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Philippa Kindon: Is it possible to manage without managers?
90 Plays1 year ago
Philippa Kindon and the team at Mayden think so and they've captured their journey of creating a self-managing workplace in their recent co-authored book, 'Made without Managers'.
Mayden is a 140-person strong health-tech company based in Bath, providing market-leading software to NHS Mental Health Trusts, charities and third-sector providers. Mayden takes an agile and self-managing approach, having broken free from traditional people hierarchies and instead is organised around teams that manage themselves and their work.
The team at Mayden wanted to share their stories, not because they think they've got this way of working all right, but rather because they want to provide examples of how it can work, and also give a real account of some of the challenges.
A lifelong student of organisational behaviour, Philippa earned her PhD from the School of Management at the University of Bath with research into identity in the workplace. Passionate about people at work, she believes that everyone deserves to be happy in their work. Not the lighthearted laugh-at-a-film surface-level happiness, but a deep, fulfilling sense of purpose and joy through connection to a meaningful endeavour.
Philippa's role at Mayden spans business development, innovation, coaching and championing self-managing ways of working.
Topics include:
- What was the problem that Mayden wanted to solve with self-managing teams?
- How Mayden was able to take ways of working from software development and apply them to the entire organisation
- How career growth and progression work in self-managed teams
- Does self-management mean there are no hierarchies?
- How do work-placed investigations progress in a managerless organisation? What about interpersonal conflicts?
- Did the Mayden team face surprises or objections?
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Visit Visibly Different
Read Made Without Managers: One Company's Story of Creating a Self-Managing Workplace
Visit Mayden
Read A Brief History of the Agile Methodology (InfoWorld)
Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com
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Transcript
Introduction to The Visible Leader Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to The Visible Leader, the podcast that challenges conventional leadership and inspires you to create a workplace culture that empowers your team. Join me as I talk to thought leaders and changemakers about practical ways to apply new learning and rethink the status quo. Get ready to become a visible leader in your organization.
Discussion on Self-Managed Teams with Philippa
00:00:30
Speaker
Thank you so much, Philippa, for agreeing to be part of my podcast. This is a bit long awaited. We've had a couple of goes, but it's really nice to actually sit down and have this conversation because I am super excited about this subject. And I know I asked on LinkedIn and LinkedIn knows, and there were questions that you've got to answer. So I hope you look forward to doing that. Yeah, definitely. And thank you for asking. I'm really looking forward to speaking with you. Good.
00:01:01
Speaker
So I know you from way back, but when I found out about maiden and self-managed teams, I was super nosy. And I thought, what the hell? I need to know more about that. So this was several years ago now. And I, so I hung out with you and I just sort of sat in meetings and watched you all and thought, wow. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. It really led me down the way of thinking about how to distribute leadership.
00:01:31
Speaker
and how to change decision-making. But the self-managed teams piece is quite an investment in a business and a big change. And I suppose at that point, I did wonder how you deal with a crisis, like how that would look and how you will scale this, is it possible? So thankfully the world, it did answer that and it gave us a pandemic. So,
00:01:59
Speaker
We got to see what that crisis looked like and also you have grown and you've been a co-author in a book about the journey.
Background on Maiden and its Hierarchical Evolution
00:02:07
Speaker
So first of all, obviously there's people out there that have not heard of Maiden. Who are Maiden? What do you do?
00:02:17
Speaker
Okay, that's a good place to start. So, Maiden, we are an established SME, Small to Medium Size Enterprise. 130 of us are roundabout now based in Bath, across two offices, and we produce health tech, mainly for the NHS in mental health, a digital care record.
00:02:44
Speaker
And we pride ourselves on our purpose of changing what's possible for clinicians and patients. So we support people who deliver mental health care with a software platform that helps them to manage those caseloads in efficient and effective ways. Nice, thank you. I do want to hear about the journey you went on to make this happen, but I think the thing question that sort of came to me was
00:03:13
Speaker
What was the problem that having self-managed teams was going to solve, like the challenge with traditional hierarchy? Because I presume before that you were a fairly traditional hierarchical company. Yeah. So there was a period of time as Maiden was growing where it did start to go down a more traditional route.
00:03:35
Speaker
And when it started and it was small and there was a handful of employees, like many startups, it is very dynamic and there's not much hierarchy and bureaucracy. So that's quite a typical kind of starting point in that respect. And as it grew.
Adoption of Self-Management at Maiden
00:03:51
Speaker
And as our software development teams grew, they started to sort of recognize they wanted to meet the customer needs faster. So we were developing the product and looking to sort of release iterations of that. And one of the problems that was coming to the fore at that point was about how to get the releases out to the customer quicker.
00:04:14
Speaker
and we cover this a little bit in the book sort of where we are roots of self-managing and we can identify that really it was from what's called the agile movement. So this is very well established in software companies and it's a particular approach to project management and at the time the software development team that we had they went off on their agile training
00:04:41
Speaker
And they brought back a lot of the self-management principles that the agile project management methodology sort of enshrines really. And the starting point of that is about autonomous self-managing teams. So for us that we can really point to some quite clear roots to where self-managing came from for Maiden. And that's probably not too unusual.
