11 ∎ The Paradox of Power

The paradox of power refers to the seeming conundrum: how to use power effectively while at the same time enabling the power of others. The seeming dilemma—either using power or giving it away—is the paradox. And high performance emerges from coming to understand and transcend the paradox of power.

The whole of the journey from traditional to evolutionary—in all of its aspects—can be understood through the lens of effective use of power. There are many traps on this journey, from the wholesale abandonment of the hierarchy to creating too much autonomy before people are adequately prepared. Whether you are coming from a more traditional management mindset or a seemingly progressive one, be prepared to have your beliefs challenged and hopefully recalibrated to an understanding that will serve as the foundation for how you may approach leadership and organizational change.

PATTERN 11.1: FROM EXERCISING POWER TO LEADING THROUGH INFLUENCE

EXERCISING POWER

Most organizational systems today exhibit a high level of use of power and authority to forward goals and activities. The typical consequence of Traditional management, with its addiction to command and control, is to dominate others, consequently fostering low levels of engagement and Theory X workers.

Power exists as a tool or mechanism for impacting a system. As a tool, power is neither good nor bad. It just exists. It can’t be gotten rid of. The choice we face is how will it be used and what choice will lead to positive consequences.

The word leadership is used in the Traditional business environment to mean a variety of different things:

• The people in charge of the organization—managers or executives

• The people with authority or power

• The act of directing and guiding people.

For the most part we have a sense of what real leadership is. We recognize that in business-as-usual organizations, the word leadership is used for anything but the real thing. We do our best and carry on without fully recognizing the painful loss of true leadership.

LEADING THROUGH INFLUENCE

Leading through influence is the ability to energize and build interest in an outcome without using authority, power, status, or any form of manipulation. It is a more complex skill—hence the name the paradox of power. It also demands an evolution in consciousness to internalize the understanding so that one can embody the change through action and behavior.

THE PARADOX OF POWER

Successful leaders are able to get things done in a very different way than with the direct use of power. We define the paradox of power as a shift in understanding and consciousness that allows one to understand the nuances of the effective use of power. Understanding the paradox of power allows one to achieve far more than one’s formal status or authority—these people are called influencers. Executives and managers who use influence over power are able to achieve great things.

While navigating the paradox of power is the focus of this chapter, it is interlinked and touches many other patterns, such as the effective use of power and how to influence change without the direct use of power. The antipatterns highlight the specific and categorical damage that can be created through the ineffective use of power.

USE POWER SPARINGLY

This is a simplified principle that captures the essence of how to lead through influence: stop using your power. A more nuanced and accurate summary is to only use power as a last resort, and even then use the least amount of power possible.

Deming identifies that effective managers avoid the use of authority: “He has three sources of power: 1. Authority of office, 2. Knowledge, 3. Personality and persuasive power; tact. A successful manager of people develops Nos. 2 and 3; he does not rely on No. 1. He has nevertheless obligation to use No. 1, as this source of power enables him to change the process … to bring improvement” (1994, 126).

What we are speaking about here is the right balance. In some situations, no power or only a very small amount of power is needed. In other situations, strong and effective use of power may be required. Some managers make the error of abandoning all power in the name of autonomous teams or a misunderstanding of what Servant Leadership really means.

PRINCIPLE: LEADING IS AN EMERGENT PHENOMENON

To fully clarify what it means to lead through influence, we need to clarify an understanding of leading, leader, and leadership.

Of course, one might simply define a leader as a person who leads others and leadership as the act of leading. This then begs the question: What does it mean to lead others? Related to this is the very practical question: How can one tell if one is leading? It’s easy. Check to see if there are followers. Hence the following definition:

In the book One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization (2005), Dee Hock provides the following insight to clarify this topic: “Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. The terms leaders and followers imply the continual freedom and independent judgement of both. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound, they are no longer a leader or follower. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate” (47).

Let us consider what it means to lead others when people have a choice about whether to follow or not. The following passage about Morningstar describes a Teal way of working with shared power and conscious leadership: “Leadership in a self-managed environment is different, however. The source is definitely not position, title or hierarchy. The only indication of a leader is whether someone has followers or not. In a self-managed environment, leadership is earned, not granted. Generally speaking, the person earning a position of leadership is the person with the most experience to bring to bear on a particular problem or situation. Positions of leadership in self-managed situations aren’t permanent. They revolve, depending on who has the most ability to deal with a situation, and whether people trust that person enough to follow him or her” (Kirkpatrick 2011, 91).

We make the following definitions to clarify the true meaning of the terms leader, lead, and leadership:

When we attempt to lead and no one follows, that is definitely not leadership.

We use the word evoke to capture that effective leadership will manifest or result in followers. The people who choose to follow are accepting an invitation to follow. They are not created by the leader. It is in fact the other way around: through the act of following, they create the leader.

To move to a high-performance organizational system, it is required to have leaders who lead—we refer to this as leadership leadership. Success hinges on leadership that actually leads. In business as usual, there is often a complacency and acceptance of managers and executives in positions of power who fail to lead.

Leading is an emergent phenomenon of a group of people. A leader may attempt to lead, yet success is measured by whether people willingly choose to follow. As such, leading, being a leader, or leadership is an empirical result that depends on what happens in practice. Further, it is a dynamic phenomenon—one can be leading one moment and not in the next.

TREAT EVERYONE LIKE A VOLUNTEER

Let us return to the practical situation where someone is a manager and wishes to grow to become a leader who leads. A key phrase that provides guidance for managers to:

Volunteering is optional. A volunteer is someone who voluntarily chooses to participate. With volunteers, people can no longer rely on power or authority to influence behavior. When one treats everyone like a volunteer, one has no alternative but to act like a real leader or fail.

On one occasion when we were visiting with an executive vice president at Google, we discovered how he had learned this very same lesson when he started working there. After a successful career in management roles at start-ups and other organizations, this VP joined Google. At that time, Google employees had the freedom to change projects, and there was so much demand, they did not have to put up with bossy business-as-usual managers. Soon a few engineers left the team rather than work for this VP. This created a wake-up moment. The VP had a choice—to fail, or to learn a new style of leadership. He chose to reinvent himself to act like a true leader.

A similar wake-up moment occurred for David Marquet in the case study Turn the Ship Around (2012). As the captain of a submarine, he was in deep trouble. He and the crew knew he was incapable of giving effective orders. They all knew that they would fail to return the submarine to active duty if Marquet kept making decisions. He had a choice—to shut up and relinquish power or to fail in his mission. Marquet understood that relinquishing power would require that he learn a completely new approach to leadership. He chose to reinvent himself to act like a true leader, and through this act he created such passionate followers that they achieved the highest audit score in the history of the U.S. Navy. The true engagement needed for high performance requires real leadership.

Most managers in organizations do not have the benefit of such a clear choice: to fail or to grow. In most organizations “good enough” is the repeated choice that leads to Traditional (Red, Orange) culture systems and the performance that goes with them.

