The concept of self-organisation is a very misunderstood topic when it comes to applying it to organisations.
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Bas Reus is exploring what it means to say that humans are self-organising, over at http://basreus.nl/2009/07/27/self-organization-defined/#comment-51. His post outlines the development of his thinking in attempting to define self-orgnisation.
Arising from the study of complexity, the important thing about self-organisation is that the ordering of society (or people in organisations) occurs through local interaction in the absence of an overall blueprint or plan. As any top manager will tell you, you can’t just make a plan, tell others and then confidently expect that the plan will be followed. Instead, all sorts of unexpected things happen – people interpret things differently, they react to things in surprising ways and there are unintended consequences. This is what is meant by saying there is no overall blueprint or plan.
Many people, including me, when they first learn of this idea of self-organisation, immediately think of questions like "How can we empower employees to be self-organising?" or "How can we manage our people so that the emergence can take place?"
In attempting to answer these questions during my doctoral thesis, thanks to my supervisor Ralph Stacey’s empathetic guidance, I came to realise that it doesn’t make much sense to talk in this way because humans already always are self organising, even when they work in organisations with top down management approaches. If they are working in an organisation with restrictive management approaches, then they are still self-organising, with a given mix of constraints, power relations and so on that is determined in part by the management approach. This is because top down or highly directive management approaches give a certain combination of constraints and power relations.
A more useful question might be something like "How can we change the constraints and power relating so that different patterns will emerge from the self-organisation?"
The challenge with thinking about self-organisation for people in organisations is to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that self-organisation means random – or that just anything can happen. Obviously, in an organisation, people cannot just do what they like. And it doesn’t make much sense to me for a manager to allow people just to do anything to respond to the environment – the chances of achieving management goals would be very low.
So self-organisation means something much more subtle than "anything goes." The challenge for managers that is presented by the concept of self-organisation is not "How can I empower my people to be self organising?" They are already self organising (in spite of management directives). The challenge is "How can I influence the constraints and power relationships so that different (hopefully more desirable) patterns of social interaction emerge." If different patterns of social interaction emerge, then along will come innovation and different results – the actions of the manager will play a big part in whether those results are more desirable or less desirable – so we cannot just say "anything goes."
The big insights of self-organisation are 1) the recognition that managers have a lot less control than the dominant managerial literature would have you believe, and 2) that managers themselves are also part of this self-organising dynamic of local interaction.
This means that as a manager you can only influence your organisation from within your own local interaction with others. So you must pay attention to your own interaction, observe what results and adjust as you go along.
Wow Stephen, I really like how you have got to the heart of it when you talk about:
“How can we change the constraints and power relating so that different patterns will emerge from the self-organisation?”
I have a question.
You can say online we are stigmergic…
http://basreus.nl/2009/07/10/stigmergy-and-ant-colonies/
http://bitworking.org/Stigmergy.html
…but unlike ants we have individual goals, rather than the exact same DNA programmed goal.
Instead a team manager sets a goal and we can self-organise to achieve that goal.
But even in organisational teams our own desires may get in the way.
This compromises the workers self-adapting, instead the manager will have to intervene the negative emergence in order to adapt.
If there is positive emergence, the manager will adapt that into the strategy, or even as a new strategy.
So even though two parties are involved, they can still operate as a synthetic type of complex adaptive system. The manager is not controlling, but just setting the start point, and facilitating along the way, and having the final decision (or perhaps the workers have a say in the final decision).
The workers are doing the self-organising, and emergence, and the manager is setting the agenda, and adapting the emergence all through out…by subtle intervention (direct or indirect)
Is it possible for workers to be a complex adaptive system on their own, just like ants or nature that adapt to survive?
Sure workers can display self organisation and emergence, but what would they need to adapt to, what’s their purpose…the ant colonies prime directive is to survive, what’s the workers prime directive in the absence of management setting an objective to aim for.
As opposed to a collaboration space where workers can self organise to a goal set by management, what about enterprise social networks that exist purely with no explicit goal but to exist. Even though they have no goal (they just are), we get lots of benefits out of them like finding people and information, sensemaking and emergence.