00:05:08
Speaker
But where it did start to look a bit more unusual for Maiden was when it had gone so well in software development teams and it was really helping to release software faster for the customers. The software development teams were more engaged in problem solving and with each other. It became a lot more vibrant a workplace.
00:05:30
Speaker
that we saw this is a really interesting opportunity to see how this would work for the rest of the business, for the non-software development teams. What was happening as the organization was growing is, and again, it was following quite a typical route into hierarchy and there was three middle managers that were team leaders and then heading up those different parts of the company.
00:05:57
Speaker
And two of the directors at the time, Chris and Ali, were having a bit of a conversation about sort of how they wanted to grow maiden and shared their misgivings with each other about hierarchy and bureaucracy and sort of said, wonder if what we've done or what the software development teams have done, could that work for the rest of the business?
00:06:23
Speaker
And so that was where they really sort of started to, I would say, follow a different track and really embrace and embed self-managing across the whole organization. Lovely. And at what point did you come into that journey? So I joined the company in 2016. The software development teams had started their agile project management methodology and training and what have you in 2013.
00:06:53
Speaker
So it was quite well established in the software development teams and then it had been released or rolled out or kind of introduced to the rest of the business during the early parts of 2016. So I'd come in a few months after it had been sort of adopted by the rest of the business and what was
00:07:15
Speaker
you know, quite interesting at that moment in time is the organisation have always, we've always been data-driven, you know, that is something that is at the heart of what we do and also how we do things. And so we've always run a regular staff survey that covers things like engagement and, you know, satisfaction as an employee with the business. And they ran the staff survey towards the end of 2016
00:07:41
Speaker
And it came back as not great. In fact, looking back over the many years that the survey had run, it came back as some of the worst results that the business had ever had. And that gave us, at the time, some really interesting pause for thought. Because the self-managing aspect had gone so well with the software development teams, the business was expecting it to go as well with the rest of the teams.
00:08:08
Speaker
And what the survey was telling us is that that wasn't what was happening. So that ended up being sort of my first sort of area that I worked on when I came to Maydome was looking at this staff survey and supporting the company to say, well, why isn't this working as well? And you know, what do we need to look at to
00:08:30
Speaker
to improve things and yeah so that yeah that's kind of where i came into the business and where we were in that journey of self-management. Quite a nice little
00:08:42
Speaker
chunky issue to get your teeth into, Philippa? It was, it was, as you know, because you've known me for quite some time, that the, you know, organisational behaviour, people at work, you know, this is my passion area. And so it really was a very interesting area to get my teeth stuck into, but also in a very different way, because the whole point was this needed to be self managing. So you can't then go, well,
00:09:10
Speaker
hold on a minute, this has gone wrong and that's not quite working and you pull your project management levers to make things happen because we wanted to tackle self-managing in a self-managing way. So we kind of set ourselves the meta problem, if you like. How do we do this without resorting to a command and control approach? Yeah, top-down implementation of self-management.
00:09:39
Speaker
Teams doesn't really work. I've never really considered that before. This is what we need to do. Right, so love that. Love the kind of like you started it, had a bit of a dip. So just talk to me about what kind of probably high level, because I imagine now it's been a while and you'll have had lots of different stages of where this went. But just to understand what you had to actually
00:10:06
Speaker
do physically in the business to shift from hierarchical to self
Values and Employee Engagement at Maiden
00:10:12
Speaker
-managed? And then when there was this dip, what did you do? Okay, so the shift obviously touched a little bit on this for the software development teams and how they adopted agile methodology.
00:10:27
Speaker
and we're up and running quite quickly. So for the rest of the business, the real kind of watershed moment was a staff day that we held in November 2016.
00:10:39
Speaker
And that was a culmination of a series of workshops where we had really dug into the values of the business. So we talk quite a lot about some of the pillars of our ways of working and the values would be one of those pillars. So this was a piece of work that had been done over a handful of years, and it emerged from the business in terms of what are the values. So that would be the first thing I would say is,
00:11:05
Speaker
You know, we've we've really kind of took a look at some of the underlying and underpinning things that make made in what it is. And, you know, most organizations will be able to point to their values or their ethos or their culture, you know, some sort of underpinning part of of who they are as an organization.
00:11:26
Speaker
And from the value workshops, we asked everybody in the company a couple of key questions. Where are we working well by our values? And how do we know? What evidence can we point to? And where are we not living well and working well by our values?
00:11:46
Speaker
And what we did there was we generated a lot of data, again, about if it's not working well, what could we do differently? And that was what we took to the staff survey. So the information about what wasn't going so well got generated
00:12:03
Speaker
by every employee, and then what we wanted to do to fix some of these issues, because we were able to come round it as a whole company, we started to think about what the solutions to those would be. And we had to still shape the staff day, you know, we still had to give it structure and, you know, it's not like you can just have a free for all.
