Having Enough Room To Step Sideways
11. Aug, 2009 
0 Comments
You can limit your team’s room to operate.
By giving them detailed instructions what to do, by giving them very fixed and tight constraints, you can drive them into a funnel of efficiency.
It’s like a bobsled track.
The less room you have to move sideways, the faster you go.
But what happens if you have a big obstacle on the tracks? What if your path is blocked and you go fast and efficient, but without any room to maneuver?
You could hit all the brakes at once.
Suppose you are real lucky and stop just before the obstacle. Suppose.
You could order the team to get inside the control room, ask them a gazillion questions, order them to lay new tracks around the obstacle, and continue their downhill race.
You could also make the tracks a little wider.
Give them room to step aside, adjust course.
You could also let them make the decisions themselves. Without providing you with all the information. Without having to wait for your, possibly misguided, opinion.
Creating self-organized teams is hard work.
You need Project Leaderships skills to enable the team to get self-organized.
I was going to mention that this goes against all you have said about self organizing teams, but then I saw that you have directed our thought from micromanaged to self organized teams in this post.
HA! got you:) you are absolutely right. Self-organization creates resilience. The project leader has a clear job to establish this in a team. One essential ingredient is everyone using the same rules of engagement.
Just discovered the term is “facilitated self-organization”
had a great interview about this for the podcast in 2 weeks.
Thanks for paying attention and taking the time to think along with me. Appreciated!