NOTE: When I say “no goal” I mean like the telephone. It’s a tool used for goals, it’s not a goal on it’s own.
Not sure where I’m going with this…in the end the fact is that organisations will be hybrids of hierarchy and networks (goal setters, and workers), it has to be that way. Something to throw in is whether the goal setters are setting the goals alone (and making the final decision alone) or is it crowdsourced.
Could an organisation exist where the workers both set the goals and work at achieving them…you would need some kind of senate/committee to represent the people…wouldn’t you. Otherwise this would be the enterprise as an organic complex adaptive system.
NOTE: This is just one aspect of Complex Adaptive Systems, my thinking is on the whole. In organisations we can “create” processes that behave like their own complex adaptive system, I read a few examples here http://0301.netclime.net/1_5/K/D/M/Harvard%20Business%20Rev.pdf
Comment by John Tropea — August 21, 2009 @ 1:59 pm
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Pingback by Twitted by johnt — August 21, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
Personally I have moved away from equating human interaction with Complex Adpaptive Systems. I simply find it stimulates thinking and action that follows traditional and mainstream management theory, only in a more complicated way.
In your post above John it feels to me like you are separating the manager from the workers in the process of self organization. That the manager is at a different level in the self organizing process. For me, Stephen’s post is about self organization being simply what is; a natural and inevitable process of interaction. Certainly the manager has a different role to play in the process but the role is not different than anyone eles’s when it comes to the ‘fact’ of self organization.
A quick story. When I wrote a recent blog post ‘Sometimes Because Is All There Is’… http://www.tms-americas.com/blog.cfm?id=862999255 it was meant to be a comment on this very thing, that self organization is just the way things are and sometimes you cannot find a predictive causal reason for things happening and when you look through mainstream models for this it leads to some level of mystical thinking. I was suprised by some of the responses that misunderstood my point and said things like ‘You’re right about that, and next time I’ll just tell them because and get on with things’.
For me this was an illustration of how easily things can get interpreted back into mainstream models of organizational thinking and I find trying to talk about human interaction as complex adaptive systems does a similar thing.
Or maybe I just didn’t make my point clearly enough!?!
Comment by Tom Gibbons — August 22, 2009 @ 4:58 am
Nothing organizes itself. Self-organization is the exception. If you want something to be organized, you have to make someone responsible for it.
Comment by jofr — August 23, 2009 @ 9:17 am
In my first comment I was talking about self-organisation in the realm of managers setting a theme, and workers self-organising to work on it…the managers then surfing the emergence and adapting it into the organisation. This is what I thought Snowden called Top-Down Stimulation.
But, back to basics, what is interesting is mimicing how we work offline with online networks.
Workers can connect around silos, have ambient awareness…in essence by being so connected there is more of a chance that we have optimised the talent of the company in conducting a task.
Workers do not need intercessors as much to know things, in a flatter org you don’t need to go through your boss to connect with people in her circle.
Usually your boss can connect you to others, and people you know in the office can help connect you to others, but this is all changing.
Perhaps this is taking away the constraints, that you talk about Stephen, from frontline workers…does this somewhat disintermediate middle management, or shift their focus/approach.
Anywho, this makes for a more engaged worker and a more effective organisation…the org is more flat, but tasks/direction is still centrally made (board/senior managers/owners)
In relation to this is also the notion of the role-based organisation.
If I can roam around the organisational web, I will soon find tasks where my passion will most fit, and people will find me for their tasks as they know I’ll be the right fit. I suppose a horizontal or flat organisation vs vertical. As Paula Thornton calls this “mutual attraction”…not having to expend any energy.
As opposed to not finding the optimum people for a job, and spending lots of time looking for the right people and information, all because you are not connected costs money, plus time that could of been spent being productive.
So perhaps the organisation as a whole is not a CAS, but we can be self-organising in the way we research, investigate, and explore…or better put we don’t need our boss as parents to hold our hand. We no longer need that restriction, and we can network the landscape ourselves.
