” of FlowChain is simple – create focus, visibility, accountability, and agency to drive continuous improvement. The results – ever better flow, reduced waste, and sustainable transformation. Deliberate, in-band continuous improvement stops being an aspiration and becomes a reality.

*Ask me about the exception.

Should We Adopt Agile?

February 18, 2024
Actionable Insights, Agile, Agility at Scale, AI, Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Prompt Engineering, Quintessence
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Should We Adopt Agile?

Following on from my previous post concerning surfacing and reflecting on shared assumptions and beliefs about work, here are ten reflective questions for an executive considering flexible software development approaches:

  1. What are our priorities – speed, adaptability, innovation, quality, predictability? How should our processes align*?
  2. Do our teams thrive with more autonomy, or require structure from leadership?
  3. Are staff skills best leveraged through specialisation or multi-skilling and cross-functional collaboration?
  4. How much do we value rapid delivery versus long-term planning and building of long-term capabilities?
  5. Can our culture accept constant change versus needing firm commitments to e.g. delivery dates, feature sets, etc?
  6. Is our leadership comfortable ceding some control over how work gets done?
  7. Do our metrics reflect outcomes, outputs, value delivered, or needs met? Should we measure differently?
  8. Is transparency into work progress more valuable than formal milestones?
  9. Do we believe in Minimal Viable Products over Big Design Up Front?
  10. Are we open to new ideas or convinced our current ways of working work best? How much research have we done?

*I.E. What approach will best ensure our organisation’s processes, systems and structures are optimally configured to support our priorities and goals, around both software development and our wider business?

 

Note: Many more than these ten questions could be relevant to the headline topic. I encourage and invite you to try asking your favourite chatbot for more questions to consider.

Also note: Given the preponderance of proselytisation for the Agile approach currently found on the Internet, I would not recommend asking your chatbot “Should we adopt Agile?” directly. Unbiased and considered advice will NOT be forthcoming.

What Do You Believe?

February 18, 2024
Actionable Insights, AI, Article, Memeology, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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What Do You Believe?

[Tl;Dr Ten questions for the busy executive to prompt self-examination]

By way of illustrating the intersection between current AI and Organisational Psychotherapy, here are ten AI-suggested* reflective questions for the business executive related to collective assumptions and beliefs about work:

  1. What core assumptions do we hold about what motivates employees? How might those impact our leadership style and company culture?
  2. Do we believe work should primarily be about productivity or fulfillment? How does that shape our policies around work-life balance?
  3. What are our beliefs around hierarchy and top-down leadership? Could a more collaborative model unlock more creativity?
  4. Are we open to re-examining traditional perspectives on things like remote work, flexible hours, or results-focused goals?
  5. Do we view employees as expendable assets or vital stakeholders? How does that perspective influence retention and turnover?
  6. Do we believe work requires oversight and control to be done well, or that autonomy drives better outcomes?
  7. Do we assume all employees are motivated by the same things like money or status? How could we better incorporate individual motivators?
  8. Are we clinging to any outdated models of what a successful workplace looks like? What new data or examples contradict our assumptions?
  9. Do we recognise generational differences in perspectives around things like work ethic, loyalty, and fulfillment?
  10. Are any of our beliefs around hard work or merit holding back disadvantaged groups? What biases might we recognise and rethink?

With help from any of the now numerous AI chatbots*, the busy executive can easily and quickly generate such questions to assist in e.g. collective self-reflection.

*The above list was generated via ClaudeAI

The Urge to Keep People Busy (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

February 16, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Busyness, Culture change, Learning, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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The Urge to Keep People Busy (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

In many workplaces, there is an underlying pressure to keep employees constantly busy. The thinking goes that if people have any downtime at work, that time is wasted and money is being left on the table. This leads managers and leaders to pile more and more work onto employees’ plates in an effort to extract maximum productivity. However, this approach is actually counterproductive.

Software companies tend to be prime examples of this misguided busywork culture. There is often intense pressure to continually release new features and upgrades to products. The development team is expected to churn out a steady stream of product increments to show that they are adding value. However, much of this activity becomes useless busywork after a certain point.

Queueing Theory 101

This phenomenon can be explained by queueing theory – the mathematical study of waiting in lines. As Tom DeMarco wrote in “Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency”, workers and tasks in a company form a queueing system. If all workers are 100% utilised, queues grow infinitely long and lead times stretch without bound. Companies need slack resources to absorb variation. Trying to keep everyone 100% busy all the time is thus self-defeating.

The Human Dimension

Studies have also shown that human cognitive resources are finite. We all have a limited capacity for productive focus and good decision making each day. Piling on more and more tasks leaves less mental energy for each task. Workers become ineffective at judging what activities are truly important versus those just designed to fill time. The quality of output suffers even as teams scramble to check more boxes.

Additionally, constant busyness leads to burnout over the long run. Workers never get the chance to recharge because they jump from one urgent task to the next. The resultant stress and exhaustion eventually sap motivation and creativity.

Alternative: Focus

Instead of keeping people busy for the sake of looking productive, organisations might choose to create focus. When clear priorities are set, teams have the space to deeply engage with tasks that really further core goals and objectives. Quality output that moves the needle earns more than quantity of output or hours logged.

Rather than endlessly generating and implementing new product features, software teams can choose to carefully consider business objectives and what features will have the biggest impact. Saying “no” to nonessential work is often healthier than taking it on just to keep programmers coding around the clock. Less can truly be more when it comes to productive and innovative software teams.

The Benefits of Downtime

In knowledge economy workplaces, ongoing learning uplifts both individual and organisational success. However, prioritising constant busyness leaves little room for employees to actively absorb new information or develop additional skills. Building protected time for learning into work schedules is thus hugely beneficial compared to attempting to eliminate all downtime.

Sufficient breathing room between intensive assignments provides cognitive space for individuals to deeply internalize and contextualise what they have already worked on. Lessons sink in better when folks have moments to pause and reflect on how the dots connect. Such periodic integration of experiences builds flexible knowledge that better transfers to future contexts.

Dedicated downtime also makes room for individuals to proactively seek out cutting edge knowledge in their domain. Workers use the time to read journals, take online courses, attend conferences, engage mentors and collaborate with peers in the field. Through these networks, they rapidly update understanding and hone best practices awareness. Organisations thrive when individuals return to apply these learnings to internal initiatives.

Importantly,downtime allows employees to pursue self-directed skill building aligned to their own person al and career needs, not just immediate organisational requirements. When individuals direct their own learning, intrinsic motivations energise mastery far beyond what imposed trainings can deliver. Carving space for self-improvement helps attract and retain top talent as well.

