Natalia Sadikova Reviews “Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization”

I recently received a beautifully-written and completely unsolicited review of my book Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization from my friend Natalia Sadikova in Russia.

Here is the photo she used to accompany her review on Facebook. Included are both the English and Russian versions.

Thanks, Natalia!

First, the English version…

In the past year, thanks to the work in the “rules of the game” I was lucky to participate in the organization of the master class of the outstanding leader, one of the experts on self-organization – Doug Kirkpatrick. You know, even ten minutes of communication with such a person can enrich you. I was lucky even more – to be the third, “Stone Guest” in big and priceless slow conversations in the Vienna Coffee Shop and Coffemania about what is self-organization, what is the way to it and the why behind such systems the future.

Remember Morning Star – one of the “Biryukov” companies, detailed in the book Reinventing Organizations? Doug was one of the leaders of Morning Star and not long ago published the book Beyond Empowerment (“Beyond Power”).

Knowing that the book is not a managerial fiction, I read it with special attention. Long. Reading the paragraphs several times. In a serious way, a black pen on the fields. Strolling from the book and looking into space. Surprised by the slim, beautiful simplicity and strict logic of the principles described in the book and already implemented in dozens of companies around the world: Morning Star, Haier, Gore & Associates, Meetup, Nucor. Some cases are presented at the end of the book, which gives it additional value – especially interesting I was shown by the descriptions of Gore & Associates (this is the company that invented and produces the same Gore-Tex), Haier and Morning Star.

Sharing with you the key principles of self-organization:

– The basis of the personal brand of every professional – accepted responsibility, made and fulfilled promises (commitments). In the model of self-organization, people have a very high level of reliability (reliability). Promises are the core of the philosophy of self-organization. People within the company give each other promises – customers and suppliers, by the way, too – and are bound to perform them.

– Self-organization is not anarchy. On the contrary! Here a man has not one, but a lot of bosses: the man himself; all surrounding colleagues, especially those who are standing closer in the network of mutual promises. And the main boss of all and everyone is the mission, values and principles of the organization.

– The self-organization model describes business processes in a detailed manner; everything that can be automated is automated. Everything that is appropriate to measure and track – is measured and monitored and, which is very important – the system is transparent. The results of the whole company and the results of the work of everyone are in employees, the process of process is promoted – an image of thinking, aimed at analysis, understanding and continuous improvement of business processes.

– People here play games. Oh, how smart it is: after all, the motive of the game is the main of the direct motives of a man! This is, of course, not about ping-pong in the lunch break, but about improvement of indicators, system points, reasonable freedom in decision making, pleasure of work, participation in the development and implementation of rules for games, inventing new games.

– Training, coaching and facilitation are important components of the management system. Self-organization is a learning organization, the system of learning is not spontaneous, but clearly built (like, repeat, any other function), often in the form of a serious corporate university. In the absence of managers, everyone should be able to teach and develop their colleagues effectively, so everyone should own and apply coaching skills. Finally, self-organization is a model that provides a very large amount of teamwork and group interaction, so facilitation is an integral element of working days.

– Special attention is given to the art of conflict resolution. No system can do without conflict: reasonable conflict management contributes to the improvement of the system, while their avoidance and silence, on the contrary, undermines it. The conflict resolution mechanism in the self-organization model is described in detail, for beginners it is one of the important blocks in training. For example, any staff member can offer a colleague to resign, if he considers that he does not follow the principles of the organization. Next is a clearly prescribed sequence of stages of “proceedings”: even the owner cannot forcibly dismiss a person if his inconsistency is confirmed. However, a guilty employee will soon discover that he is not a member of any project team (the staff themselves choose who they want to work with) and, accordingly, he cannot show the results on which the payment of his work is based. Further stay in the organization loses its meaning.

– The achievement of the goals is monitored by the KPI system, and the professional competence is with an assessment of 360 degrees: this element of the management system makes the members of the team “transparent” to each other and exempts the system of assessment from the subjectivity and bias of the chief, so common in the classic “assessment culture”. The feedback from colleagues gives rich material for self-improvement and contributes to superior excellence (a phrase that warms my soul  ) and is the best fulfillment of its promises to colleagues. And improving your indicators is an important part of the game!

And in our conversations, and in his book, Doug says: “no system is going to be perfect. Human wings never perfect. But… we have to come up with something that is the most important thing we have.” (“No, and there will be no perfect system: in the end, people are imperfect. But we need to develop a system that will significantly surpass the one we have now “). Judging by the experience of companies that dare to apply self-organization – it turned out!

Those who are familiar with the concept of spiral dynamics know: self-organization, like any other innovative model of management (Holakratiâ, collaboration, etc.) is possible only at the higher levels of development of systems (in particular, at the green level – level of consent). In the enterprise with “Red Directors” it is unlikely to “fly” such a system, and it is unlikely that the managers themselves will want to share their power with their subordinates. Therefore, of course, the principles described will fit far not for all companies at the current level of development, but rather for business units. Eh, damn want to work for such a unit… or create it 🙂

P.S. Why is the lash on the book? To highlight one of the two basic principles of self-organization: people should not use force against other people (“people should not apply force towards other people” – and, of course, it is not only about physical power). I hope that the leadership of the future will be like this.
#рецензиикниг #двадцатьпятыйчас

Now, in the original Russian:

В минувшем году благодаря работе в «Правилах игры» мне посчастливилось принять участие в организации мастер-класса выдающегося лидера, одного из экспертов по самоорганизации – Дага Киркпатрика. Знаете, даже десять минут общения с таким человеком могут обогатить тебя. Мне повезло ещё больше – Третьяковка, «Каменный гость» в Большом и бесценные неторопливые беседы в «Венской кофейне» и Coffemania о том, что такое самоорганизация, каков путь к ней и почему за такими системами будущее.