If an organisation is more flat and networked, it’s similar to saying we removed the restrictions or blinders and now you can see and connect to everyone.
So it’s one thing that we can now surf the organisation to achieve our tasks more optimally…but this has now emerged something else…now we can actually find the tasks we like to do, the tasks that suit us best. Without trying the organisation will self-organise to have the best quality people matched to the tasks…win win.
Two things here:
1. If I am surfing the org and collaborating, sourcing from people across teams to achieve my task, then those people need to somehow charge their time, or even make time for me.
2. If I float around moving from task to task based on a system of mutual attraction, then who is my boss.
If I’m a freelance cinematographer, I go from job to job working on films in the great big film industry.
Can this happen within an org? Can I be a freelancer that goes from task to task, just like the cinematographer?
But what happens in between jobs, the cinematographer is without a wage…what about the worker in between tasks, who then pays their wage…do we always have to be part of a backbone business unit just in case.
I started in the library in my current job and them moved to document management.
When I was doing library work, I had to work hard to find research work within our organisation otherwise that meant I had to charge to overheads.
The way it worked was that if I helped someone out over 15 minutes, they had to give me a charge code, whether it was a client project code, or their own overhead code…the fact that it wasn’t my overhead code was the important thing.
Actually I posted about the natural move to a role-based organisation in a post called “We are more than our job title describes, so let’s get social!”
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/04/24/we-are-more-than-our-job-title-describes-so-lets-get-social/
Here’s an excerpt from my post where i quote Margaret Schweer
“Many of us are transitioning away from job to roles based on work for some portion of our organization. This is an important paradigm shift for leaders – ownership for talent is shared. Talent needs to be flexibly deployed against the areas of highest value for the organization.”
“The ability to structure work and talent in a flexible fashion increases the organization’s ability to rapidly and effectively respond to needs in times of crisis or opportunity.”
“…collaboration allows the organization to accomplish tasks or create new business offerings in ways that could not have anticipated or even attempted with traditional organizational structures.”
Moving into a role-based org allows us to adapt and share the ownership of the talent, but what are the implications.
This is good in theory, but if it’s anything like my work, besides our main jobs, we are sometimes found to be an expert in something and offered a task by another team(of course our boss has to approve that she can allow the time for us.). What happens is that I’m doing too many tasks, and nothing gets done properly, we have good intentions, and it’s great we have sourced the right people, but since this is an extra task, it gets put off.
This is a pity when the extra task is more suited to us than our current job…are our bosses willing to let us go, will they want to lose us.
Comment by John Tropea — August 24, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
Hi John,
Many thanks for your Twitter message, prompting a number of us to continue the stimulating conversation that Stephen began on self-organization.
I was interested to read your vision of an organization in which individuals have greater discretion to organize their own roles and relationships to suit their particular talents and interests. Indeed, when I was a manager in industry, my leadership approach was governed by similar aspirations (more later). At the same time, I would not equate this with “self-organization”, in the sense that I now talk about it.
Perhaps it would be useful to explain my thinking, by distinguishing between what I see as three complementary but distinct aspects of organizational change and performance. These are organizational dynamics, organization design and organization development.
For me, the term “self-organization” refers to a fundamental dynamic of organizations. It is an inevitable property of the complex social process of people in interaction. Ralph Stacey, and colleagues of his like Stephen, refer to this as a “complex responsive process”, to emphasize the pivotal role that ‘talk’ (or “communicative interaction”, as they more precisely call it) has on organizational outcomes. This is echoed in my own view of organizations as dynamic networks of self-organizing conversations, and the notion of informal coalitions that flows from it. So, as both Stephen and Tom Gibbons argue, above, “self-organization” is not something that is within the gift of managers to decide upon. It is at play just as surely in an organization ruled by the proverbial ‘iron fist’ as in one that has all the attributes of empowered self-management. However, the critical thing to emphasize here is that it is the conversations that are self-organizing. And it is through the self-organizing interplay of these ‘local’ conversations across the organization and beyond that ‘global’ outcomes emerge.