Of course, workers also benefit from downtime that simply allows their brains to recharge after intense problem solving. Neural networks expend significant energy forming new connections demanded by complex tasks. Regular periods of low external stimuli are crucial for restoring the actual physical infrastructure enabling learning in the first place.

Rather than something to eliminate through added busywork, downtime facilitates ongoing renewal that powers future performance. Knowledge workers’ most precious asset is the human capacity for rapidly acquiring and applying new understanding. Protecting time and space for learning may thus provide the highest organizational return on investment of any activity, busy or not.

Finally, downtime provides the space to surface and reflect on both personal and shared assumptions and beliefs about the way the work works (i.e. the opportunity for organisational psychotherapy, whether facilitated or self-directed).

Summary

The impulse to minimise any workspace downtime is understandable but misplaced. Workers and companies both thrive when space is made for deliberate thinking, creative ideation, restoration, reflection, and collaboration. The busiest person in the office is rarely the most productive or effective. Organisations migh better choose to create focus for employees rather than frenetic stimulation. Whether explained through queueing theory or basic human psychology, purposeful work will always trump mindless busyness.

Teams for the Flow Era

February 11, 2024
Article, Fellowship, Flow, Flow•gnosis, Flowchain, Quintessence, Teambuilding
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Teams for the Flow Era

Teams that are capable of smoothly and swiftly reconfiguring themselves is becoming the norm in the software industry today. Rather than old-fashioned rigid structures and siloed employees, progressive organisations opt for a more fluid approach that allows for responsiveness to shifting conditions.

Team members work across multiple projects in these flexible arrangements, contributing versatile skills as needed and rearranging team composition to suit the task in hand. Situational leadership – a.k.a. Fellowship – emerges based on expertise instead of formal titles. With boundaries that allow copious and timely information sharing between interlocking teams, rapid coordination becomes commonplace.

Self-direction and mutual trust enable these dynamic teams. A strong, shared strategic purpose coupled with developmental training and organisational support gives members the confidence to take initiative without constant top-down control. Teammates understand how their piece connects, empowering local decision-making even as larger configurations reshape around evolving challenges.

This fluid team format creates adaptable organisations capable of smooth reprioritisation as demands change, unencumbered by bureaucratic processes. People, ideas and resources flow to each new focus area in turn, adjusting teaming patterns seamlessly to current priorities. Progress keeps pace with the opportunities and demands of the day.

Some continuity and purposeful guidance balances out the flux. Respected, experienced figures may anchor successive teaming waves, providing continuity of culture and knowledge transfer. As thought leaderBob Marshall describes in his acclaimed book ‘The Team Fruit Bowl’, fluid teams’ steadiness enables ongoing realignment around the organisation’s North Star.

Self-aligning, versatile teams represent the leading edge of organisational design today. Staying responsive without getting swept away, they ride currents of change toward transformative performance.

The Great British Worker Shortage: Flogging a Dead Horse

February 10, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Quintessence
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The Great British Worker Shortage: Flogging a Dead Horse

Recent headlines bemoan a British workforce apparently lacking motivation as employee shortages plague UK companies. But rather than dusting off the same stale carrot-and-stick strategies aimed at driving disengaged worker horses, a radical shift may be in order. What if leading organisations reinvented their entire mindset and systems to inspire authentic engagement?

Outmoded Assumptions

This seismic reinvention starts with rethinking assumptions:

  • Are tired coercion tactics truly the only solution, or are there unmet needs amongst our people?
  • Could under-tapped passions and purpose be awakened to fuel commitment?
  • What kind of workplace reimagining could kindle individual and collective potential?

Rather than tread the same dead paths, today’s visionary organisations are poised to pioneer reinvention rooted in understanding these human truths. Work can inspire meaning, camaraderie and self-actualisation towering far above merely showing up for a wage. But aspiting to these heights requires a fundamentally fresh lens.

Are we ready to reshape the canvas? What possibilities might emerge through a relationship-based reset? Read on to explore dead-end strategies of the past contrasted to pathways to engagement and symbiotic thriving…

Reinventing the Disengaged British Workforce

Here are 12 strategies often used by companies who find themselves riding a dead horse:

  1. Change riders: For example, appoint new managers. But rather than simply swap managers, why not build engagement teams to deeply enquire of unmotivated staff on their true passions and purposes?
  2. Buy a stronger whip: But harsher penalties or coercive measures usually backfire. Could tailored incentives that speak to intrinsic worker values be more sustainably motivating?
  3. Harness several dead horses together: Attempting to harness disengaged teams rarely breeds vitality. Should clarifying individual purpose come first before teaming to ignite motivation?
  4. Emulate the best practices of other dead horse riders: Trendy gimmicks gaining traction elsewhere may entertain briefly, but authentic and lasting motivation lives in practices tailored for your people.
  5. Outsource the ridership: Handing rein over to outsourced managers who lack connection to internal teams can further dissolve rapport and purpose. Regular grassroots engagement from the organisation can rebuild relationships.
  6. Affirm that “this is the way we have always done things”: Preserving status quo processes may provide familiarity but squelches the innovation and empowerment today’s workforce expects. Could reinvention around the human dimension stir engagement?
  7. Change the requirements, declaring “This horse is not dead”: When workplace reality conflicts unsustainably with output expectations, organisations able to accept reality and reinvent accordingly tend to thrive.
  8. Perform cost analysis to see if contractors can ride cheaper: Analysing staff as expenses rather than assets risks missing their fullest potential value. How could we reboot to showcase their upside?
  9. Promote the dead horse to a management position: Rather than reward fancy titles over real contribution, what if meaningful advancement tied directly to the ability for motivating and uplifting others?
  10. Sue the horse manufacturer: Playing the blame game often wastes energy better directed toward understanding real needs and reinventing uninspiring systems. What does that reinvention vision entail?
  11. Claim “the horse was always dead”: Whether motivation issues worsened gradually over time or not, forward-thinking leaders take full responsibility today. Authentic reinvention must start now.
  12. Hire in foreign riders known for their ability to ride dead horses.

The Antimatter Principle reminds us that inspiration sparked by deeply attending to human emotional needs will always outpace coercion. Will UK companies discover how to truly engage the 21st century British worker by fully reinventing the workplace experience? I boubt it. And yet, The potential awaits fresh thinking!

What is Rigour?