TOOL: FOUR KARMAS

We have modified a Buddhist teaching called the four karmas to create a tool to guide interactions with a person or a system. These four options illustrate the different uses of power. Each successive level can be seen as using more power.

1. Peace—Create peaceful relations. Support psychological safety.

2. Enrich—Give the person or system what it needs or wants. This can be education, financial support, or emotional support.

3. Energize—With energize, we put our will and our desire into what should happen. This is where we may share what we see and what we think would be valuable. We invite people to support, join, or follow us. Participation is optional.

4. Destroy—Destruction can be used to oppress or liberate. In its healthy usage, we understand that new creation may require destruction and may use power for the ultimate good of the person or system.

With every situation, one can use the four karmas to evaluate alternative patterns of interaction. High performance comes from using the right level of power to support the people in each unique context.

From the perspective of the four karmas, the only real use of power is for destruction, conscious destruction. As an enabler of change, it is important to be conscious at each moment where we are operating to ensure we are using the most effective move for the given situation.

It is typical for our human conditioning to see destruction as a negative use of power. This can lead to a false sense of humility or a suppression of thoughts and behavior that can lead to a retainment of unhelpful structures or team members. Many leaders choose to avoid destruction for the sake of trying to be fair or a being a good leader. In these situations, we can choose a new perspective, where destruction is for the good of a system and for the good of individuals. Of course, when there is a shift in consciousness or mindset, the power of destruction when using the four karmas looks very different. Growth and transformation are a normal outcome from the positive use or conscious destruction.

PATTERN 11.2: FROM SERVING GOALS TO SERVING PURPOSE

SERVING GOALS

In most traditional organizations, goals shape the focus and structure of organizational activities. Frequently, top leadership commits to specific outcomes and metrics with the board of directors. These are usually formulated as a strategic plan with cascading sets of objectives or subgoals for various groups, departments, and teams. In this process, groups are frequently given different and often conflicting goals that lead to organizational tension and conflict.

Communication plans are made to get middle managers and workers to understand what is needed of them, and yet there is little hope that people might actually be excited. Often a whole system of management by objective is in place to measure conformance and compliance. The workplace becomes increasingly meaningless, and low levels of employee engagement lead to low productivity. Even worse, the ability of the organization to adapt to the changing world is blocked or hampered by the typical annual planning process.

OKRS—OH NO!

OKRs is a system created at Google to seemingly avoid the trap of top-down goal creation. Each OKR consists of an object or goal that is created by the team or subgroup. In Google’s context, they define a key result that is a stretch goal—something ambitious and challenging—so that the team has a chance to push the envelope and deliver the extraordinary.

When there is a high level of psychological safety and space to learn from failure, then these structures will work. It is a great example of how Google made goals useful in their context. OKRs will only work in very evolved organizations.

What happens in more traditional organizations is that OKRs are misinterpreted, misconstrued, and used very much in the same way as Traditional goal management. Suddenly, it’s the top leadership defining or guiding the OKR creation. Without psychological safety, talking about stretch goals doesn’t make sense—people will just play it safe.

The key challenge is that OKRs are designed to act at the level of consciousness of Google—an evolved organization. Simply copying the structure and applying it to a traditional organization cannot possibly work since the management and employees need to operate from a more evolved consciousness.

SERVING PURPOSE

In an evolutionary organization, we see purpose emerge as a key construct to inspire and guide the behavior of people in the organization. The purpose is an active part of daily work life to orient and guide decisions and behaviors. Employees who are actively engaged and part of the creation of the organizational purpose will be inspired and motivated to work toward the common goal of the organization. Giving people purpose leads to the health and well-being of your team members and creates a positive and productive environment within your organization.

In traditional organizations, a clear organizational purpose may be absent. Even when there is a purpose, people usually do not feel connected to it or inspired by it. Success requires more than an organizational purpose being written down on a plaque on the wall or in the company slide deck for new employees.

WHY BEFORE WHAT

Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009) is very instructive for sparking shared motivation and desire. The powerful observation in the book is that why is much more important than how or what for inspiring people. Stated differently, the purpose is much more important than the plan or the goals.

VISA is an incredible example of how an organization may evolve and emerge. The following quote captures the clear focus on the creation of an energized community of workers: “Since the strength and reality of every organization lies in the sense of community of the people who have been attracted to it, its success has enormously more to do with the clarity of a shared purpose, common principles, and strength of belief in them, than in money, material assets, or management practices, important as they may be” (Hock 2005, 94).

LEADERS SERVING PURPOSE

Every single use of power or authority can be measured by the level of alignment with the organization’s purpose. Power that is used in ways that are not supportive of the organization’s functioning lead to dissatisfaction with those interested in serving the organization. In contrast, power that is used to support the organization’s ability to function is well received and gives people faith and trust in their leadership.

What does it take for leaders to serve a purpose? It requires that they put the needs of the organization and its people before personal preferences. This requires enough growth in consciousness to overcome the destructive tendencies of the ego to practice the openness and humility needed to truly serve the organization’s purpose.

In the book Good to Great (2001), Jim Collins talks about leaders who operate very differently from “traditional leadership”—what he calls level 5 leadership—to unlock organizational performance: “Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is for the institution, not themselves” (21). Here we see that the ability of leaders to evolve the organization is limited by their own personal evolution.

A shift in leadership to a more evolved consciousness, where the ego has been dissolved, is required to unlock an inspiring shared purpose. Consider this observation about the shift needed with leaders of Teal organizations: “Focus on higher purpose seems to be precluded when a leader is deeply rooted in ego because the currency of the ego is fear; how can a leader be available to lead others in a conscious way if they are busy defending a fractured ego?” (Sarah Morris quoted in Laloux 2014, 247).

Evolving one’s consciousness and letting go of the ego is an essential shift leaders need to be able to lead the transition to high-performance organizations.

In Frederic Laloux’s work studying Teal organizations, he found that the creation of a compelling purpose goes hand in hand with the cultivation of humility. “One way that leaders show humility is by reminding themselves and others that their work is in service of a purpose that transcends them individually” (Laloux 2014, 247).

When the people in an organization share a higher purpose—more important than any one individual—it creates a powerful dynamic for evolution. From a psychological perspective, it has been experimentally verified that helping others leads to the highest levels of human fulfillment or happiness (Santi 2017).

PRINCIPLE: LEADERSHIP EMERGES FROM THE RESPONSIBLE USE OF POWER

The best and only use of power by leaders in organizations is in service of the organization and its people—to serve the purpose. When power is used in a way that supports the shared desire and in a way that supports the people, then we may say power is being used for the good of the organization. Of course, this possibility is fully dependent on the evolution of leaders. An easy test to see if power is being used for good is to see if people agree with the decisions.