As regards organization design, I see its primary purpose as one of shaping and aligning the various elements of the organization so that it is best placed to achieve its purpose and ethos (at least as judged by the principles that inform the design). Critical to this, therefore, is a view of organizations as purposive, goal-oriented ‘enterprises’ – whether these are commercial of not-for-profit. As part of the design process to achieve this, decisions will be made on structural aspects of organization, as well as on related processes, systems and procedures. And, whether by accident or design, these will both enable and constrain the ways in which people are supposed to work together formally. So the outcome might be one which facilitates greater self-management; or else inhibits (or even prohibits) it, in favour of greater centralized control.
And this brings me finally to organization development. This is intended to provide a comprehensive approach to planning changes in behaviour in organizations, to achieve greater organizational effectiveness. It adopts humanistic, people-based values and recognises the impact of social, psychological and emotional aspects of organization on performance outcomes. As such, it embraces a philosophy of management rooted in a positive view of the value of greater employee self-management. In essence, then, managers who embrace this perspective maintain high expectations of people’s willingness and ability to contribute and adopt leadership practices designed to foster mutual trust and enable greater self-regulation.
I mentioned earlier that, during my time as an in-house manager, I practised this approach myself and advocated it widely. Indeed, I developed a sense-making framework at the time to facilitate this approach and subsequently developed it further. In essence, at the centre of the framework are an individual’s core strengths or distinctive competence, on which their contribution to the organization – and personal growth – will be built. The framework then branches out in four complementary directions. These describe in turn the attributes of self-sufficiency, self-direction, self-control, and collaboration.
This broadly accords, I believe, with the ‘talent-based’ approach to role development that you are advocating – without, perhaps, taking the risk that empowered self-management will lead to abdication of leadership responsibility. As Larry Hirshhorn argues in his HBR 2002 article, “New Boundaries of a ‘Boundaryless’ Organization”, people still have a psychological need for what he calls authority, task, political and indentity boundaries to be set. I argue similarly in my framework that there is a need for “boundary management”. As individuals develop along the four dimensions, a key focus for the manager/ team leader is simultaneously to enable and constrain performance by managing the boundaries within which team members are operating. The aim of this is to encourage, assist and enable people increasingly to ‘push the boundaries out’ as they grow in competence and confidence. At the same time, it seeks to to align this growth to the shifting needs of the business environment within which they are operating.
In summary, then, I see self-organization as a dynamic of all organizations, however they might be designed and managed from a formal standpoint. Outcomes emerge from this process – both locally and globally. Emergence locally takes the form of jointly improvised ways of thinking and acting. And globally it can be seen in such things as the idealized designs of the formal organization; the informal coalescing of people around particular agendas; and the widespread ‘patterning’ of taken-for-granted assumptions about the organization, which creates a generalized tendency for people to think and act in familiar ways.
Formal organization design and development activities are themselves subject to these dynamics (as well as enabling and constraining the precise nature of the outcomes that emerge in the ongoing conversational interactions). However, I believe that it is misleading to refer to formally empowered designs and/or management processes as being “self-organizing”. Instead, I feel that the terms “self-managing” and/or “self-regulating” would probably provide better descriptions of these formal, planned and structured elements of organizational strategy and practice.
Cheers, Chris
Comment by Chris Rodgers — August 25, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Thx immensely Chris, Tom and Stephen. I am learning so much via these conversations…the blogosphere (and Twitter) and this whole distributed participation ecosystem is my university.
Also I understand that this is your view of this topic and others like Dave Snowden may have a different view or approach….I’m not exactly sure where this is…
My understanding so far is the conversation is work, is king.
1. Self-organisation isn’t an organisational strategy, it’s something that happens whether you like it or not, and is effected by constraints.
Therefore workers don’t need to be empowered to self-organise as they are already doing it.
I too was thinking to become more empowered, and was not denying that we don’t self organise to an extent “hey…do you know where the leave form is” ie if we don’t know something, and our team doesn’t know it, we don’t just then malfunction…yes…we network to get an answer..sometimes this is hard within the constraints of hierarchies, and “need to know” information flows.