February 7, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Capability development, Caring, Culture change, Engineering, Fellowship, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Rightshifting, Self-organisation, Software development, Standard work, Teambuilding
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What is Rigour?

Rigour refers to the strict precision and accuracy with which work is executed in fields like software engineering and collaborative knowledge work (CKW). It entails adherence to standards and best practices for needed outcomes.

The Importance of Getting it Right

Attentive rigour matters because carelessness breeds mistakes. Flaws in logic or bugs in code stem from a lack of rigour. This introduces unwanted surprises, and failures down the line. Rigour is an attitude of mind that zeroes in on getting things right the first time Cf. Crosby, ZeeDee.

The Perils of Getting it Wrong

However, the quest for rigour can go awry when imposed hastily or mindlessly. Establishing rigorous frameworks like requirements analysis, peer review etc. does carry overhead. Teams can get so bogged down chasing perfection that creativity, productivity and morale suffer. Or so much time is spent eliminating small defects that bigger picture progress slows. Like most things, balance is warranted.

The Laissez-Faire Extreme

At the other end of the spectrum from rigour lies the laissez-faire attitude. This French phrase meaning “let it be” encapsulates a laid-back approach where participants have broad freedom to work in whatever manner they choose.

In software and knowledge work contexts, laissez-faire environments feature very few enforced policies, protocols, or mechanisms for ensuring quality. Creativity and unhindered workflow takes priority over rigour. Peer reviews, quality assurance, and documentation are optional. Teams self-organise organically without work standards.

This spontaneity can spark innovation but has pitfalls. Lack of rigour tacitly permits cut corners, gaps in logic, unfinished ideas and sloppy execution. With an easy-going approach, easily preventable flaws accumulate and undermine end results.

In applied contexts like commercial software development, laissez-faire practices practically guarantee shoddy work products riddled with defects. User needs demand rigour not as an obstacle, but as an enabler of excellence. Finding the right balance is key.

The absence of rigour embodied in laissez-faire philosophies may promote freedom. But the ensuing chaos leaves the fruits of hard work easily compromised. Some structure and rigour ultimately serves applied collaborative knowledge work better in the long run.

While cutting corners is not an option, forced rigour without context can mean marginal gains at disproportionate cost. Rigour must enable, not encumber, the pursuit of excellence. Teams that foster a culture where rigour flows from all participants, intrinsically and voluntarily, tend to find the sweet spot. Getting there requires clarity of purpose, patience, and care. Do that and rigour lifts the quality of collaborative knowledge work substantially over time.

What does rigour mean to you and your team?

Building Method: Creating Shared Understanding of How We Work

February 7, 2024
Antimatter principle, Article, Needs, Quintessence, Requirements, Software development
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Building Method: Creating Shared Understanding of How We Work

With today’s complex business landscapes and rapidly evolving technologies, having a well-defined “way of working” is crucial for software teams to execute effectively. Most organisations adopt processes, frameworks, and methods that they believe will deliver software projects successfully within their constraints.

But how often do teams step back and ask – how well does our method actually work for us? How much have we actively built and shaped it based on our own learning? How much of what we’ve learned about how to build software do we apply to building our method(s)?

The Reality

The reality is most teams inherit an existing software development method or cargo-cult the latest hype they read about. They don’t consciously architect the foundations defining the collective work. Much like constructing a building without an intentional blueprint – the result is disjointed work patterns built piecemeal over time.

This leads to confusion, frustration, and quarterbacking* when team members operate on conflicting assumptions and mental models of how work actually flows. People spin their wheels questioning why things happened when lacked shared reasoning of how decisions get made.

That’s why teams dedicated to continuous improvement migh choose to prioritise Building Method. This means deliberately designing an optimal way of working given your realities – then updating the blueprint as you learn from experience.

Key Steps

Key steps for Building Method include:

  • Surfacing the needs of all the Folks That Matter™ re: the Build Method (old skool: requirements analysis)
  • Facilitating deep conversations about current practices, the good and the bad, what to keep and what to reject
  • Mapping out flows – where value gets created and lost
  • Defining decision rights giving clarity yet freedom
  • Distilling guiding principles for tracking outcomes vs needs
  • Envisioning the ideal configuration of people, process, tools
  • Inspecting then rewiring suboptimal current conditions
  • Embedding rituals allowing reflection and adaptation
  • Surfacing and reflecting on governing shared assumptions and beliefs about how work should work

While external benchmarks provide useful perspective, real transformation occurs when teams consciously architect agreements uniquely tailored for the Needsscape. By investing energy into Building Method you construct a living blueprint that evolves intentionally vs. accidentally over time.

Invitation to Contribute

What does your team’s current method look like – and how intentionally was it built? I welcome perspectives on elevating teams capabilities for effectively Building Method. Please share your experiences in the comments.

Aside

*Quarterbacking is when one person on a team takes on an overly directive role and excessively tells other members what to do, rather than allowing for collaborative decision-making and self-organisation.

The term comes from American football’s quarterback position – the player who calls out plays and commands the offense on each down. Calling someone a “quarterback” on a software team implies they are dominating discussions, assigning tasks, and tightly controlling the work in an ineffective way.

Quarterbacking can emerge when team members lack a shared understanding of role clarity, decision rights, working agreements, and processes. Without clear method or structure, an informal hierarchy forms with the most vocal directing others and disempowering the team.

The alternative is facilitating peer-to-peer collaboration where everyone has agency in creatively solving problems. Avoiding quarterbacking means intentionally designing team interactions that enable decentralised leadership, autonomy, and leverage collective intelligence.

So in summary, quarterbacking refers to overly directive and disempowering behaviour that stems from lack of clarity, structure, and self-organisation on a team. The solution is co-creating method that empowers the broader team.

Individual Mindsets vs. Collective Mindsets

February 2, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Capability development, Culture change, Innovation, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence, Systems thinking
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Individual Mindsets vs. Collective Mindsets

We often talk about the need for individuals to change their mindsets – their assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes – in order to create positive change. But as human beings, we don’t exist in isolation. As the saying goes, we are social animals, shaped by the groups and cultures we are part of. So perhaps we might choose rather to shift more of our focus to addressing collective mindsets rather than just individual ones.

Schein On

Organisational psychologist and author Edgar Schein argues that culture stems from a group’s shared basic assumptions and beliefs. These collective ways of thinking and being manifest in organisational policies, processes and behaviors. If the culture has dysfunctional aspects, it perpetuates dysfunction. Merely helping individials adopt more productive mindsets without addressing the surrounding culture is an uphill battle.