When executives and managers fall into the trap of serving goals, the sight of the purpose and the motivation that comes with it is lost. In such a context, any use of power will be unlikely to effectively serve the organization or its people, and leadership will inadvertently fall into the trap of breaking the trust and confidence of those they hope to lead.

PATTERN 11.3: FROM COMMAND AND CONTROL TO LETTING GO OF CONTROL

COMMAND AND CONTROL

An overreliance on command and control for governance is the hallmark of a low-performance traditional organization. The existence and function of the hierarchy is based on the prevailing and usually tacit belief that people need to be told what to do for anything to get done.

Connected with this is the assumption that people are more like Theory X—unmotivated, unambitious, and needing to be governed. This in turn creates a vicious loop where people become disengaged and unmotivated, and organizational effectiveness is far from the potential. Why on earth would any reasonable, well-intentioned manager continue such a devastating system?

Even worse, those at the top of the organization become busier and busier. While this may fuel the self-importance that the ego feeds on, most managers realize that they have become a bottleneck for decision making. They realize that they are trapped between the dilemma of taking a vacation or impacting the rate of progress with work. Across the organization, there are harmful delays introduced by getting approvals and working through steering committees. Then there is the gnawing awareness and concern that a surprisingly high number of decisions and plans just don’t work out. Even though there is an unstated collusion to sweep the dirt under the carpet, the mounting challenges take away from work satisfaction.

IT’S ABOUT FEAR

Let’s face it: the words “let go of control” confuse and frighten most leaders. Common objections are: How will we be able to get anything done? How will we make sure people are working on the right things. Even more frightening, what will my role be?

The real challenge here is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of loss of status. Fear of not achieving results. Even though it has been proven again and again that sharing power with employees leads to higher performance, managers just can’t do it. While overcoming fear is the ultimate solution, an important starting place is for leaders to have a clear understanding of how letting go of control is a key element of high performance.

LETTING GO OF CONTROL

Various new forms of leadership have been proposed to move beyond command and control. All of these point to one key shift: letting go of control.

FACT: EXECS AND MANAGERS ARE NOT IN CONTROL

The truth of the matter is that managers do not actually have control over the people who report to them. For sure, power and authority can be used to achieve compliance. Yet at each moment, a worker is fully in control of what effort and energy they bring to an activity. High-performance leaders are simply recognizing the underlying reality and flowing with it.

PRINCIPLE: CONTROL IS AN ILLUSION

People are complex systems. It’s hard to predict how people will react. Then we have organization systems that are a collection of people—that’s complexity squared! Organizations are very complex systems. It’s hard or impossible to predict what might happen when we take action. How can any leader be certain that a particular decision, choice, or use of power will actually have the intended consequences? This fact is, of course, readily apparent when leaders are open to unlearning and discovering reality.

If leaders do not have control, what do they have? High-performance leaders understand the importance of leading through influence as well as the effective use of power.

SHARING POWER

One key aspect of the shift from low-performance culture to high-performance culture is the sharing of power. A transitional pattern seen in organizations that seek to move beyond command and control is the focus on the empowerment of workers. With evolutionary organizations, there is an extensive dismantling of the typical power infrastructures. This is manifested either by eliminating a fixed power hierarchy entirely or by evolving leadership to such a point that the hierarchy is fully in service of the workers and the organization.

In the remarkable case study documented in Turn the Ship Around, a whole new way of working came out of one simple choice by the captain of the submarine: “I vow to never give another order” (Marquet 2012). In that moment, the captain chose to give up control out of necessity. As a new captain, without the usual yearlong training program, there was no way he could make intelligent orders with his low level of knowledge. There was simply no other workable solution to his situation. On Marquet’s submarine, they unwittingly stumbled upon one of the key characteristics of high-performance leadership: giving up control.

Ricardo Semler explains the motivating philosophy at Semco— an Evolutionary case study: “I wanted to know if it was possible to liberate people and free them from the elements of life that make it a drag by creating an entirely new kind of organization. The answer lay in relinquishing control. It was a deceptively simple principle because it would mean instituting a true democracy at Semco” (Semler 2004, 9). An entire chapter is dedicated to the importance and details of how Semco handled this change: “Order of the Day: Give up Control, Sir!” (111).

For further descriptions of how evolutionary organizations around the world and in different industries have handled sharing power, we refer readers to Reinventing Organizations (Laloux 2016).

KEEP THE HIERARCHY—IT’S A JOURNEY

A popular myth around the future of work is that you need to get rid of the hierarchy to create high performance. It’s simply not true. A key source of misunderstanding is the book Reinventing Organizations (Laloux 2016), where the existence of a hierarchy in the largest case study, AES, was simply overlooked. Other high-performance organizations such as Semco and Turn the Ship Around also retained the hierarchy. It’s not about having a hierarchy or not— it’s about the behavior and mindset of the people in positions of power.

If you are in a position of power, don’t worry, it will take time before anything like full self-organization can function well. Everyone at the organization will likely need to evolve to operate effectively with higher levels of autonomy. You will more likely have your hands full working to develop people.

The ability to give up control and share power is a leadership capability. Depending on the situation, a leader will decide to what degree to exercise this capability—how much power to share, whom to share it with, what constraints to provide, and so on. In no way are we advocating a complete abdication of power. That has worked in unique situations but probably won’t work in your environment. Instead, we are suggesting sharing power and control in an iterative and incremental way as people are developed.

EMBRACE EMERGENCE

High-performance people and organizations learn to embrace emergence. As every organization is a complex system, there is no possible way any leader can directly control the organization or its evolution. Hock speaks to this invitation of a broader and deeper understanding of leadership: “To be precise, one cannot speak of leaders who cause organizations to achieve superlative performance, for no one can cause it to happen. Leaders can only recognize and modify conditions that prevent it; perceive and articulate a sense of community, a vision of the future, a body of principle to which people are passionately committed, then encourage and enable them to discover and bring forth the extraordinary capabilities that lie trapped in everyone” (Hock 2005, 55).

As the leaders in an organization start giving up control, an organization will naturally move to distributed decision making. The low-performance model of top leadership making decisions shifts to become a web of decision making based on who has the best information and wisdom to serve the purpose of the organization. In this situation, everyone is coleading and cocreating the future. As a result, the path taken by the organization will evolve as a function of many independent decisions. This is emergence: the future of the organization emerges from the whole. There is no one person or group in control.

Emergence is actually a direct result of complexity. The future will emerge regardless of whether leadership chooses to acknowledge the underlying reality.

CULTIVATE SURRENDER

As leaders learn to let go of control, they will evolve to understand and practice surrender—fully letting go. In fact, creating great outcomes is fully dependent on releasing into the unknown.

In Artful Making (2003), Robert Austin and Lee Devin explore lessons of high performance from the perspective of the theater. They investigate the patterns of highly successful productions. High performance requires letting go and moving beyond plans: “The things you are able to plan are those things that you see as being possible. Impossibilities never make it to the planning stage. Whereas envisioning involves faith in a maybe and a belief in the chance that the ‘maybe’ can become a ‘yes’” (Austin and Devin 2003, 173).