So if we take these constraints away we make way for a different kind of emergence that could go beyond silos…that is, we amplify self-organisation.
Is it not, more empowering to be more connected, and connected to people who are your bosses boss, and for them to see your profile blogs posts and recognise your talent, which they formerly would only know about via your boss, if they happened to tell them. Is it not empowering that since you are visible in an online social network that you start drawing a reputation…there are many stories of people’s LinkedIn profiles and blogs getting them places.
What is an example of taking away a constraint?
Sometimes adding something is like taking something away.
If I add an online social network, it enables people to become even more self-organised, more optimally self-organised as they were before…as a result gets around the limitation of self-organising in an environment of hierarchies…a more beneficial emergence as it uses talent more optimally and is more productive and adaptive.
We may focus on trying to change/lift the constraints in a self organising system (like organisational conversations, not the organisation itself) to get a different emergence (more desirable patterns of social interaction). We can do this with a social network that gets around the constraints of hierarchies, and “need to know” information flows. And we can do this with the manager co-creating throughout the whole process.
Are these two efforts: the online social network, and the management style of co-creation during task, a strategy that focuses on self-organisation or just a way of being.
If I can now self-organise in a more reachable and connected way due to a online social network, could this not be part of a strategy to amplify self-organisation (by adding something, it has a result like you took a constraint away).
An online social network may be part of a strategy to help the organisation be more connected than is currently possible within the existing conditions.
I understand self-organisation is not a management method like command and control, self-organisation just is whether you like it or not…but we can amplify this.
2. Managers are not separate, but part of the self organisation.
Now I understand that good management is about realising this, therefore their approach should be co-creation and facilitationn, see point 4.
Beforehand I was saying that workers do their thing in achieving a set task, and the manager harnesses or dampens the emergence, kind of acting like the adapting part…they don’t do this by reviewing the task, they do this continually throughout the task by being part of (or ambient awareness) all the conversations and workings out.
So yes the manager is part of the self organisation by default as they are part of the conversations where this self organisation takes place…in fact the self organisation itself is the conversation and what manifests.
So this is not a CAS, but instead self-organisation and emergence in conversations between workers and managers. The managers role in the conversations is to also harness the emergence or be the boundary…this kind of adapting part of their role made me think of it as a CAS…kind of like a thermostat being a negative feedback loop, as well as their role as a positive feedback loop.
3. We talk about self organising conversations, not the organisation itself as a self organising living system or complex adaptive system…due to lack of boundary (conversations can happen even outside of the org and impact the task…how long is a piece of string) and local rules (set by managers) may not be followed due to human self interest, interpretation, intentions, reactions, unintended consequences.
Point 2 mentions about the feedback loop. Actually I need clarity on this…a manager acting as feedback is not an automatic system generated thing based on a rule…it’s at the discretion of the manager, and if the manager fails to do this, or do it well, then there is no adpating, or not adapting well.
4. Managers cannot control outcome in order to immaculately achieve a plan..for the reasons mentioned above (interpretation, unintended consequences, etc.). Why should they anyway, because when you get down and dirty to the reality of your task, maybe your understanding was skewed or unexpected gifts emerge…once you get into it you may realise your plan sucked or is unrealistic, or just needed to be sculptured as you went along…your outcome is always changing whether you like it or not, as a result of the human dance, the best a manager can do is become part of the conversational process that leads to the output.
Decisions, processes, procedures all ultimately come from conversations, not from the plan, so it’s essential to be present in conversations.
And if a manager is ignorant to want to stick to the plan without caring about the investigative conversations that reveal the reality of the situation, then it’s at their peril.
Managers can act with intention, but have to facilitate and influence the potential of people and constraints they face (the leadership aspect I guess).
Where and how they participate is crucial because it’s in these conversations/interactions that output/outcomes emerge from. It’s important to be part of the conversations as they are the building blocks of what manifests into tangibles…because interactions/communication is a dance (meaning, interpretation) we are perpetually co-creating…if the manager is involved in the granular bits of co-creation, there is more of a chance of coherence.