For Example

Take a common example – trying to promote more innovative thinking in a risk-averse bureaucratic workplace. Telling individuals to “be more innovative” often backfires. When people attempt new ways of doing things, they get pushback for not following protocols. and Interesting ideas get shut down quickly by naysayers. There are no systems or incentives to support innovation. So you end up with frustrated employees, not actual innovation.

Organisational Psychotherapy To The Rescue

In contrast, #OrganisationalPsychotherapy seeks to invite folks into uncovering and transforming collective assumptions and beliefs – the mental models that shape systems and culture. By facilitating more awareness of existing culture and defining desired culture, interventions get better traction. Collective mindsets shift to be more supportive of stated goals, like innovation, making it easier for individuals to adopt those productive mindsets as well.

Summary

The key insight is that individual mindsets are downstream of collective mindsets. Without addressing dysfunctional aspects of culture and systems, individual change efforts face resistence from the surrounding ecosystem. This highlights the need to focus on group mindset factors first and foremost. Of course, individuals still have agency in driving any kind of change. But we’d do well to spend more time examining and evolving the shared beliefs and assumptions on which any organisation is built. For cultural transformation, that’s likely the most high-leverage point of intervention.

Postscript – Donalla Meadows’ Twelve Points of Leverage

In her influential article “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” systems thinker Donella Meadows articulated 12 places within complex systems where a small shift can lead to fundamental changes in the system as a whole. Her framework offers guidance on how to approach system-level transformation, whether in organizations, societies, or beyond.

Meadows proposes 12 leverage points ranked in order of effectiveness, with the most high-leverage interventions at the top. The higher the leverage point, the easier it is to make major improvements to the system with minimal effort. Her list starts with more superficial leverage points around details like subsidies and incentives, then moves deeper into the fundamental goals, paradigms, and transcending purpose that underpin why a system exists in the first place.

The most powerful leverage points require a deeper, more courageous transformation. But they allow us to redefine the very reason a given system exists, enabling revolutionary redesign rather than incremental improvements. Meadows urges change agents to have the wisdom and patience to address the deeper paradigms, values, and purpose driving systemic behavior. As she concludes, “People who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.”

In examining Meadows’ hierarchy of leverage points, we gain an appreciation for the depth of change required for true systems transformation. It inspires a more radical reimagining of what’s possible. The framework continues to provide guidance to sustainability leaders and organizational change agents seeking to effect large-scale improvements in business, government, technology, education and beyond. In this critical era facing many complex, planetary-scale challenges, Meadows’ words ring truer than ever as we work to create fundamental shifts towards more just, resilient and life-affirming systems.

The Era of Collaborative Knowledge Work

January 30, 2024
Actionable Insights, Antimatter principle, Article, Business, Collaboration, Culture change, Fellowship, Improvement, Management, Organisational effectiveness, Quintessence
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The Era of Collaborative Knowledge Work

Work dynamics have been evolving rapidly in recent decades. Back in 1959, management expert Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge work” – jobs focused more on expertise application versus manual tasks. Today, many observe the economy shifting from industrial production to innovation through agile collaboration.

Fundamentally Different

The nature of work has fundamentally changed. We have shifted from an industrial economy largely based on manual labour to a knowledge economy increasingly based on intellectual collaboration. This transition invites a new way of looking at work, focused on both recognising and facilitating collaborative knowledge work (CKW).

In this model, cross-disciplinary teams come together to brainstorm and refine breakthroughs iteratively. Silos give way to fluid circles of contribution. Motivation stems intrinsically from the shared mission, not extrinsic rewards. Experimenting with unconventional ideas bears lower risk when paired with constructive peer feedback.

But embracing the CKW paradigm depends on adopting a distinctly different approach to work. How can groups establish norms where everyone feels comfortable contributing without fear of judgement or rejection?

Autonomy, Mastery and Shared Purpose

Part of the solution links back to aligning clearly around higher purpose. When autonomy coexists with shared accountability, inspiration untaps. Structuring reciprocal mentorship allows members to develop emotionally and motivationally while exchanging honest developmental guidance.

This differs drastically from the hierarchical command-and-control management style of the past century that was well-suited for manual labour but proves limiting for knowledge work. Managers can no longer simply dictate tasks and expect compliance. For collaborative efforts to thrive, managers must nurture a culture that empowers teams with autonomy while providing direction, support, and facilitation.

What About Management?

Those in the know recognise the incompatibility of CKW and the traditonal management paradigm. Yet, organistions intent on making the best of CKW are faced with transitioning away from the concept of management towards e.g. sefl-managing teams and fellowship. In essence, we’re talking about culture change. Here’s some guidance in that regard:

Guidance for Old-Guard Managers

For managers used to traditional modes of top-down management, adopting a collaborative approach invites a paradigm shift. Here are key ways to enable more participatory and productive knowledge work:

  • Provide transparent context and clarity around broader goals while giving teams discretion in determining how goals are achieved.
  • Cultivate constructive exchanges where all team members feel comfortable contributing ideas without fear of judgement.
  • Ask probing questions, identify gaps, and point to resources, not dictate solutions.
  • Focus on facilitating the collaborative process through conflict resolution, dialogue around communication norms, and adaptive coordination.
  • Champion new ideas that arise from the team and rally support across the organisation.
  • Evaluate performance based on the effectiveness of collaborative processes and quality of outputs.

Advice for New Managers

For those assuming their first management role, the collaborative approach may feel more intuitive. Still, translating intent into impact invites concerted learning. Here are some areas for new managers to consider:

  • Foster emotional intelligence to nurture relationships, understand different working styles and motivations, and resolve interpersonal friction.
  • Hone facilitative teambuilding techniques like liberating structures, engagement through powerful questions, and conversation mapping.
  • Promote inclusion by valuing diverse voices, ensuring equal opportunity for contribution, and mitigating dominant perspectives.
  • Develop fluency in digital collaboration tools and appropriate applications for remote and hybrid work settings.
  • Elevate and practice orchestrating for collaborative work.
  • Pay attendtion to the quality of interpersonal relationships and the overall social dynamic.
  • Attend to folks’ needs.

The CKW paradigm brings substantial promise and possibility but requires managers themselves to transform. By embracing this challenge, leaders can unlock unprecedented potential from today’s knowledge workers.

The future lies in fully unleashing human potential by connecting talent to shared missions. But practical change management matters. How might we reinvent team rituals and processes to make this vision an everyday reality? The answers will come collaboratively, through commitment to the journey of learning together.