00:12:25
Speaker
you still need to put some frameworks in place. What we use is we borrowed, again, something from the world of agile, which is stories, which is just written as a way to say, as a major employee, I would like to know X, Y, and Z so that I can deliver my work well. That's a very basic example. What we did at that staff days, we asked people to engage with,
00:12:53
Speaker
areas that they felt they wanted to work on the most and so that generated some solutions that we then took back to the business after the staff day or some potential solutions that people were already feeling quite engaged to work on
00:13:08
Speaker
So that probably points to one of the things that we do as often as we possibly can and quite differently is there's a lot of self selection. So that generates a lot of motivation. And how that has then played out in the long run is working groups. So working groups, task and finish groups, when somebody spots an issue in the business that they feel passionate about working on, they can put their hand up and say, I've spotted this issue.
00:13:38
Speaker
Does anybody else want to work with me on this? And we come around working groups and task and finish groups to try and solve the issues that the business has in that way. So that's probably one very tangible thing I can point to. I mean, it really points to engagement, doesn't it? And it is to something people struggle with across the board. I mean,
00:14:01
Speaker
I don't like to go to the automatically the negative, but it all, I feel like all the questions I, I actually put a question on LinkedIn, like I said, and I got these questions and it is always like, what happens if, you know? Yeah. So I was sort of thinking when you said that, um, do you get the same people that come forward? You notice that pattern is that, is that dynamic hook? Does it work? Or is there anything in that with the engagement of a sort of self-selected group that
00:14:29
Speaker
is problematic. We just basically want to get to the problems, Philippa. Do you know what I mean? It's like, when does it not work? I love that concept and I just really want to get under it a little bit. Do you know what? We really appreciate those questions because one of the things that we identified when we were trying to work in this way is there isn't much out there, or there wasn't at the time, it is getting better now, but there isn't much help and information out there that tells you what some of the issues are.
00:14:59
Speaker
and you know you don't want a bit of a warts and all look at this because it isn't going to be plain sailing and that's what you know we've chosen to kind of structure our book around those questions so we know you know people want to understand you know what about when things go wrong or you know what's not great about this so don't mind those kind of questions at all
00:15:22
Speaker
So the question was, do you find the same people turning up for those working groups? There was definitely a period of time where that was the case, where you probably did get an over-representation of a few people. So at Maiden, we keep very good records of how people are spending their time, but it's all self-accountable because people are accountable to their team.
00:15:47
Speaker
and the work they need to complete in what we call sprints, which is two week patterns of work, people are invited to manage their time well.
00:15:59
Speaker
So if you started as an individual to think, oh my goodness, I'm spending all my time in working groups and none of my time doing my day job, you know, you're asked to kind of question yourself or your team. If your team is noticing that that's happening for you, then the team provides those checks and balances to say, is the balance of your work correct?
00:16:19
Speaker
And I think probably some of what also sets that right is because of the variety of working groups. So you might get some people that are particularly drawn
00:16:30
Speaker
to working on the working groups that maybe are to do with our way of working, like decision making. But then you've got another set of working groups that are around things like accessibility, diversity and inclusion, also technical working groups. So what we've found over time is it evens out and there is something that appeals to people across the board. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the bit in there is like,
00:16:54
Speaker
you will have some people that go, oh my God, I'm always on these groups and I can see that. But then there's other sense of, oh, I love being on these groups because I love doing that kind of stuff and actually at the sacrifice of what, but we circle back to self-managing teams, self-managing that conversation, which I think a lot of people will be going, God, how does that work? I mean, before you answer that one, let's just take a step back
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah. And then just go, okay, so what did you actually do? You did the workshop. You got clear about the values. You have that agile. What about the managers that were there? What happened to them and their status and how did that look?
Transition of Managers to Coaches
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah. So at the time there were only three, so we were still quite small.
00:17:44
Speaker
and each of them had their own sort of journey. I think one of them left the business anyway. They'd gone to a different job. Then one of them in particular, and actually she's another co-author in the book, she was on maternity leave and she met up with the director as part of their kind of return to work.
00:18:12
Speaker
And the director said, when you come back to work, you might find that things are a little bit different. And we would love to speak to you about something called coaching. And I'll return to that word of, you know, some of the pillars of our ways of working. Coaching has become another one of those pillars. So what happened with her journey, she came into the business as a manager, actually a marketing manager.
00:18:43
Speaker
and she has travelled a path that has taken her into
00:18:47
Speaker
coaching and she is now an ICF accredited coach and she absolutely loves it. And she tells a story in the book and there's certain blogs on the maiden website that sort of will take you through her journey in a bit more detail. But that's not to say, you know, some people say, well, haven't you just made all the managers coaches then? Not the case. So what we've done is we've created a coaching program
00:19:17
Speaker
And anybody in the business can train to be a coach and anybody in the business can ask for coaching support. And we know that is quite different to many of the coaching models of a more typical organization.