The same pattern is observed by John Paul Getty when speaking of how to create extraordinary outcomes (Getty 1986). One example of his achievements is the commercialization of oil in the Middle East in an area that was an undeveloped desert. He turned a “maybe” into what has become one of the largest industries in the world, yet at the time people thought he was crazy.

Austin and Devin continue to describe the key way that the director of an ensemble is able to lead to success. They use the team “release” to describe the activity of letting go so that extraordinary results can emerge. The role for leaders is to use focus and attention to influence the outcome: “Focus is the primary means by which the director influences efforts at release. A director/manager cannot necessarily know what workers are doing; he/she cannot tell them what to do. But often, he/she can influence focus” (Austin and Devin 2003, 89).

Successful leaders understand the principle of letting go and release. It can be used to cocreate the emergence of what is unfolding in an organizational system. It’s more like surfing the waves than moving the strings in a puppet show.

In a similar vein, Semler speaks about the importance of emergence and the serendipity that comes with it: “In an organization, the road taken can also permit ambling and rambling—and unexpected learning. It just requires losing control. As I’ve said, most business leaders find that difficult, if not painful. But it is also profoundly rewarding” (Semler 2004, 236).

Letting go of control is a natural practice with the evolution of consciousness of the leader. At the start of the journey, it’s not about enjoying letting go of control, it’s about realizing the necessity of it.

THE EVOLUTION OF LEADERS

Let’s face it. Although essential, it’s not an easy journey for a leader to make the shift to let go of control. Marquet, as captain of the submarine, gave up control when he had no other choice. Laloux notes the challenge shared among leaders: “Fighting the inner urge to control is probably the hardest challenge for founders and CEOs of self-managing organizations” (Laloux 2014, 245).

High-performance leaders exhibit a shift from controlling and planning to cocreating and flowing with emergent creation. Embracing emergence and letting go of control is not a technique or a piece of information. It requires a shift in consciousness:

• Identity—from directing to a supporting leader

• Values—from importance of their expertise to the contribution and wisdom of others

• Beliefs—from “I am in control” to “The future is an emergent”

• Behaviors—from talking to listening

• Actions—from telling and deciding to growing, guiding, and enabling

It’s one thing to know that letting go of control is a good idea, it’s a completely different thing to put it into effective practice. This pattern, like many, is an invitation to your leadership journey.

PATTERN 11.4: FROM ELIMINATING HIERARCHY TO INCREASING FREEDOM

ELIMINATING HIERARCHY

Another famous trap is that of abolishing the hierarchy to create a flat organization with self-management. There are many change advocates who promote eliminating the hierarchy (Pflaeging 2014, Laloux 2016, and Gill 2018). It sounds promising, since many of the problems of low performance seem to stem from the hierarchy and the oppression that accompanies it. We have a different view to increase the performance of an organization and create a smoother transition for organizational change.

DISSOLVING THE HIERARCHY IS NOT THE GOAL

Dropping the hierarchy is not the ultimate goal or objective. Rather, it is a means that one might hope to create an outcome. A useful goal is to create a high-performance organization through people who are able to contribute at their best. With this in mind, we might be curious: What is the impact of dropping the hierarchy? How might this help? How might this be harmful? What are the preconditions for it to work? How can we increase the chances of a successful transition?

We have no objection to the elimination of the hierarchy as an emergent outcome that best serves the evolutionary path of an organizational system. What we see as harmful is the treatment of dissolving the hierarchy as a universal prescription for success. Attempting to shift culture by changing structures will not work unless it is led or accompanied by a shift in consciousness.

DISSOLVING THE HIERARCHY = HOW TO CREATE FEAR

In most organizations, even the merest discussion of dropping the hierarchy will trigger intense fear for execs, managers, and workers. Their sense of order and stability goes out the window. In the case of workers, they worry about what new demands may be placed on them and how they will be able to do their jobs. In the case of execs and managers, they wonder if they have a future at all and may be baffled as to what role they may have and how they might contribute what in the future. The impact of dissolving the hierarchy is illustrated in figure 11.1.

The fear triggers the fight-or-flight system and the resulting loss of intelligence due to reduced blood flow to the brain. Fear has numerous biochemical reactions that create physical limitations. There are numerous studies on the effects of fear and how it can make people sick. Symptoms of fear in the physical body are rapid heart rate, nausea, digestive disorders, immune deficiency, lack of sleep, and so on— all creating a long-term taxation of imbalance and disease in the physical body.

Without psychological safety, people’s abilities to navigate through the confusion of a lack of hierarchy is severely limited. Just at the moment when maximum brain function and learning is needed, the very opposite is created. In most situations, even exploring the concept of dropping the hierarchy is unhelpful, as it throws leaders and people into the deep end of organizational change without adequate preparation. Maintaining a sense of order in a hierarchy provides the safety needed for people to evolve.

In terms of evolutionary sequence, dropping the hierarchy is a late-stage game that demands a high level of leadership evolution. For most organizations, there is a substantial amount of growth and evolution before people are ready and interested in such a dramatic change.

Don’t discard the hierarchy until people no longer need it. Effective leaders use power for the greater good of the organization. Discarding all power is an abdication of leadership, and while well-intentioned is unlikely to be successful in most situations.

INCREASING FREEDOM

How can you make people free? It’s impossible, since they are already free—we can’t make someone something that they already are. On the one hand, when we recognize people’s freedom and we respect it, we will not tell people what to do. On the other hand, we may only function effectively when we have agreements about how we will cooperate and work together. Herein lies the essence of the paradox of power. Ultimately, we need leadership to resolve this challenge—someone who leads in such a way that people willingly follow. Hock captures this leadership challenge eloquently: “There is no way to give people purposes and principles, yet there can be no self-organizing self-governance without them. The only possibility is to evoke a gift of self-governance from the people themselves. It is there that a true leader may be useful, perhaps even essential” (Hock 2005, 67).

PRINCIPLE: ELIMINATE OPPRESSION

Oppression and misuse of power is the real challenge to overcome. The challenge experienced with low-performance culture systems is the existence of a power hierarchy where the supposed leaders—the executives and managers—do not actually lead with wisdom and fail to serve the organization. It’s a misuse of hierarchy that limits performance.

Hierarchy is neither inherently good nor bad. It is just a tool. Everything revolves around how the tool is used. In healthy organizations, hierarchy is used to create sufficient order and structure to support the psychological safety needed for people to function.

Hierarchy is a naturally occurring structure in nature and in organizations. Regardless of whether or not there is a formal hierarchy, there will always be an awareness of who is more knowledgeable, wise, skilled, and so on. That creates an informal network or ad hoc hierarchy. Some high-performance organizations have a natural hierarchy of leaders who lead with responsibility.