Pronouncing “Quintessence”

January 27, 2024
Article, Business, Improvement, Language, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Productivity, Quintessence, Software development
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Pronouncing “Quintessence”

If you’ve come across the word “quintessence” while reading English texts, you may have wondered about the correct pronunciation and actual meaning of this rather unusual word. As a non-native speaker, the pronunciation can seem tricky at first. Read on for a quick guide on how to say “quintessence” properly and what this interesting word signifies.

Breaking Down the Pronunciation

Quintessence is pronounced “kwin-tess-uhns” in British English. Let’s look at each syllable:

“Quin”: The “qu” sounds like a hard “c” or “k”, as in words like “queen” or “quick”. Say the “kwin” syllable.

“Tes”: This syllable rhymes with words like “test” or “best”. Say “tess”.

“Ence”: Here the “e” becomes a schwa sound – the neutral “uh”. Think words like “enhance”, and say the schwa “uh” sound.

Put together, the full pronunciation is: kwin-tess-uhns. The stress is on the second syllable, “tess”. Say the word a few times out loud, stressing that middle portion, to get comfortable with the pronunciation.

Alternatively, you might choose to pronounce it “quint” + essence”.

The Meaning of Quintessence

So now that you know how to say it properly in your best spoken English accent, what does “quintessence” actually mean? Quintessence signifies the purest, most perfect or concentrated essence of something. For example, you could describe a breathtaking landscape as “the quintessence of natural beauty”. Or for an organisation that has everything sorted, all its ducks lined up, and firing on all cylinders, we might choose to call that a “Quintessential organisation”.

Etymology

The word originates from medieval philosophy, derived from the Latin “quinta essentia”, meaning the “fifth essence“. This referred to what was thought to be the pure substance making up heavenly bodies, beyond the four basic earthly elements of fire, water, air and earth.

In Modern Physics

In modern physics, “quintessence” refers to a hypothetical form of dark energy postulated to explain the observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Based on astronomical observations, scientists have determined that some unknown form of energy, termed “dark energy,” makes up about 68% of all the energy in the observable universe. This mysterious dark energy is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up over time. To explain this phenomenon, physicists have proposed that quintessence – an extremely light and slowly-varying scalar field – may account for the observed behavior of dark energy and the accelerating cosmic expansion. Quintessence would have negative pressure, offsetting normal attractive gravity and driving galaxies apart at an ever-faster rate. If confirmed, the quintessence scalar field would be the “fifth element” driving cosmology, alongside ordinary and dark matter. Though still unproven, quintessence remains a leading contender for explaining one of the biggest mysteries in modern physics and astronomy. Further experiments and astrophysical observations may shed more light on this proposed fifth essence permeating the universe.

Summary

So next time you come across this unique word, you’ll know the proper English pronunciation and understand its meaning related to a pure, perfect embodiment of something. With your new knowledge, use “quintessence” to impress your English friends and teachers!

Further Reading

Marshall, R.W. (2021). Quintessence – An acme for software development organisations. https://leanpub.com/quintessence

The Hidden Hand of Shared Assumptions

January 24, 2024
Article, Business, Culture change, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence
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The Hidden Hand of Shared Assumptions

Behind many business failures and underperformance lies a common root cause – the unseen influence of collective assumptions and beliefs (and Cf. Rightshifting). Across organisations and even entire industries, leadership often clusters around shared perspectives, biases, and mental models. Over time, these become entrenched as accepted wisdom rarely challenged or revisited. This phenomenon profoundly shapes decision-making, typically outside conscious awareness. And flawed underlying assumptions can lead organisations astray, even unto the graveyard.

A prime example is the financial crisis. The model of endless housing price growth and low-risk securitized assets became so ingrained across banks that it created systemic fragility. The possibility of declines or instability was dismissed out of hand. Groupthink prevailed and warning signs were ignored. Until the flawed assumptions catastrophically collided with reality.

Every sector holds similar tales. In automotive, the assumption of an enduring petrol car dominance slowed electric investments. In medical science, the belief that ulcers resulted from stress delayed recognition of bacterial drivers. The corporate world is littered with shifting paradigms disrupting those clinging to outdated assumptions.

Why does this happen? Humans are sensitive to social signals and prefer perspectives validated by their peer group. This shapes unconscious biases and mental models. And perceived wisdom calcifies even where contrary evidence emerges. We must therefore consciously re-evaluate the collective assumptions within which we operate.

This is particularly crucial given rapid technological and social change. Assumptions rooted in fading reality misguide strategy. Herein lies opportunity for those recognising seismic shifts early. And grave risks for those dismissing disruptive forces based on yesterday’s truths. Separating enduring assumptions from emerging realities is key.

So let us examine just four detrimental assumptions embedded across businesses:

  • The concept of management is treated as an inherent good when in fact it can severely hamper organisations. Managers micromanaging and scrutinising employees’ every move often harms efficiency, stifles innovation, and breeds resentment amongst staff. The relentless oversight creates a tense working environment where workers have no autonomy or control. The reams of paperwork and interminable meetings generated by managers frequently add little value. Clearly, the assumption that more managers and more top-down control is always better fails to acknowledge the reality and the downsides.
  • The notion of concentrated leadership seems ill-founded. Centralising decision-making and strategy in a narrow elite risks disempowering the wider workforce. When employees cannot influence choices impacting their work, motivation and dedication suffers. Likewise, executives profiting lavishly from company successes while workers gain only stagnant wages breeds discord and weakens productivity down the chain. The contributions of a chief executive on a £10 million salary rarely outweighs that of a thousand dedicated employees. Concentrated power often produces conflict and fragility rather than thriving organisations.
  • The belief that exhaustive software testing is imperative leads projects astray. Developers waste huge sums of time and effort running code through endless minor variations with diminishing returns. There is little value testing every trivial feature adjustment to death. And users grow frustrated with delays and restrictions as programmers obsess over comprehensive testing. Pursuing flawless software typically proves counterproductive as no system is ever perfect – the goal should be usable products that can be iteratively improved.
  • The assumption that employees should be worked to exhaustion is clearly unsound. People do not enjoy unsustainable workloads and unreasonable deadlines. Pushing human resources to the brink often backfires rather than driving engagement and satisfaction. There are better ways to attract and retain talent than by running staff into the ground. And tired, overwhelmed personnel tend to see plunges in output and quality. Straining human endurance typically fuels turnover rather than powering success.

Many more detrimental assumptions can be found detailed in my book “Quintessence“.