So instead of trying to force a plan to outcome, plan and sculpture…be involved as a facilitator in the co-creation process, and the outcome will always just be.
After writing this I have now discovered Comment 6 from Chris, in relation to my comment (comment 5) about Bas’s original context in reference to organisational self-selection. Rather than about doing tasks, he was instead, or perhaps in addition to, also talking about self-selecting tasks, rather than being given tasks.
Bas said:
“Traditionally, people are assigned tasks by their management. They are assigned the task because it fits their job function and have the resources available to accomplish this task. This can be very effective in some circumstances, but not always. People mostly have more competences than they use on their daily job, which can really be less effective in other circumstances. So my thesis is that people can be of more value to the organization by organizing differently, more bottom-up by letting the employees assigning tasks to themselves.
So self-organization in an organization is a process where people can self-select themselves when assigning tasks. Self-selecting can occur because of various reasons, for example because people have interest in the task, are familiar with it, or aren’t familiar with it at all but see it as a challenge. Whatever the reason is, it is always a valid one because it is self-selected.”
Chris doesn’t call this self-organisation, but rather self-selection, self-managing, self-regulation…of course it happens in a self-organising way, everything does.
As Chris says
“the term “self-organization” refers to a fundamental dynamic of organizations.
It is an inevitable property of the complex social process of people in
interaction. Ralph Stacey, and colleagues of his like Stephen, refer to this as a “complex responsive process”, to emphasize the pivotal role that ‘talk’ (or “communicative interaction”, as they more precisely call it) has on organizational outcomes”
Chris mentions the
“distinct aspects of organizational change and performance. These are organizational dynamics, organization design and organization development.”
Org Design – aligning org to best achieve it’s purpose (goal oriented org) from a design (structure/process) point of view
Org Dev – “It adopts humanistic, people-based values and recognises the impact of social, psychological and emotional aspects of organization on performance outcomes. As such, it embraces a philosophy of management rooted in a positive view of the value of greater employee self-management…self-regulation”
“at the centre of the framework are an individual’s core strengths or distinctive competence, on which their contribution to the organization – and personal growth – will be built.”
Attributes are “self-sufficiency, self-direction, self-control, and collaboration”
Then Chris mentions how a self-managed or role-based organisation or boundaryless organisation still looks for authority
“people still have a psychological need for what he calls authority, task, political and indentity boundaries to be set.”
Boundary Management – “team leader is simultaneously to enable and constrain performance by managing the boundaries within which team members are operating. The aim of this is to encourage, assist and enable people increasingly to ‘push the boundaries out’ as they grow in competence and confidence. At the same time, it seeks to to align this growth to the shifting needs of the business environment within which they are operating.”
This sounds like a mentor or Mr Miyagi in the Karate kid, more than a manager.
Comment by John Tropea — August 25, 2009 @ 3:26 pm
On self-organization and emergence: #1 – Processes not systems…
Over recent days, I’ve contributed to a couple of wide-ranging discussions on self-organization, in response blog posts by Bas Reus and Stephen Billing. This post and the next one summarize my current thoughts on the topic, from an informal coalitions…
Trackback by informal coalitions — August 25, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
Hi John,
I agree with Tom that the workers are interacting in a way that is self-organising, and the managers are also interacting in a way that is self-organising. So self-organising is not just for the workers – the managers are equally bound up in human relating and are not separate from it.
Tom, I also have found that people relate to the concepts of complex responsive processes through the lens of mainstream thinking and it takes quite some enquiring, like what John is doing, to develop your awareness, and of course the enquiry is never ending.
Comment by Stephen — August 25, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
jofr, I do not understand your comment at all and would like to invite you to enlarge on it a little, to explain a little more what you are getting at.
Comment by Stephen — August 25, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
In reference to point 9. I have and am certainly currently finding the same thing regarding the interpretation of complex responsive processes through the lens of mainstream thinking. And often there seems to be a response of defensiveness or agressiveness rather than open exploration.
In some ways it feels like Bas’ inquiry is heading in that direction and at some point I simply have to stop interacting in this format since I cannot get past the defensive or aggessive response in this format.