IT’S ABOUT LEADERSHIP CONSCIOUSNESS

When digging deeper into case studies in literature and our own consulting work, there is a shift toward the more conscious leadership characteristic of evolutionary organizations. There appears to be a certain level of evolution in the consciousness of a leader needed to begin the journey to self-organization or self-management—a willingness to learn and grow, to let go of control, and to learn to develop others. We define this set of characteristics as Evolutionary Leadership and dedicate a series of patterns to clarify the essence of it.

The choice and commitment of a leader to create self-organization appears to be the essential pivot in the evolution of the organization. For some leaders, the choice comes from a deep inner yearning for equality and fair treatment of human beings (e.g., AES or Morningstar). For other leaders, the change is born out of necessity or simple practicality (e.g., Turn the Ship Around or Favro from Reinventing Organizations). A final source of motivation may come from the awareness that they as a leader are not functioning in a way that will yield the success of the organization that they hope to create. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater is a good example of this type of leader (Dalio 2017).

The choice to change begins two parallel journeys. One emergent journey is the evolution and discovery of the organization of how it will function and what it will be. The other is that of the leader: the journey to self-organization is a profound teacher that supports leaders in the evolution of their consciousness. Every time they hit a Leadership Edge, they have no alternative but to evolve or to give up on their goal. An illustrative example of these shifts is shared as a business novel that highlights the principles of S3 (Cumps 2019).

TOOL: BOUND ARIES

Boundaries support people’s psychological safety. Every organization has and needs a set of boundaries to indicate what is allowed and what isn’t. Human systems dynamics identifies the concept of a container as a mechanism for organizational coherence. The book Good to Great (2001) by Jim Collins describes it as follows: “Build a culture around freedom and responsibility, within a framework” (124). Human Systems Dynamics uses the term exchanges to represent the boundary between different containers (Eoyang and Holladay 2011).

The culture of the organization can be understood as a very complex organizational boundary. While the structures (processes, roles, etc.) are explicit and usually clear, the informal style aspects are often much more tacit but equally important.

There have been numerous attempts to codify rules for human interaction to generate high performance, such as core protocols (Kasperowski 2015) and Holacracy (Roberston 2015). These attempt to use structures to govern human beings to shape behavior. Some people really like rules because it gives them a feeling of safety, yet for most people they are too unnatural and block the fluidity of natural human interaction. The consensus from actual Teal organizations seems to be that a compact, minimal set of rules works well when people have a high level of personal responsibility. Further, the patterns seem to be that evolving the practices that suit the people and the organizational system is essential.

House Rules

An example tool from a training context is to create house rules that describe how we want to show up for ourselves and others. When the holder of power—the instructor—sets aside their authority and power, they can invite equality and responsibility. By inviting participants as equal adults to cocreate a set of rules for behavior, the basis for self-management can be established. See the illustration for an example agreement. The house rules can be understood as a behavior-oriented set of shared values. You can call them whatever you want—some people prefer the term working agreement.

TOOL: HOLD SPACE

Who can create a flat organization where people have equal decision-making rights? Only someone with power. The real secret to shifting from a hierarchy to a flat organization is for the leader to hold space for the organization.

Harrison Owen created a powerful technology called Open Space. It was originally created as an unconference format where the participants would cocreate the agenda themselves. There is a special role called the convener that only has the power to set the ground rules for collaboration and to hold space for participants (Owen 1997). On the outside, holding space doesn’t require any specific activity. Holding space is about not using power as a convener and holding a positive intention about the participants.

The secret of holding space is for the holder of the power to not use that power. This is the secret of self-organization and self-management—the holder of the power must choose not to use it. Looking closer to examples of organizations that have successfully gone down this path, we see that this is an essential ingredient.

The example of Captain David Marquet in Turn the Ship Around captures the essence of holding space: “I vow never to give another order.” The constraint to willingly choose to limit one’s power acts as a forcing function to guide a leader’s development to overcome their ego to move into a new way of working and, more importantly, a new way of being.

PATTERN 11.5: FROM AUTONOMOUS TO INTERDEPENDENT

AUTONOMOUS

There are many compelling advocates for creating high levels of autonomy in the workplace, such as Dan Pink’s book and video: Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (2011). Agile is relentless in its focus on autonomous self-organizing teams as a key structure for creating high performance. The move toward flat organizations and self-management all seem to share the message around increasing autonomy.

Autonomous is defined as “independent and having the power to make your own decisions” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). The questions we explore are:

• Is it helpful to create people, teams, and groups that are autonomous?

• Is focusing on autonomy helpful or harmful?

• What is the maturity level needed to have autonomy?

THE AUTONOMOUS TEAM TRAP

Many organizations that have tried to go Agile have encountered the enormous damage caused by setting up autonomous teams. When management tells teams that they are autonomous, people on teams may believe it. If they believe management, then the teams will start to make decisions as if they are autonomous. Invariably, what happens is twofold. It may be that management has not fully revealed or has not been fully transparent in what decisions the team can actually make. Another is that management realizes that the team is not capable of such a high level of autonomy and then overrules a decision. We call both of these examples hitting the “invisible electric fence.” It’s shocking to team members and undermines the psychological safety they need to function. At that moment, the team realizes that they are not really autonomous, and faith in leadership drops. As illustrated in figure 11.2, this can cause a great deal of disappointment, resentment, and resistance within any organization.

AUTONOMOUS IMPAIRS COLLABORATION

Imagine your organization has multiple teams or groups. What happens when we tell them that they are autonomous and tell them to focus only on their goals? They will! Then the organization is typically introducing significant multiteam challenges that can be avoided. The results are typically a lack of collaboration, dependency challenges, and conflicting goals. It’s ironic that the introduction of autonomous teams to break down silos are actually inadvertently creating new silos.

AUTONOMOUS IMPAIRS GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION

The lesson from Lean is that when we optimize locally, the global optimum falls. So creating high levels of autonomy is often actually counterproductive for organizational performance. Instead, what we may seek are healthy levels of autonomy that serve our organizational purpose.

The way forward is then straightforward: to work together to improve the global outcome.

AUTONOMY, NOT AUTONOMOUS

In truth, no team in an organization is truly autonomous. A fully autonomous team would make all decisions independently of others (managers, other teams, etc.). The requirements needed are to have all the context and capabilities to make decisions effectively on their own or know when to involve others. While this is theoretically possible in cases of peak performers in a high-functioning ecosystem, in practice it’s not an optimal system for regular organizations.

AUTONOMY IS AN EFFECT, NOT THE CAUSE

Despite many efforts in the agile community and those seeking to create Teal or flat organizations, a focus on autonomy does not itself create high performance. Depending on the people involved, a shift to higher levels of autonomy may be beneficial for some while worse for others. Why is that? The reason is that autonomy is not the cause of high performance. Instead, it is an effect or reflection of an underlying shift in the whole system—not just practices but more importantly consciousness.