The lesson is clear – we might choose to constantly surface and reflect upon ingrained assumptions before they lead us off a cliff. Momentum can quietly build behind outdated modes of thought right until environmental shifts expose systemic brittleness. As markets transform, so too must the underlying mindsets guiding business decisions.

Every Organisation Rules Out a Host of Beneficial Choices

January 24, 2024
Article, Business, Culture change, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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Every Organisation Rules Out a Host of Beneficial Choices

Every organisation rules out choices that would markedly improve their bottom line  – due to entrenched assumptions.

All organisations have deeply rooted beliefs and assumptions that influence their decision making, often without people even realising it. These unquestioned ways of thinking can lead organisations to dismiss ideas, policies and practices that could significantly benefit them.

Many proven best choices around areas like compensation, flexibility, hierarchy, remote work, and sustainability get ruled out quickly in most corporate cultures. Not because the ideas lack merit, but because they don’t align with legacy notions of how business should operate. The prevailing managerial ideology acts as mental blinders, narrowing the overview of what’s possible.

For example, decades of belief in the primacy of shareholder value has prevented many companies from prioritising sustainability, even when a greener approach would bolster the bottom line. The assumption that purpose erodes profits still permeates boardroom thinking.

Similarly, the standard 9 to 5 office-dependent schedule gets virtually no pushback in some contexts due to deep-seated assumptions about productivity and supervision needs. Even when the growth of knowledge work makes location and set hours irrelevant. Assumptions lead organisations to miss a host of opportunities.

Key is bringing awareness to the unexamined collective beliefs that close organisations off to progress and performance-enhancing innovations. Progress depends on leaders willing to question legacy orthodoxies that no longer serve. A company’s entrenched perspectives ultimately impact hard business metrics. Routinely reexamining operating paradigms is essential to ensuring beliefs enable rather than obstruct impact and financial returns.

Organisational psychotherpy makes this possible in a low-risk fashion.

The next breakthrough idea could be waiting, if only long-held assumptions would get out of the way.

The Humanity at the Heart of Organisational Psychotherapy

January 24, 2024
Article, Compassion, Culture change, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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The Humanity at the Heart of Organisational Psychotherapy

Organisations are made up of people – complex human beings with emotions, dreams, fears, and relationships. Yet somehow, when we walk through the office doors each morning, we are expected to check our humanity at the door. The ostensible focus becomes targets, metrics, shareholder value – losing sight of the humans behind it all. (But also see: Your REAL Job).

Organisational Psychotherapy seeks to rebalance this by putting the person back at the centre of the workplace. Through simple techniques grounded in psychotherapeutic theory, it aims to create more humane organisational dynamics where staff can bring their whole selves to work.

Key Principles

Some of the key principles include:

  • Attending to folks’ needs (the Antimatter Principle)
  • Containment – providing a safe space for employees to process difficult emotions so they do not spill out destructively. Managers should offer non-judgemental listening and support.
  • Reflexivity – encouraging individuals and teams to reflect on their own behaviours and dynamics before making changes. This avoids knee-jerk reactions and promotes sustainability.
  • Role clarity – clearly defining responsibilities so no one feels asked to fulfil impossible expectations. This reduces anxiety and burnout.
  • The “good enough” organisation – perfection is impossible with human beings. Organisational Psychotherapy advocates aiming for “good enough” -and clearly stated – standards that make space for people to be fallible. This means focusing less on rigid metrics and idealised goals, and more on sustainable ways of working that protect staff health and wellbeing in an imperfect world. There is recognition that some days we can give 100%, while on others our energy and focus may falter – and both scenarios can be met with compassion rather than criticism.

Heart

At the heart of all of this is compassion – for ourselves and each other. Workplace stress often stems from a lack of self-compassion, driving harsh inner critics and causing us to lose touch with out humanity and the humanity of those around us. Creating work cultures built on mutual understanding and caring allows our organisations to more ethically support both staff and customers.

Organisational Psychotherapy Memes

The power of Organisational Psychotherapy memes speaks volumes about how desperately many organisations need more humane dynamics centred on understanding people. No matter how slick our processes, how smart our tech – an organisation relies on its people. Workers and managers alike deserve compassionate spaces where they can bring their authentic, complex, perfectly-imperfect selves to the table every day.

Further Reading

Trzeciak, S., & Mazzarelli, A. (2019). Compassionomics: The revolutionary scientific evidence that caring makes a difference. Studer Group LLC.

Marshall, R.W. (2021, December). Quintessence: An acme for software development organisations.

US and THEM

January 23, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Collaboration, Community, Conversations, Culture change, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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US and THEM

In any human organisation, natural subgroups emerge from shared interests, backgrounds and experiences. While we might expect some clustering, problems arise when – as is common in tech organisations – an “us vs them” mentality takes hold between ingroups and outgroups.

Some common divides in tech companies include:

Ingroups

  • Engineers
  • Product Managers
  • Executives
  • Long-Serving Employees

Outgroups

  • Non-Technical Roles
  • Contractors/Consultants
  • Recent Hires
  • Remote Employees

Impacts

Divides often lead to biased decisions, limited information sharing, poor collaboration, feelings of disrespect, high turnover, groupthink and tokenism. Organisations fragmented by subgroups usually suffer as a result.

We’re All In This Together?

Rather than expecting executives and HR to fix these issues, employees at all levels have significant power to act.

Actions for Individual Contributors

  • Look into the basic phenomenon of ingroups and outgroups
  • Build relationships beyond your immediate team
  • Model inclusive language and behaviour
  • Call out subtle exclusion when you see it
  • Learn more about internal groups you don’t interact with often

Tactics for Teams

  • Set expectations for mutual understanding between groups (charters can help)
  • Invite rotation of cross-functional team staffing
  • Discuss observations about silo behaviour in retrospectives
  • Provide onboarding mentorships to new hires across the company
  • Avoid protecting the team (instead, seek mutual dialogues and benefits)

Folks who own the way the work works also play a crucial role too by implementing structural changes to connectivity. But culture shifts come largely from how rank-and-file employees relate, day-to-day. Each person can choose to reflect upon their language, decisions and behaviours that might be isolating colleagues and subgroups, and solidifying ingroup and outgroup divisions.

The end goal is a culture where people bring their whole, authentic selves to work (often risky), uniqueness stands out more than fitting in, and outsiders get welcomed rather than excluded.

What tactics have you found most effective for strengthening connections between workgroups? What benefits have you seen? Let’s exchange ideas in the comments!