00:19:34
Speaker
where it's often coaching is offered to the brightest stars or the people with the management potential or whatever it might be, but actually we've taken that universal approach to coaching. You can't become a coach unless you've had the training because you recognize that it is a particular skill, but you can, anybody can ask for the coaching support. So this, yeah, this is what's happened is people's,
00:20:03
Speaker
jobs and careers have changed tack, have taken different paths and they've had a much greater hand in shaping those paths and those tracks. So you're a marketing manager who now is ICF accredited, which is awesome. Is she, it was a she, wasn't it? It was, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Should we name her?
00:20:26
Speaker
We can, I don't think she'd mind. Her name's Michelle, which is awesome. Michelle. So when, so now Michelle's nicely accredited coach. How much of her job is marketing? Is she, is she moved away from doing marketing? She really now focused on coaching.
00:20:44
Speaker
She's now focused on coaching. She will still get called on from time to time to help her marketing colleagues. She still gets to use her marketing skills and background for the needs of the business on a case by case basis. But again, she manages her time accordingly. Her main area that she is expected to deliver on and her main passion area is around the coaching.
00:21:11
Speaker
And so, as I say, she runs that program. She supports us all as individual coaches. She is now also training to be team coach. So, yeah, she's very much her heart and her, you know, delivery is in that area. But that's not to say that, you know, and actually the marketing team have, of course, grown and changed in that time. And they've, you know, they've put on more people. So, you know, it's evolved and emerged. And I would say that's probably
00:21:41
Speaker
how career growth and progression now generally happens at Maiden is there's a lot more evolution and emergence and people are encouraged to figure out what their path is. Another couple of questions I was thinking about were, so you've got directors, so is that
00:22:11
Speaker
a form of hierarchy, like just wondering about that as it is.
00:22:16
Speaker
how that works, what that looks like. Yeah, yes. So we do have directors. We now have a team of four. When I joined the business, it was a team of three. We've grown a director team by one in the last six years. And yes, I would, this is a hierarchy situation. We say, as we sort of kind of say in the book, you've caught us out. Yes, there is a bit of hierarchy.
00:22:44
Speaker
We are as flat as we feel we could possibly be at this stage in Maiden's kind of growth as a business. So what you have is the four directors have a particular role to fulfill in the business as any other team and any other individual do. And their role, the role of the directors as we've sort of worked our way through in Maiden has a four-part sort of shape to it.
00:23:13
Speaker
their job is to set direction, set expectation and then we have a bit of a debate about whether the third part is whether they should be getting out of the way and let everybody else get on with their jobs or whether they need to lean in and support because they have
00:23:30
Speaker
incredible experience and insights to bring to the rest of the business. And actually, obviously, what happens is it has to be a blend of the two. Sometimes the directors need to be involved, and sometimes they need to let the teams get on and do their stuff. And then the final part is to seek assurance, because at the end of the day, we are a limited company, rest of the company's house. There are legal requirements, as anybody running their own business knows,
00:23:58
Speaker
that you know as a company you have to make sure that you do those things so the directors fulfill that role for maiden and in that inherently becomes you know a hierarchical step if you like.
00:24:14
Speaker
And what is also the case is they are the only people that can sign an employment contract. So they are the only people that can sign that. So there is still the employer-employee relationship that exists. So self-managing, yes, definitely flat, flat as we can be at this size and scale of the organization. But there is some elements of hierarchy in that. Yeah, we'll let you off.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah, but this actually this put points to input an important point about choosing how you work is we don't work in this way, because it's a fad or a fashion or it's all the
Pragmatic Approach to Self-Management at Maiden
00:25:00
Speaker
rage. It's about choosing the ways that you work.
00:25:03
Speaker
to best suit what you are trying to do as a business. And where we've identified that really supports us is in terms of being innovative and delivering great customer service. So we really lean into that self-managing principles. Some people call it new ways of working or progressive ways of working. However you want to describe it is
00:25:26
Speaker
is it has to have, it's not an end in its own right, it's a means to an end. And we always try and keep that in mind. There are always choices you're making. Yeah, no, it's very pragmatic, isn't it? It's like, if you had to do something that was away from that ethos, because it was the right thing to do, then it is the right thing to do. Yeah. So I'm going to ask you some questions that have been posed by my community.
00:25:52
Speaker
So this one's Syra Ganji and she asks, how do workplace investigations, things like allegations of discrimination, harassment, violence, misconduct, or a toxic work culture, get dealt with in a management-less structure? Okay, so that's a great question and thank you for your
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, for bringing it. So first of all, to say, like any typical organization, we have a set of policies. We have an equality, diversity, and inclusion policy. There are still those underpinning points around the business that give us shape, that give us structure, and that we all have to lean on.