AUTONOMY IS A SPECTRUM

When we consider the shift to evolve from Traditional to Evolutionary, more evolved cultures have greater levels of autonomy. We agree wholeheartedly that higher levels of functioning are correlated with higher levels of autonomy. The question is not so much whether autonomy is good or bad, it is more effective to ask: What level of autonomy will serve this group at this time based on their level of evolution?

REQUIREMENTS FOR GREATER AUTONOMY

The key requirements for increasing effectiveness through higher levels of autonomy are that people are able to independently make decisions that reflect the greater organizational purpose and that they use their power responsibly. In turn, these requirements can only be satisfied to the degree that people show up as Theory Y (motivated, engaged, and responsible), have a growth mindset, and have the skills and context needed to function at the higher level of autonomy. The organization shows a high level of maturity in their functioning.

INTERDEPENDENT

The alternative principle of focus, to create a shift to high performance, is the development of a sense of interdependence among people, teams, and groups. Interdependence recognizes the dependency on one another. It turns out that everyone works for the same company and that success is shared. Evolutionary organizations even move beyond internal optimization to understand that success is shared with business partners and the larger ecosystem.

PRINCIPLE: AUTONOMY FOLLOWS INTERDEPENDENCE

Creating higher levels of autonomy without a sense of interdependence will lead to local suboptimations that are harmful to the organization. People will focus on their silo rather than the whole. The only way to support greater independence in decision making is for those making the decision to integrate the good of the whole organization.

A sense of interdependence is not a skill, process, or practice. It is a shift in how we see ourselves at an individual and team level as well as how we view the importance of our relationships with the other groups we interact with.

WIN-WIN

It is possible to invite the development of interdependence through shared purpose, shared goals, shared metrics, and so on. As the sense of interdependence grows, people will become aware of not just how a decision impacts their local activity but they will also be able to take a broader perspective that incorporates the larger organizational system. Figure 11.3 illustrates that higher levels of autonomy will only produce the desired outcomes with an evolved sense of interdependence.

The principle of win-win is that of mutual success. When people realize that their success is based on shared success and shared purpose, they begin to operate from the perspective of interdependence. In this way, the pure self-interest and desire to succeed can motivate this important shift in perspective.

WE NOT ME

Ultimately, a sense of interdependence is a shift in consciousness. The phrase: from “me to we” captures the essence of the shift from the ego and self-interest to a sense of interdependence. Individuals balance the needs of themselves with the needs of the team. Teams balance their needs with that of other teams and the rest of the organization. In this situation an increase in autonomy will not create challenges and may be beneficial.

One important place to put this principle into practice is when discussing what is going wrong with a project. The protocol is simple: drop all names—I and you—in favor of we. Example: “We noticed there was a problem early on, but we did not communicate it effectively.” “We did not complete component X until late in the project, and this led to cascading delays.”

—George Bernard Shaw

PATTERN 11.6: FROM SELF-ORGANIZATION TO RESPONSIBILITY

SELF-ORGANIZATION

One of the debacles of the past decade is the addiction to and overemphasis of self-organization and accompanying autonomy for agile teams. In most cases, the essential prerequisites within and outside of teams are not present. While there are certainly great successes, there is more than often confusion, tension, and a failure to improve performance.

Self-organization is a process where independently functioning people are able to organize themselves effectively without external support. These concepts can be considered at the team, group, and organizational levels. The basic premise of introducing self-organization is that it prevents micromanaging behaviors that reinforce the use of power and authority typical of a traditional organization.

SELF-MANAGEMENT

Very closely related is self-management, which extends self-organization to include the responsibility to govern and manage itself. Self-management implies getting rid of the hierarchy to create a flat organization. As such, the introduction of self-organization as a goal is a first step toward self-management and eliminating the hierarchy.

IT’S AN EMERGENT OUTCOME

The concept of setting up self-organizing teams doesn’t even make sense. As per the definition, self-organization is a process: it’s an emergent outcome. The managers of a system or transformation program can’t create self-organization. All that can be done is to create the conditions for effective self-organization. So if self-organization is the outcome, what is the cause?

ORGA NIZATIONAL CONFLICT

Most organizations that explore the use of self-organization do not understand that the very notion and concept is designed to disrupt the hierarchy and act as a forcing function to move the system toward increased worker freedom and a weakening of the grip of the oppressive hierarchy. There is some thin hope that the whole system will then evolve to a more mature way of working. In practice, this seldom happens. Instead, there is usually a clash of cultures that results in conflict, confusion, resistance, and disillusionment.

ALL ABOUT AUTONOMY

At the core, self-organization appears to be the justification for creating higher levels of autonomy. It is possible to increase levels of autonomy in hopes that effective self-organization may happen. A far better question to ask is: What level of autonomy will serve this person or team? From the earlier pattern, we see that autonomy only makes sense to the extent that there is a sense of interdependence, various levels of maturity, context, capability, and so on.

RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is the single largest factor to determine whether self-organization or self-management will produce the desired outcome of high performance. Self-organization is the outcome, and by focusing on responsibility, we might enable it.

MODEL: RESPONSIBILITY SPECTRUM

Responsibility is a spectrum. The concept of responsibility is very closely related to Theory X and Theory Y, with X at the low end of the spectrum and Y at the high end. On the low end, we have people who do not take any responsibility for their actions and choices. At the high end, there are Evolutionary or Teal organizations where we see that people act like adults and take full responsibility for their behaviors, choices, and actions. Here, people move beyond fear, guilt, and shame to honestly look at what is happening and seek to grow.

One must overcome denial, blame, and justification to take full responsibility. For an in-depth exploration on responsibility—one aspect of Theory Y—we refer you to the work of Christopher Avery and the Responsibility Process (Avery 2001, 2015).

PRINCIPLE: SELF-ORGANIZATION FOLLOWS RESPONSIBILITY

In high-responsibility environments, it is not only possible to have self-organization but also self-management and a flat organization. One excellent example of an evolutionary organization that operates this way is Valve. At Valve, they only hire responsible people. Telling people what to do would only destroy their ability to contribute. Instead, every desk has wheels that can be unlocked so workers can move their desks to wherever they need to be in order to serve the organization. No one tells workers what to do, each person is seen as a responsible adult and is the best person to figure out how to contribute to the organization’s success (Valve Corporation 2012).

As shown in figure 11.4, the appropriate level of self-organization depends on the level of responsibility of the individuals. It is only with the high levels of responsibility that come with people who show up as Theory Y that self-organization adds value instead of creating challenges.

DEVELOPING RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is not a skill. It is not knowledge. It is a shift in our inner being—our identity, values, beliefs, and behaviors. While knowledge, skills, and training can support increasing a sense of responsibility, it is ultimately a choice and represents an evolutionary shift in consciousness.