What’s Your System Improvement Index?

January 21, 2024
Antimatter principle, Article, Improvement, Metrics, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence, Systems thinking
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What’s Your System Improvement Index?

Most systems operate under some sort of performance metric – service uptime, number of users, needs met, revenue growth, new feature deployment, incident resolution time…that sort of thing.

Whether they’re set by management, agreed upon by the Folks That Matter™, or simply targets for continuous improvement, metrics exist.

Sometimes, they’re overtly stated – written down in strategy documents or OKRs.

And other times they’re not formalised in this way.

Don’t mistake the absence of documented goals to mean non-existence of those goals (see also: Your Real Job)..

You might think your system has no performance metrics because nothing is in writing or has ever been formally discussed – but all you have is no clear agreement as to what your system’s performance metrics are.

Whether you’re a founder, product manager, engineer or other contributor, your system can do one of two things – meet expectations or disappoint. The absence of clear, agreed, preferably documented performance metrics merely means you don’t know when the system is underperforming.

If your system lacks clearly defined metrics, stop here – the key takeaway is to discuss and agree metrics and targets, even if just on your own team – so you know when the system is failing to hit the mark.

For most mature systems and products, it’s around this time of year teams analyse performance against goals – 15% improvement in latency, 11% increase in conversion, 7% bump in NPS…that sort of thing.

My question is this:

“To meet your system’s goals, how much do your collective assumptions and beliefs need to improve?”

It’s a difficult question without an obvious answer – 0%? In line with the target metrics? Double digit percentage gains across the board?

I don’t know the answer, and you may not either – but we’d likely both agree your organisation’s mindset and culture can always evolve.

Tools like organisational psychotherapy can help reveal limiting assumptions and facilitate shifts in collective beliefs.

So let me ask plainly:

“To meet your goals this year, how much do you need your organisation’s culture to develop?”

Pinning down an exact number isn’t straightforward, but it certainly isn’t zero.

One suggestion to quantify this:

Conduct regular culture and maturity assessments, and use the year-on-year improvement as an indicative ‘System Improvement Index’ benchmark for collective thinking shifts.

Of course, you may already do this, in which case view it as validation you’re tracking evolutions in organisational worldview.

If not, there are many good culture evaluation frameworks out there. Use one aligned to your organisation’s design and purpose. We have one we can share too – just ask!

Let me close by asking once more:

To meet next year’s targets, how much do your collective assumptions and beliefs need to improve? What’s your system’s ‘Improvement Index’?

The Assumptions Underpinning Business Beliefs

January 12, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Culture change, Improvement, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence
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The Assumptions Underpinning Business Beliefs

“Have you ever asked yourself, what are the deepest principles upon which my management beliefs are based? Probably not. Few executives, in my experience, have given much thought to the foundational principles that underlie their views on how to organise and manage. In that sense, they are as unaware of their managerial DNA as they are of their biological DNA.”

~ Prof Gary Hamel

Professor Gary Hamel’s insight points to a common blind spot – the assumptions upon which we build our businesses rarely get examined. We take our beliefs for granted rather than questioning where they came from or evaluating their current relevance. Over time, unquestioned principles shape our strategic decisions, workplace culture and collective potential – and thus effectiveness – without our awareness.

Organisational psychotherapy offers one route to excavating the hidden shared assumptions that become ingrained in a company’s DNA. Through techniques like group reflection and dialogue sessions, teams can gradually bring unspoken belief systems to the surface. Often these are “stories we live by” – the narrative frames determining priorities, norms, success measures and more. Shining light allows us to reconsider if these beliefs still serve the organisation or if they hinder.

Just as individual leaders have inner beliefs steering their choices, so too do groups and organisations. The shared assumptions get passed down over years through habits, policies, legends and corporate mantras. They solidify into the “way things are done around here” until nobody bothers asking why anymore (if they ever did). And yet today’s business realities may require questioning everything we take for granted about how to operate, adapt and succeed.

I invite leaders to view organisational psychotherapy as an opportunity to unearth the stories we live by. Let’s open up today’s prevailing assumptions to inspection in the cold light of day. Do they still nourish the collective potential or constrain it? This work of examining our beliefs benefits from neutral, experienced facilitation rather than internal politics. Thereby we can evolve the organisational DNA to better thrive in tomorrow’s complex business ecosystems.

The principles we build our organisations upon end up building our organisational lives. What beliefs inform your company’s inner DNA right now? And are you willing to question their ongoing relevance with courage?

Positive Deviant Organisations

January 11, 2024
Article, Quintessence
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Positive Deviant Organisations

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, organisations can benefit from continuously innovating and adapting to stay competitive. Gary Hamel, a renowned management thinker, believes that to discover radically better ways of operating, organisations might choose to look beyond tghe same-same of conventional best practices and examine “positive deviants” – the outliers who succeed against the odds.

As Hamel states, “How do you discover radically better ways of leading, organizing and managing? The short answer: You look far beyond the boundaries of today’s “best practice.” You look someplace weird, someplace unexpected. To glimpse the future of organisations, search out the “positive deviants,” organizations and social systems that defy the norms of conventional practice.”

Positive deviant organisations thrive by bucking industry trends and norms. And by founding their principles and practices in radically different collectiove assumptions and beliefs They develop unique practices, processes and cultures that allow them to achieve exceptional results. Studying how these maverick organisations operate can provide valuable insights for leaders looking to foster innovation.

A great dissection of positive deviant organisations is detailed in my book “Quintessence: An Acme for Highly Effective Organisations“. The book examines innovative companies like MorningStar, which has developed a radically transparent and idea-meritocratic culture. MorningStar’s unique principles and practices have allowed it to consistently outperform the market.

As “Quintessence” demonstrates, positive deviant organisations like MorningStar offer a window into the future of management. By analysing how these outliers succeed, organisations can get inspiration for how to better lead, organise and manage their own teams and organisations. The lessons from positive deviants can spark new ideas and changes in foundational assumptions and beliefs, tailored to an organisation’s specific context and goals.

In today’s accelerated business landscape, the best practices of the past will no longer be sufficient. To build great organisations of the future, leaders might choose to seek wisdom from the positive deviants – the pioneers charting new paths beyond the status quo. Studying these radical outliers can unlock innovative strategies for how to structure, manage and lead in radically better ways.

Further Reading

Pascale, R. T., Sternin, J., & Sternin, M. (2010). The power of positive deviance: How unlikely innovators solve the world’s toughest problems. Harvard Business Press.

