Illustrated Version
3/10/17
- Self Management
- For self-management to work, it’s not enough take hierarchy out. we need to grow a system of distributed authority.
- Coaches / support positions that have no power over the teams
- from a teal perspective, it’s almost insulting to believe that someone will work hard just because you dangle a carrot in from of their face. if a person isn’t motivated to do great work, something is up.
- How come people without bosses don’t become complacent? The short answer seems to be this: intrinsic motivation, calibrated by peer emulation and market demands.
- The goal is not to make everyone equally powerful, but to make everyone fully powerful.
- The point is not to make everyone equal; it is to allow all employees to grow into the strongest, healthiest versions of themselves.
- Wholeness
- If, in so many work places, we play petty ego games, i don’t believe it is because we are somehow fundamentally flawed as a species. simply, the ego is what we are left with when we cut ourselves off from deeper parts of ourselves.
- Work becomes a vehicle where colleagues help each other reveal their inner greatness and manifest their calling.
- It’s hard for trust to flourish when everyone is hiding, to some degree, behind a professional mask. We don’t just lose productivity; in subtle but real ways, our humanity feels cheated by the shallow relationships we have when we don’t engage with each other at levels that truly matter.
- School gatherings where they have a half an hour of praise and gratitude for each other
- At Sounds True, every meeting starts with a minute of silence
- Meeting chimes. Almost always, that’s all it takes to get the meeting back on track.
- Evaluations: What is the one thing i most value about working with you? And what is one area where i sense you could change and grow?
- Evolutionary purpose
- when an organization truely has a noble purpose, there is no competition. anybody who can help to achieve the purpose on a wider scale or more quickly is a friend, an ally, not a competitior.
- Sense and Respond
- It’s not directionless: we still have a suppose pulling us forward. it’s by being present to that purpose in every moment, not just once up front, that we are more likely to reach it
- “Traditional companies look five years ahead and plan for the next year. We try to operate like farmers: we look twenty years ahead and plan for the next day.”
- When someone has a good idea: “Why don’t you write a short and catchy story about what you’ve done and publish it on our internal social network? lets see how it resonates with other teams. And if you can, package your approach so other teams can quickly copy it.
- The organization should resist casting the outcome into stone, feeling that its work of sensing is done for the next few years. whatever strategy it chooses is just the basis that will evolve as of the next day, as people sense and respond.
- Lets make a budget if it provides real guidance for important decision, but not to try to predict and control.
- If we tried to control body temperature in the way we often try to prevent risks in organizations, it might look something like this: We’d all walk around in space suits heated to the perfect temperature, and we wouldn’t be allowed to walk too quickly or too slowly. We’d also end up with control, but at the cost of losing much of our freedom to maneuver.
- If you work in an organization where you have the power to make things happen, where you can bring all of what you are to work, where you serve some noble purpose, do you really need a carrot to do good work? If someone isn’t motivated, the problem is not an absence of targets. Something is causing that work not to be stimulating for that person. That is the problem that needs fixing. simply adding targets won’t do it.
- When change isn’t imposed from the outside, from above; when we personally feel the pull of change, the need for change; when we feel powerful and responsible; when there is a safe space where we can have meaningful conversations about all this… chances are that embracing change is somewhat easier.
- If for a moment you try to take yourself (your wishes, your dreams) out of the equation and listen to the budding organization, what is the purpose that it wants to serve? What form and shape will best server its purpose?
- Start with people having multiple roles instead of job titles. Use the advice process and determine a conflict resolution mechanism. These are probably the three most important ingredients to start with…
If wholeness is important to you, some of the foundational practices might be for you and your team to explore which ground rules you want to establish to create a safe space; to choose some soulful meeting practices, and to determine recruitment and on boarding processes that will help new colleagues join the groove. Perhaps you want to make sure you listen to the organizan’s evolutionary purpose from day one. Often we feel we need to have detailed business plans and budgets when we start a new venture. Ask yourselves: what’s the (minimal) amount of planning the project really needs? And what is simply guessing in the dark to have an illusion of control? Can i let go of it so i stay open to signals, to new opportunities? - Difference between complex and complicated systems… The reality is that organizations are almost always complex systems. That’s why so many large change efforts fail.
- Among all the travel, there were a few situations that looked like possible abuses. Trust will always be abused at some point; that’s part of life. The question is not should we keep trusting or stop trusting? Rather, it is: does our system have the ability to self-correct quickly or not? For a system to self correct, three things are needed: 1. A shared understanding of what’s healthy. 2. Information. 3. A forum for conversation.
- There is real unlearning involved in order to reach simplicity. You could say that for our generation, the journey to Teal organizations is mostly one of unlearning complicated ways of doing what can be done much simpler.