The good news is that if you have been keeping a journal and completing the Your Turn exercises, you are on your way to taking responsibility for how you show up. In part three, there are more activities to support taking responsibility for how you lead yourself and others. To go deeper on the topic of personal responsibility, we refer readers to Christopher Avery’s book, The Responsibility Process: Unlocking Your Natural Ability to Live and Lead with Power (2015).

PATTERN 11.7: FROM EMPOWERMENT TO SHARING DECISIONS

EMPOWERMENT

Merriam-Webster (n.d.) defines empowerment as “the act or action of empowering someone or something: the granting of the power, right, or authority to perform various acts or duties.”

The term implies that there is someone giving power and someone receiving power. It is often used as a term for progressive management where power is shared with the lower ranks. The chief problem with the term is that it seems to imply that empowerment is a characteristic or trait for a progressive organization, and as such it is misleading and confusing.

PRINCIPLE: POWER SHARING IS A SPECTRUM

The core concept is about the level of power sharing in an organization. As organizational culture evolves from Traditional to Evolutionary, there is progressively greater and greater sharing of power. From very little sharing of power with Traditional to the key characteristic of shared power with Evolutionary/Teal, there is no point on the spectrum where one can declare, “We support empowerment” as if to proclaim victory.

THE TRAP OF RAPID POWER SHARING

A large problem with well-intentioned change programs is to share too much power too quickly when people are not ready for it. For example, with the shift to autonomous self-organizing teams, there is a large shift of power from managers to teams. With the move to a flat organization, there is a big bang shift of power from managers to individuals. In virtually all organizational contexts, this leads to conflict, since leaders are not prepared to give up power, and individuals on teams are not prepared to effectively use the power. As such, we can see this approach as well-intentioned, but it in fact creates significant psychological suffering for all involved.

SHARING DECISIONS

Sharing power is really about sharing decisions. Decisions are the manifestation of power in the organization. Every time someone makes a decision or takes an action, they are signaling: I have the authority and power to make this decision.

An effective way to understand and shift the use of power and authority is to focus on decision making. It is a key dimension to move from command-and-control leadership styles prevalent in Traditional organizations.

The combined needs for fostering engagement and rapid decision making both call for sharing decision making. To avoid the bottleneck of centralized control, high-performance organizations keep decisions where they need to be made. In one Teal case study, AES, the responsibility of every manager was to move a decision to the lowest levels that could support and effect decisions.

PRINCIPLE: SHARE POWER ITERATIVELY AND INCREMENTALLY

We advocate an iterative and incremental approach to sharing power through decision making. On a decision-by-decision basis, leaders may choose to relinquish power based on the specifics of the situation. The journey to high performance begins in earnest when leaders begin to ask themselves this question: Who is the best person to make this decision?

An iterative and incremental approach supports the evolution of the leaders and people in the organization. Leaders will only give up power as they grow in their ability to let go of control. People will be selected to make decisions as they take on more responsibility.

LEADERSHIP EVOLUTION

For power to be shared, executives and managers need to develop both in their level of consciousness and learn the practicalities of sharing power. A key characteristic is that they are able to let go of control to embrace emergence and let solutions unfold over time instead of trying to control everything and everyone.

As such, an iterative and incremental approach provides a graceful way for leaders to share power in a way that makes sense based on the context. Iterative means that the leader will run experiments and adapt as they discover what is working and what needs to be changed. Incremental means that power is given away piece by piece rather than in a big shift.

EVOLVE PEOPLE AND LEADERS TOGETHER

It’s a journey of coevolution for leaders and the people receiving the power. Just as leaders need to evolve to share power, people need to evolve to receive power and use it responsibly. Of primary interest is to invite the evolution of people from Theory X to Theory Y. As leaders create a healthier work environment and people’s engagement levels increase, the people will be more able to receive power effectively.

As people receive power iteratively and incrementally, they can learn gradually how to take responsibility at a rate that is comfortable for them. We might understand sharing power in this way as safe-to-run experiments. The process is not just about making great decisions, it’s about developing the people so they have the capabilities needed to be successful.

CHALLENGES WITH DECISIONS

If you have ever been to a meeting, you have probably experienced the business-as-usual challenges with making decisions:

• The most senior person deciding

• The loudest person in the room dominating

• The person who is the most stubborn gets their way

• People agreeing so they can go home and see their families

• Fake agreement with people saying yes but little follow-through

• Making compromises to avoid challenges so that the decision has little impact

• Endless meetings without decisions

• Committees that create solutions that avoid conflict but are poor for serving the purpose

• Decisions that get changed later by people higher up in the hierarchy

In short, the daily experience around decisions in traditional organizations is unpleasant for human beings and has very little relationship with high performance. In the upcoming sections, we share specific approaches that can be used to improve the effectiveness of organizational decision making.

THE HIPPO EFFECT

The key challenge to overcome with sharing decision making is to neutralize the damaging effects of a hierarchy. In particular, there is a well-known phenomenon called the HiPPO effect where authority distorts effective decision making. HiPPO stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. When a group of people are meeting, the most senior person’s opinion will carry much more weight than others. As such, people with more junior status will be less likely to share their own perspectives, let alone challenge the more senior person.

As human beings in our society, we have a learned behavior to not question authority. In the famous Milgram experiments on obedience to authority in the 1960s, people were asked to take actions that they did not personally agree with. Most people follow orders even when they think they are wrong. For most of us, we learn at a very young age to comply with authority to avoid punishment or the withdrawal of love.

Ultimately, a shift in consciousness and clearing of emotional wounds from the past are needed to fully overcome our fears. However, we can finesse this challenge and make progress using the following practices.

LISTEN FIRST, SPEAK LAST

In pattern 10.3, “From Status and Domination to Equal Voice,” we introduced the tool Listen First, Speak Last. As a leader, one of the very best ways to overcome the HiPPO effect is to stop talking and start listening. The practice of listening first will create the space for others to contribute. When a leader shares last, it elevates the status of others to support their psychological safety. We refer readers to the full explanation in the model Equal Voice.

TOOL: DECISION CARDS

We created the SHIFT314 Decision Cards technology to support iterative and incremental sharing of power. Sharing too much power too soon may actually slow down or block the evolution of an organization. What we seek to do is to share the right amount of power based on what makes sense in the specific situation.

The cards represent an important evolution of Jurgen Appelo’s delegation poker system (Appelo 2010). A key elevation is the removal of role and status from decision making. The Decision Cards technology is also designed to work hand in hand with the Advice Process (as described in pattern 11.8, “From Giving Orders to Using the Advice Pro cess”).

It turns out that in most meetings there is confusion and ambiguity not only around what decisions are being made but also around who has the power to make the decisions. The first challenge is that this may lead to poor decisions because of fear of speaking up. The more important challenge is that there can be excessive discussion and arguing about options or choices. The real conflict is usually about who has the power.

Decision Cards, shown in figure 11.5, are used to clarify one question: Who has the power? You can use them to increase awareness and options around who makes decisions and how those decisions are made. Note: you can use the concept without the cards.