John, I think your comment 7 is very much different than the common response to these types of discussions and it was great to read it!
In my work, focused through the lens of complex responsive processes I do not often talk about the concepts much anymore, just do my best to help them using this lens of how the world emerges and move along with them in the process. And it works well for me and is much more comfortable than being the hero consultant.
Comment by Tom Gibbons — August 25, 2009 @ 11:51 pm
Tom, like you, I rarely talk about complex responsive processes in my consulting work. But because I am seeing what is going on around me as complex responsive processes of relating, this gives me insights that others don’t have, and I often speak about these insights relating to the specific situation we are in – and that’s what’s powerful in my consulting.
I thought that Bas, like John was grappling in an exploratory way with these concepts. I hadn’t picked up on any defensiveness. Of course, with this format we are grappling with the limitations of not being in real time, no body language etc.
Comment by Stephen — August 26, 2009 @ 12:03 am
I have the feeling that our understandings of the concept of self-organization, self-selecting and more are more and more converging. We learn from each other (at least I do) and we negotiate meaning.
Still, to me the empowerment element is related very much with removing or changing constraints. Adding something (by design), which indeed can remove constraints as a bypass, can empower employees to self-organize, or self-select.
Comment by Bas Reus — August 26, 2009 @ 12:56 am
Hi Bas, I’m not really sure what you mean when you say “the empowerment element.” Can you say a little more about this please?
I am thinking about the idea you raise of removing constraints. The way I see it, power relationships (e.g. that between a manager and a direct report) both enable the work to be done and constrain both parties in how they can behave – they can’t just do anything if they want the relationship to continue. So, there are always enablers and constrainers present in every relationship. It’s like a balance that changes, rather than one person having power over the other, or one person constraining another. They constrain each other, but at the same time they also enable each other. For example, the manager can’t get the phones answered without the staff. The staff can’t get paid without the manager’s approval.
So to me, the manager’s attempt to remove constraints may change the power balance, but there will still be constraints, and there will still be enabling factors present – you have to look at both, not just “constraints.”
I have looked back at my post and I have deliberately used the words “change” the constraints rather than “remove” the constraints for this reason.
Comment by Stephen — August 26, 2009 @ 1:10 am
With the empower element I’m referring to my blog about the self-organization definition. In the problem statement I mention how employees can be empowered for self-organization. In the discussion we talked about because we already self-organize, we cannot empower for it. You said “They are self organising, with a given mix of constraints, power relations and so on.”
And I agree when you say changing contraints, that is what happens for example when you enable people to self-select for tasks to be done. Removing is impossible in any sense, you always have the history where there was this constraint. Removing therefore means changing.
Comment by Bas Reus — August 26, 2009 @ 1:49 am
Thanks Bas, that’s cool. Now I understand what you were referring to.
Comment by Stephen — August 26, 2009 @ 1:56 am
Just a quick clarification of my point (11) above. I do very much appreciate Bas’ enquiry and his openess to explore this topic. I have however found other posts to be either aggressive or defensive which for me is a constraint to an interaction that can close things down, especially in this format.
It is interesting to note that this interaction in the last couple of days has ’self organized’ to the format of your blog Stephen and somewhat away from Bas’…. perhaps due to the different constraints and enablers that this format currently is providing. And perhapas an example of exactly what we have been discussing here.
Comment by Tom Gibbons — August 26, 2009 @ 5:08 am
Well, you know self-organization is a buzzword. Different people mean different things with it. We all know well that in daily life nothing organizes itself. A broken cup doesn’t repair itself, a room or a desktop doesn’t clean up itself, etc. Self-organization is the exception. That’s why it looks interesting to us. Even a group of people will not organize itself, if no one feels responsible for it. Left to their own, everyone would follow mainly the own interest, or the group members will start a fight to determine who the most powerful member is. It’s simple, if you want something to be organized, you have to make someone responsible for it. Employees who organize themselves are a wishful thinking of incompetent managers.