00:26:47
Speaker
So let's point to what's a little bit different. Those policies are developed and created by working groups, by employees. That is an important part of how they are developed and created. But what I would also point to is we have
00:27:09
Speaker
a professional HR team. So we have those HR skills in the business that always feed into and obviously the points that were raised by your audience series around, you know, some of the
00:27:25
Speaker
the HR matters that when you're working in an organization of 130 people, it's not going to be plain sailing. You are going to have challenges on your hands. So we make sure that we bring in the skills and the expertise that we need when you start to think about some of the employment law, some of the diversity inclusion and some of the more tricky things that any organization of our size is likely to face.
00:27:52
Speaker
What we would also say is that it isn't almost management-less. What we've come to recognize is how you manage the work rather than manage the people. So there's still management structures in place. There's still frameworks, there's still policies, but it's how you create them, how you shape them,
00:28:18
Speaker
how much people are involved in, as we say, building the kind of organization that they want to work for. So that's probably what feels a bit different is not those issues go away. And we will always recognize when you need a specialist. And we make sure that like, for example, our coaches get additional training, so that if somebody comes to them with some particular issues that might need
00:28:43
Speaker
a more specialist HR support, that they're signposts to the right places. So yeah, I don't, hopefully that answers the question. But yeah, I think it's really important to pick on that management-less structure being not a good description, actually. And it's easy to call it that. But yeah, it's in there, but it's just being done differently. We've come to call it scaffolding over the years. What we recognized is, if you just
00:29:12
Speaker
you like to go free, free for all, you know, completely, you know, if that can cause stuckness in itself. And, you know, and some of your listeners might have come across things like liberating structures, which is a fantastic resource for self managing teams and organizations, which, you know, provides you with some shape and some frameworks for how you can, you know, still
00:29:38
Speaker
you know, get some good structures in place without kind of the typical hierarchy and bureaucracy that, you know, we know that there's a lot of difficulties with those.
Remote Work Transition and Conflict Management
00:29:50
Speaker
One thing I did say at the beginning that the unfortunate crisis that we hit with the pandemic, because obviously, you know, you're in this self-management, so you don't know what it looked like within a different set up now because you're in it.
00:30:06
Speaker
Do you know that if when you've reflected on this, which I presume you might have done, how you manage that as an organisation compared to maybe more of a traditional hierarchical, what have you got thoughts on that?
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, great question. Looking back, I would say I am so proud of how Maiden faced up to the crisis. You're right, I was in, you know, very much in the heart of Maiden at that time. And, you know, you pick up on what other organisations put out there about what they did and how they managed and what have you. So over time, I guess we've been able to sort of see, well,
00:30:49
Speaker
How did we approach that compared to another organization? But certainly in the thick of it, when those are initial, you are going to have to work from home and everything's going to be remote.
00:31:03
Speaker
That was where I think some of our self-managing principles really came to the fore. Already, most teams were completely able to work remotely without what we said, without missing a stride. Because of the way we manage ourselves and the way we manage our work, everybody was able to retreat to their own homes, but still have really clear direction, know exactly what work needed to be delivered. And one of the things that we were also able to do
00:31:33
Speaker
because we serve the NHS in mental health, a lot of that work, obviously that's where the critical work is going on, that needed to move to remote.
00:31:47
Speaker
just as rapidly as the rest of the country. And we were able to implement some really rapid changes to our software that enabled secure video links. And we were able to do that within a very short number of weeks. And I think a lot of that was to do with how devolved our decision making is across the teams. So I would point to that as a particular strength in terms of
00:32:13
Speaker
that particular crisis and our particular way of working, it did enable us to be very fleet of foot at that time. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. In fact, you know, it feels like you were like one step ahead because of not needing the command and control. It's hard to do, harder to do, isn't it? When there's that type of crisis going on. Yeah. Right. So Robin Idelson.
00:32:37
Speaker
How do you work through interpersonal conflicts and deciding who is a leader or owner of a project if there isn't a dedicated hierarchy?
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, again, another great question. Thank you. So we've got roles within the business. I think we've connected with lots of other organizations that work similarly to ourselves. And we found this is a bit of a theme that as people move away from set job descriptions, it doesn't mean that there aren't still recognizable roles within the business.
00:33:11
Speaker
So for us, some of those I could point to is something called product owner. And a product owner looks after a roadmap for the development of a product. And then something else you have is a scrum master. Now a scrum master, I know it sounds like an odd term, it's very well recognized in agile, but the scrum master plays very much a team coach role.
00:33:36
Speaker
and supports a team to figure out their processes, but also supports them in some of those interpersonal skills, if you like. Because any team, well, as we know, have lots of ups and downs, different personalities, face different pressures at different times. So there is a dedicated role that what we call holds the space for the team. They're not the team leader. They don't call the shots or default to making the decisions.
00:34:06
Speaker
their skill set is much more around mediation, coaching, you know, supporting teams to come to their own decisions. So I would say some of the roles that we have are really key in helping teams to figure out some of the interpersonal stuff. In terms of leadership, what we say is, everybody's got the potential to be a leader in a self managing organization.