Doing Things Differently

January 11, 2024
Actionable Insights, Article, Quintessence
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Doing Things Differently

We’ve all heard the saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always had.” Yet, breaking out of our habits and routines can be challenging. The 16th-century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli recognised this tendency, writing in his famous work The Prince:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

Machiavelli’s point was that implementing major change inevitably faces resistance, precisely because people are so accustomed to the status quo. But he also acknowledged that introducing “a new order of things” can bring great rewards if done skilfully.

So why do we resist change even when we’re unhappy with how things are? A lot of it comes down to cognitive biases. Losses loom larger than gains in our minds due to Loss Aversion. The Endowment Effect also attaches us more to what we already have. And the Backfire Effect makes us double down on our existing assumptions and beliefs when they’re challenged. Overcoming these subconscious biases takes self-awareness and effort.

When trying to effect change, it can be useful to start small. Big overnight changes, even if needed, often fail because they are too disruptive. You’re more likely to make progress through incremental changes that build positive momentum over time.

It also helps to focus on progress rather than perfection. The goal isn’t necessarily finding the ultimate solution immediately but rather taking steps in the right direction. Pursuing iterative improvements beats getting stuck waiting for the perfect plan. In Quintessence I write in more detail about this.

Additional keys to making change work include questioning (surfacing and reflecting upon) assumptions, inviting outside perspective, running experiments, learning from failures, and communicating transparently. With the quintessential mindset and approach, doing things differently can open up new vistas of possibility. Though the path may not be easy, as Machiavelli noted, the rewards make it worthwhile.

Rather than rigidly adhere to the status quo, have the courage to surface assumptions, reflect on them, adapt and grow. As the saying goes: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always have what you’ve always had. But if you do what you’ve never done, you’ll have what you’ve never had.”

The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy

January 9, 2024
Article, Culture change, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence
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The Profound Connection Between the Technology Business and Organisational Psychotherapy

The breakneck growth of the technology industry has centered on building ever-faster, smarter, and more efficient tools and systems. Yet, as explored in depth in books like Quintessence and Memeology, there is a growing recognition that advanced technology alone cannot solve all human challenges, especially within the workplace. The human element remains critical. It is at the intersection of technology and organisational psychotherapy where profound opportunities arise.

What is Organisational Psychotherapy?

Organisational psychotherapy is an emerging field examining shared assumptions and beliefs within group settings, especially workplaces. As explained in my book “Quintessence“, it identifies issues like toxic team dynamics, ineffective leadership structures, and overall dysfunctional organisational cultures that prevent human potential from flourishing. The overarching goal is to enable organisations to surface and reflect on their dysfunctional patterns.

Some key issues that organisational psychotherapy addresses include:

  • Unspoken hierarchies stifling diversity of thought
  • Exclusion and gatekeeping harming innovation
  • Lack of psychological safety preventing collaboration
  • Poor leadership disempowering teams
  • Communication breakdowns sowing distrust
  • Excessive bureaucracy killing agility
  • Toxic or abusive management traumatizing employees
  • Perverse incentives rewarding unethical behavior
  • Workplace discrimination and bias
  • Employee burnout and poor mental health

While individual therapy focuses on helping individuals, organisational psychotherapy zooms out to understand group and system dynamics in the workplace. It provides a framework for understanding precisely why certain organisations struggle to thrive, even when they have access to the most advanced technology.

The Role of Technology in Enabling Dysfunction

Today’s most ambitious technology companies aim to build platforms and algorithms that enhance productivity, spur innovation, and seamlessly connect teams. However, technology also has a shadow side, especially when designed and deployed without care.

As dissected in Memeology, tools meant to improve efficiency can lead to e.g. rigid bureaucracy. Use of messaging apps can foster miscommunication and conflict. Social media algorithms can enable the rapid spread of misinformation and extremism amongst groups. AI-driven management systems can demoralise human workers and treat them as expendable cogs in a machine.

In essence, technology lacks self-awareness about potential downsides. When combined with unhealthy group dynamics in an organisation, it can worsen performance instead of improving it. There are countless examples of advanced technology being implemented in counterproductive ways:

  • Remote work tools leading to always-on expectations and burnout
  • Enterprise messaging apps used to harass marginalised employees
  • Productivity tracking tools sowing distrust between managers and teams
  • AI-driven hiring algorithms entrenching bias and discrimination
  • Social media misused to attack and silence diverse voices
  • Surveillance technology undermining privacy and autonomy

Without an understanding of organisational dynamics, technology can unintentionally become a burden rather than a boon to human potential and cooperation. This underscores the need for a complementary lens like organisational psychotherapy.

Integrating Organisational Psychotherapy into Tech Culture

Several forward-thinking technology companies are now working to integrate organisational psychotherapy into their products, teams, and company cultures. They recognise that the best teams, and therefor products, are those that understand innate human strengths and weaknesses and seek to bring out the best in people.

For example, collaboration platform designers are exploring how interface details affect unspoken hierarchies, exclusion, and groupthink within online teams. Instead of optimising purely for efficiency, the goal is to encourage diverse voices, psychological safety, and healthy group norms. (See also: Conway’s Law).

Leading companies are also examining their own cultures through an organisational psychotherapy lens as detailed in Quintessence. This includes focusing on diversity and inclusion initiatives, workplace mental health policies, healthy communication norms, and compassionate leadership principles. It also means decentralising authority, allowing time for reflection, and seeing value in failure as opportunities for growth. The goal is to create thriving environments, not mere productivity factories.

Bridging the Gap Between the Technical and the Human

Ultimately, organisational psychotherapy and technology work best when united, bridging the gap between the technical and the intimately human. Just as medicine combines an understanding of physiology with ethics and the human spirit, technology moves in a positive direction when informed and supported by psychotherapy.

The engineers and programmers building the latest algorithms, platforms, and machine learning systems would benefit immensely from integrating human-centered design principles (for example: Emotioneering). And organisational psychotherapists helping companies create healthier dynamics and leadership structures might choose to embrace sophisticated tools to augment their impact.

When technology and organisational psychotherapy come together in this way, they have the potential to profoundly empower teams, heal dysfunctional organisations, transform organisational cultures for the better, and unlock new levels of human potential, especially within the CKW workplace. The future belongs to solutions that successfully bridge the technical and the humane. Both Quintessence and Memeology point toward this brighter destination. But we still have much work to do as an industry to fully integrate technological advances with psychological wellbeing and bring out the best in each other.