Comment by jofr — August 26, 2009 @ 8:14 am
jofr,
You quite rightly point out that different people mean different things about self-organisation and it is often used as a buzz word. We have been discussing here the idea of self-organisation and emergence as thought of in complexity theory, and how it is applicable in organisations. It has a different meaning in this context from “anything goes” or “laissez faire.”
Comment by Stephen — August 26, 2009 @ 8:26 am
Believe me, I have read all books about complexity theory I could find. I know what the ideas mean. The processes which they describe are rare – except in the wishful essays of incompetent managers and buzzword engineers.
You ask how we can organize a team which organizes itself. The answer is: you can’t. You can only try a kind of controlled evolution or series of educated guesses by constant trial and error and continuous feedback (also known as agile management). This is what good managers have always been doing, hire and fire until it works.
Comment by jofr — August 27, 2009 @ 8:07 am
jofr,
I must say I just don’t quite get where you are coming from. I went to your CAS blog and read a bit and if you’ve read a bunch of books on complexity theory and CAS’s I don’t see how you could come to the conclusion that self organization is rare. It’s pretty much the first thing those books talk about.
After all you did self organize yourself into responding to these blogs unless you have someone somewhere telling you to write this stuff, and someone is telling them to tell you and so on…
As for the comment about ‘hire and fire until it works’…. I guess I’m just glad you’re not my manager!
Comment by Tom Gibbons — August 28, 2009 @ 9:11 am
Hi jofr,
I’m intrigued by your phrase “hire and fire until IT [my emphasis] works”.
Leaving aside the difficulty I have in equating this in any way with the idea of “good” management, you appear to be suggesting that the complex dynamics of organizations can be mastered if only we ‘do IT better and get IT right.”
This might fit well with established wisdom and may even seem like common sense. But it is a version of common sense that still sees the business world as ordered, predictable and ultimately controllable. It isn’t.
Comment by Chris Rodgers — August 28, 2009 @ 11:08 am
Hi jofr,
Thanks for coming back to comment again. I appreciate your comments and those of everyone who has participated in this conversation.
I can’t help wondering whether perhaps we have different understandings of self-organisation.
A number of people in this conversation (including me) have been attempting to articulate what is meant by the term self-organisation. In this process of iterative articulations, I (and I suspect others too) have gained new insight and a sharper appreciation of what it means to each of us, judging by the shifts in thinking that people are acknowledging.
I am interested to know what you understand by the term self-organisation and would like to invite you to comment on what it is that self-organistion means from your perspective. In this way, we may both deepen our understanding of this concept that has provoked so much discussion in this thread on this blog, and on the blogs and twitter tweets of those others who have participated in this conversation as well.
Comment by Stephen — August 29, 2009 @ 12:28 am
[...] blinders can be removed. What this means is talent is revealed and self-organisation (which we already do regardless) can really shine. Work groups can form that attract the right people in a decentralised way, and [...]
Pingback by Library clips :: Work group fatigue : level of effort vs funded, or transform the organisation! :: November :: 2009 — November 23, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
[...] Réflexions intéressantes dans un blog que je ne connaissais pas, sur le thème "self-organization" : la remarque première est que (bien sûr) on n’a pas besoin d’organiser les gens pour qu’ils "s’auto-organisent"
–on est toujours déjà en train de s’auto-organiser, y compris (et peut-être plus?) dans les systèmes hiérarchiques très contraints : organisation informelle des salariés qui doivent ajuster leurs comportements concrets à une organisation "rigide" pour produire –quand même– des résultats (cf. toute la réflexion socio-technique –toute cette crise remet à l’ordre du jour les conclusions de la socio-technique, qu’on se le dise!). [...]
Pingback by [Mauvaises pensées d’un consultant] :: Self-organization et variables de pilotage [en] :: November :: 2009 — November 29, 2009 @ 2:09 am
[...] a fact of human nature, and therefore organisations. All we have is to the capacity to influence the constraints…and think about a more inclusive and holistic [...]
Pingback by Library clips :: Sharing and Change in the Corporate Plot :: March :: 2010 — April 1, 2010 @ 10:05 am
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