00:34:30
Speaker
it moves around, you know, it might be that in one project, you are leading that project, you are leading that piece of work, because of your skills, because of your expertise. But in another project, you might be coordinating, you know, a particular piece of work or supporting others, or you might be the deliverer on a piece of work. So it's about
00:34:51
Speaker
you know, recognising different skill sets in different areas and bringing those to the best, you know, to the best that meets the needs of the business and that helps grow that individual. So obviously people are going through different career paths. So you encourage people to take some of those leadership opportunities as part of their growth and progression. And do you find, because one of the things I notice is how to have a difficult conversation
00:35:20
Speaker
on your observations about performance or anything is universally tricky. Like some people get it and some people have practiced it, but it features in a lot of the work that I do. So do you find that it shows up a lot and it's about coaching and working through that, or do you just have that situation where people don't look away from it?
00:35:47
Speaker
It certainly doesn't go, those challenges don't go away just because we work in the way that we work. People are people, you know, giving and receiving feedback is hard and, you know, the research and the neuroscience is there. We know that it can feel threatening.
00:36:06
Speaker
at that sort of deep psychological level. And just as any other organisation we grapple with, how do you give and receive feedback in constructive ways? We've tried various things along the years. We've tried having Feedback Week, where everybody focuses on keeping the feedback flowing.
00:36:29
Speaker
We have stripped out formal appraisals, so individuals need to figure out or, you know, within their teams, what feedback am I looking for?
00:36:39
Speaker
You know, how am I going to find and generate that? What objectives am I setting for myself? And how do people know that that's what I'm working towards? So some people use Google Forms and they send it out to the people they want to get feedback from. Other people will manage that within their particular team setting. But one of the things that we build in, and again, I'm going to return to Agile, and it's one of those really key roots and principles for our self-managing way of working, is every two weeks,
00:37:09
Speaker
each team that's working in sprints has what they call a retrospective and that is their dedicated team time where they get to really have if they need to the difficult conversations and the scrum masters have that role of creating the safe space so that people can have those difficult conversations and because generally they're working together quite long term as a team
00:37:34
Speaker
They do get to know each other well, and we know that that's part of what can create a safe space, but then that can also build frustrations over time. So it's about being really switched on and providing that regular cadence of the safe space and the retrospective.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, and, and again that HR team is there as the backstop the advisors so you know if a team is running into some really tricky issues, and they're finding they're not able to solve it themselves, they're not going to be left to flounder.
00:38:10
Speaker
a set of support they can reach into, whether that's the HR specialist, whether that is their director, which any of the directors have what we call a residual line management duty. So if there's something that really a team have found they've reached a dead end on, they've got places they can reach into to get support. We also encourage reaching out to coaches so that, again, they've got that opportunity to figure the problems out for themselves
00:38:38
Speaker
and take the actions that they need to take. I think the word that comes to mind when I think about you and listening to you talk there is intentional. It's everything you do is intentional. Yeah. And like you said, it doesn't mean that people aren't people and again, we encounter problems. But so often it can be that things get a little bit swept under the carpet or people aren't necessarily doing their jobs and it's not caught early enough and it will escalate and
00:39:08
Speaker
I get a sense that there isn't much margin for carpet from sweeping under the rug.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah, I hope not. And we do as much as we can to make sure that things are brought to the table. And actually, what I would love to point to, which I meant to mention earlier, when Chris and Ali were sort of talking about their misgivings of hierarchy, this comes to what we've called our ethos, which is around your beliefs about people at work.
00:39:43
Speaker
You know, people show up generally with good intentions to work hard deliver well, and to behave as adults, you know, that's you know one of our underlying assumptions is that people are adults and, and they come to work to do a good job.
00:40:02
Speaker
if an organisation sets the right environment for people to work well together, they will work well together. And so that's it comes back to some of those sort of court ethos principles about your beliefs about people at work. Let me carry on with my question so I can get everybody done.
Career Growth and Decision Making at Maiden
00:40:21
Speaker
So this comes from Ben Clark. Taking out hierarchy looks like a potential step down in people's CVs.
00:40:29
Speaker
Obviously, you only had three managers and sounds like there's a big old success story with one with a shift. So I'm not sure whether there was anyone else that felt like it was a step down. I don't think step down, because once you sort of strip away hierarchy, you strip away the ladder metaphor, so it's gone. You have to find a new way of thinking about growth and progression. And what we say to people is we recognize when you
00:40:59
Speaker
When you go to the outside world, you know, beyond the major boundaries and you're at a conference or you're in a meeting, you know, with external or, you know, perhaps, you know, people move on and they're building their CVs, it's about use a job title.
00:41:14
Speaker
that would make sense to your audience. So for me, when I'm going to a conference and I have to fill out a form so that I've got something on my badge so that people can make sense of who I am and what I do, I use the term program manager.