• I Decide—I make this decision alone.

• I Decide after Seeking Advice—This decision is mine to make. I will make it after seeking advice from those impacted and those who have experience with this decision or domain.

• We Decide Together—This decision is mine to make as an equal with others.

• I Advise—This is not my decision. I am impacted or have experience that I will share with the decision maker.

• Please Let Me Know—I have nothing to contribute to this decision.

Clarify Authority

With any group of people who are involved in making decisions together, the cards can be used to clarify who has decision-making authority. Or more importantly, how can the group work together to make the best decision for the organization?

1. Identify the decisions that need to be made, and explore one decision at a time.

2. Pick a decision that needs to be made. Explain it.

3. Everyone secretly picks a Decision Card, indicating their role in the decision.

4. When everyone is ready, reveal the cards.

5. If there is agreement about who the owners are, authority is clear.

6. If there is disagreement, have everyone share their thinking. Then repeat card selection.

There is agreement when there is just one decider or multiple people agree that they will make decisions as equals. If people do not agree on who has the power, then the most senior person will decide, or the various parties will escalate to their management. More progressive organizations will invite people to clear any emotional charges around the conflict and explore disagreement in a supportive way to discover what the underlying challenge really is.

Clarifying authority levels with direct reports is an essential practice to reduce confusion, increase alignment, and support staff development.

How to Clarify Boundaries

Decision Cards can also be used to clarify boundaries within teams, for teams, and between different groups to increase collaboration, responsibility, and psychological safety. For example, rather than telling a team that they are autonomous, a much healthier choice is to use Decision Cards to clarify:

• What decisions are they allowed to make?

• Where do they need to seek advice?

• Who do they need to seed advice from?

The tool creates a very natural way for a manager to start iteratively and incrementally sharing power with teams and help them grow in responsibility.

Getting Started with Decision Cards

The best way to start with this tool is to use it yourself without telling anyone. You can ask questions that cause self-reflection with the person or group:

• What decisions do we need to make?

• Whose decision is this?

• What level of involvement do you want with this decision?

For physical cards and online Decision Cards tools, please visit: https://shift314.com/decision-cards.

PATTERN 11.8: FROM GIVING ORDERS TO USING THE ADVICE PRO CESS

GIVING ORDERS

The default of hierarchical organizations is for the executives and managers to give orders and make decisions for what is to happen in the organization. As explored in other patterns around modern management, the entire structure and expectation is that top leadership sets goals and objectives, and everyone’s job is to do what they are told. Even the CEO may not be fully in charge, as they need to do the bidding of the board of directors. As leaders direct and decide, they exercise their higher level of status to inadvertently dominate others and foster disengagement.

THE EXPERT TRAP

The default assumption is that the highest levels of performance will come if the most expert and possibly most senior person makes a decision. Even if the expert could make the seemingly best decision, having them make the decision is based on a bias toward short-term results. High-performance organizations balance short-term and long-term and thus invest in sharing decision making to develop the collective ability of an organization over time. The truth is that sometimes really amazing outcomes can only come from juniors because they are not constrained by previous experiences and assumptions. Even more interesting, moving decisions to senior people creates a bottleneck that increases delays (thus reducing the value of decisions) and poor decisions due to gaps in information.

THE RACI TRAP

Many organizations use the responsible, accountable, consult, inform (RACI) matrix to purportedly improve decision-making clarity (Wikipedia 2021b). Very few people have ever been able to use this reliably in most situations. The best description of RACI was shared by one of my leadership class participants: “It is what we use when we want to assign blame when things go wrong.”

The artifact itself fosters neither motivation nor better decisions. In particular, the choice to separate responsibility from accountability leads to all sorts of challenges. In contrast, the Advice Process is designed to orient decisions and projects for success.

USING THE ADVICE PRO CESS

In high-performance organizations, leaders give away decision-making power and limit themselves to the smallest set of decisions needed to support the organization. The very best leaders learn to stop giving orders and start giving advice.

The Advice Process is a powerful structure invented by the organization AES to allow leaders and managers to move decisions to where the information is (Bakke 2005). The company grew to over 10,000 people running power plants worldwide. Extraordinary levels of performance were created through leaders asking one simple question: Who is the best person to make this decision?

TOOL: ADVICE PRO CESS

The Advice Process is a way to approach decision making that tends to produce better decisions. It is a way to develop the leadership capability of people so that we may foster leaders at all levels. It fosters and encourages engagement and equal voice. The main benefits of the Advice Process are:

Better decisions

More engagements

On-the-job education

Figure 11.6 summarizes the key points about the Advice Process. There is someone—the decider—who will make a decision to move the organization forward. With the Advice Process, the decider has ownership and accountability—they hold the full responsibility for the outcome of the decision. When people have ownership and accountability, their level of motivation for making a good decision increases dramatically.

Who is the best person to make a decision? Usually the best people to make a decision are:

1. Close to the issue

2. Know the day-to-day details

3. Understand the large context or big picture

With this criteria, it will be natural to move many decisions lower down in a hierarchy. It will also require a shift to higher levels of information sharing or transparency so that people lower in the hierarchy have access to the information needed for decisions.

SEEKING ADVICE CREATES BETTER OUTCOMES

When someone is the decider, they ask for advice from the following groups of people:

1. People who have experience making this type of decision

2. People who have different perspectives (perhaps different departments or groups, different levels of the hierarchy, or from people outside the organization)

3. People who will be impacted by the decision

The Advice Process is a way to listen to the voice of the system to understand what decision will serve the purpose and the people in the organization. The Advice Process fosters equal voice. When we collectively pool our wisdom, we make better decisions. Better decisions mean higher performance. It’s that simple.

SEEKING ADVICE CREATES BETTER RELATIONSHIPS

To follow the Advice Process is an act of humility: when we ask for advice we are really saying, “I can’t make this decision without your help. Will you please help me?” When following the Advice Process, we strengthen relationships in the organization.

The Advice Process is a practice or structure that can be used to support a shift in people’s consciousness and behaviors. The Advice Process will only work and be effective to the extent that one is operating in a more conscious environment where we value people learning and developing their leadership and where there is psychological safety.

GETTING STARTED WITH THE ADVICE PROCESS

The best way to get started with the Advice Process is to use it yourself. It’s not about teaching or telling about it. All you have to do is start making clarifying statements and ask questions like:

• This is your decision. Would you like my advice?

• This is my decision, and I want to make the best choice for the organization. What’s your advice?

If you are using it correctly, what you will observe is that over time people will start to copy your language and use it themselves.

On the other hand, if you are interested in sharing more directly with people as a practice on your team or group, there are some important prerequisites for it to be effective. Namely, there needs to be enough trust for more junior people to really be able to make decisions and enough safety so that they know if something goes wrong it will be seen as an opportunity for learning. Ultimately, success depends on a culture that values people learning and growing more than optimizing each specific decision.