00:41:29
Speaker
you know it sounds very hierarchical but there's no people management in that whatsoever but it makes sense to the outside world and it gives them a sort of a hook to kind of you know place me roughly within oh what do you do at maiden
00:41:44
Speaker
So we say to people just use what you need to other than you can't be the company director. That's the one that they're registered in a company's house. You cannot call yourself a director, but if you need to call yourself something, then do. But what we do challenge people around is why do you need it internally? What's going on there? It's much more about growth and progression
00:42:10
Speaker
How are you delivering to your work, to your customer, to your team? Worry not so much about fancy job titles. Think about impact. Think about how you want to grow in your career development and that value that you want to deliver to your customers. Again, very pragmatic, isn't it? Yeah, I hope so. This is from Rob Gilbert.
00:42:37
Speaker
What interesting and surprising outcomes did you not foresee with this change? The reason we find that question so interesting is we went into it intentionally, but we also went into it knowing that it would forever iterate.
00:42:58
Speaker
So something surprises us all the time because you're always pushing the boundary of where you're at. So, you know, sometimes you might be surprised at how open people are to make the next steps. And then other times you're surprised by why did we bump into that big barrier? You know, we had to go experimenting with some reward and recognition type work where we wanted to really lean into some
00:43:28
Speaker
peer-led rewards around bonuses and how that was distributed. And one team boycotted it completely, said, no way, we are not going there, we will not do that.
00:43:42
Speaker
You know, that was amazing feedback, but it was surprising. So I would say there's continuous surprises, but all that does is that fuels the, right, well, what do we do next? How is that bubbling up the next challenge? I'm just trying to think of something a bit more tangible for the person that asked the question. So leave that one with me and I'll see if I can think of some more tangible examples. Let's, let's about what's surprising. What, what,
00:44:10
Speaker
What did you bump up against? So you bumped up against implementation of something. I mean, you can imagine that, like the pay, incentives, and then everybody bump up against that. And, you know, it's a real tricky one to nail. So what else did you bump up against that you thought, not surprisingly, but what did you encounter that was a bit tricky? Probably in some of the earlier days,
00:44:38
Speaker
it was around, I think you pointed this already, sort of that over attendance at workshops, you know, people were so interested in what was going on. But yeah, you would find you have a working group of 20 people. And actually, you know, that's a bit unwieldy. But over time, as it's become just a bit more embedded and a bit more, this is the way that we do things, that's naturally sort of evened itself out a bit.
00:45:07
Speaker
Yes, so almost over enthusiasm for it perhaps in the early stages. I would say decision making is certainly a tough nut to crack and one that we keep returning to. How do you get decision making right in an organisation like this? So I would say that's a continued source of work that we do around our way of working.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah, now I can imagine. What was the conclusion? What do you think? What's the nugget underneath decision making? What's the key learning you've had through all your iterations? The key learning on decision making.
00:45:57
Speaker
Clarity, clarity, oh my goodness, it is. Be clear who is the decision maker. Be clear what is the decision that you're trying to make. It's incredible how what is probably the case for most decisions is they are a series of mini decisions. And also that in a self-managed organization or where you've got lots of distributed and devolved power and decision making is
00:46:27
Speaker
there's maybe a number of people that influence that you consult with and actually now there is a growing body of resource out there to help you with decision making. So that would be the other thing is don't try and figure this out completely on your own, reach out for the resources that are there from places like corporate rebels,
00:46:49
Speaker
Reinventing work, liberating structures. There are things out there that can help you now. And Frederick Lalloo's Reinventing Work, the advice process, so much of what it comes down to is something called the advice process, which is actually inherently anybody can be the decision maker.
00:47:09
Speaker
as long as they have consulted, taken the right advice, but we do also say question yourself at the very beginning. If you've not got the expertise, you know, you may have noticed the problem, but actually the decision lives with somebody else. So there's quite a lot of, yeah, figuring stuff out in the beginning, but if there's anything I would come back to, it would be clarity. Nice insight there. And did
00:47:35
Speaker
I know when I met with you, we talked about what happened as far as people leaving. So if you could just share what happened is, you know, some people obviously, this wasn't the right environment for them when you made that shift. So what percentage do you think didn't stick around? Yeah.
00:47:55
Speaker
So the other, we can point to lots of examples of other organisations that have sort of been through this transition and there is quite recognised that there's about maybe 20% I think is a recognised figure.
00:48:13
Speaker
We probably did have some people that found this wasn't right for them, but what we have done all the way along is encourage open conversations. We find actually the way of working, because it evolves and iterates, the more you can hear from people, both inside the organization and from external, both supporters of the way you work and people who might be skeptical or more,
00:48:43
Speaker
doubtful about whether it can work, the more you can improve on how you work.
Feedback and Intentional Management
00:48:49
Speaker
Sometimes we call it like the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl. You don't want to be in an echo chamber in this. You really need friends, but you also need honest and critical friends, people that can point and say, what the heck is happening here? Again, we've talked about that a bit in the book in The Journey.
00:49:13
Speaker
you know, engage with anybody that is willing to about what's working and what's not and keep those conversations going. Brilliant. Yeah, I know. Absolutely love that. Bring in the dissent. We want the dissenters. They're so important and so many people don't want to hear it and don't find ways to include that voice. So yeah, sounds good. So kind of getting close to wrapping up, like,
00:49:42
Speaker
One thing that would be great, thinking about my community can be listened to this. I don't know that many of them are going to go, right, that's it. We are going down this road. I mean, be lovely. And seriously, if anyone's listened to this and that's what they choose, let us know, because we would love to hear. But it may be that there obviously are some real insights from your way of working, how pragmatic you are about it, that they can take back to the more traditional hierarchy.
00:50:13
Speaker
What things do you think they could steal from you that would still work even though they've got a hierarchy? Right. Anybody is welcome to steal anything from us. We, so first of all, let me say if anybody is inspired by this podcast and they want to dig into anything that's come up in a bit more detail, you know, please, if they want to get in touch, really happy to do that. Or they could buy the book.
00:50:42
Speaker
Where will they find the book? What's the book called? Made Without Managers and it's a team of us at Maiden that sort of penned this so yeah that's very much there as a resource for anybody that's intrigued and interested. What I would say is
00:51:00
Speaker
First of all, steal anything from us, but also don't steal anything from us because the starting point has to be your organization. So the first thing is look inside your company and get to know
00:51:16
Speaker
who you are, who are your employees, what are the things that are working well for them and not working well for them. Start with employee engagement. That would be kind of that first port of call is, by all means, be inspired by any organization that's doing things a bit differently, but don't necessarily think that it will translate into a different environment because each organization environment is so unique.
00:51:44
Speaker
But some of those things, probably the starting questions is about what are the underlying assumptions about people at work? How have I started to create an organization that's really true to what I want an organization to be? I mean, if there's anything we would love to inspire people to do is to question anything that you're sleepwalking into. If you're sleepwalking into putting middle managers in place,
00:52:10
Speaker
Have a think about what is it? What is it that you're actually wanting them to do? And would it be better suited to be done in a different way? And I think that's what we've done is we've allowed ourselves at regular intervals to almost step outside of ourselves and go, what's really working here? And unpack the things that aren't
00:52:31
Speaker
and keep, you know, sort of pressing on with the things that are put people at the center, you know, make your decisions, and around the fact that it's human beings, you know, change the way you think about organizations. You know that we're not machines.
00:52:47
Speaker
You know, we're forging new futures, you know, the way that society is working, the challenges that we're facing, you know, the organisations are going to have to rise up to meet around climate change. You know, we're going to have all of us have to find different ways to work. So it's just about, you know, giving yourself a bit of space to think about that. Yeah, again, it's that mindful being intentional, not sleepwalking.
00:53:13
Speaker
Absolutely. And you know, having, you know, coaching, you know, people like yourselves that can give a slightly outside perspective, but without trying to solve the problems, you know, the organization will have its own answers, each individual has its own answers. So it's about really thinking, how can I take a coaching approach? How can I put the people at the center of what's going on here? And what help and support might I need along the way? Lovely. Well,
00:53:42
Speaker
question. Have I not asked that T either typically gets asked or is a really juicy question that you think I should have asked?
Reflections on Self-Management's Rewards and Challenges
00:53:55
Speaker
Is it worth it? Yes. Is it easy? No.
00:54:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's been incredible to work in an organization that's opted for this approach. And, you know, we have been asked from time to time, like, how would you feel about going to work at a different organization? And I do ponder that from time to time. How would I feel about going back to having a traditional line manager?
00:54:32
Speaker
you know, working in a hierarchy. And I, you know, I'd seriously question, could I go back to something that looks more traditional? And I honestly don't know because it has been so liberating and fulfilling to, you know, to work in this way in an organization that so sort of wholeheartedly supports this.
00:54:52
Speaker
But it's not for the faint-hearted. There are some significant challenges in it, but so far they have reached great rewards for maiden. But we have growth ahead of us, we hope. Will some of those things that have worked for us so far still work in the future?
00:55:12
Speaker
you know, we sort of step forward in each, you know, each growth phase knowing that that's that question in our minds, you know, is we will iterate and we may have to change again. We will have to change again. Yeah, yeah. That is a guarantee, isn't it really? Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Philippa. I really enjoyed that conversation and I just love listening to you talking about
00:55:39
Speaker
all the challenges and all the fun stuff and yeah I really really appreciate it. Oh thank you so much for asking me to take part. I love having the chance to speak with you about this area and yeah really really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for all your great questions and all the brilliant questions from your audience. Thank you.
00:56:14
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Visible Leader podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episode, hit the subscribe button. And I'd love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review. If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me. Kinehines on LinkedIn.