Employee engagement has been talk of the town for a while now. The widespread recognition that too many of the workforce were disenfranchised, untrusting, change fatigued and frankly fed up, provoked a renewed exploration of what management might do differently.
Along the way I have become more and more interested in the idea of self-management being part of the solution. In other words, that the answer to management’s frustration with apparent disengagement, is not to do more, but actually to do less, to step back and create space. Daniel Pink talked convincingly about autonomy, mastery and purpose being key to intrinsic motivation in “Drive”. In “Reinventing Organisations”, Frédéric Laloux identified self-management as a core principle in successful “teal organisations” that exemplify a new organisational paradigm. Ted brings us speakers such as Sugatra Mitra sharing his dream of Self-Organised Learning Environments (“SOLEs”), where children with the space, a computer and a smart question can teach themselves. In summary, there is an increasingly loud voice talking about freedom and choice within organisations (and society) as prerequisites to enabling people to be at their best. All of these voices challenge all recent models of management, the idea of which, according to Pink “presumes that to take action, or move forwards, we need a prod”.
It seems a radical departure from the current state, where so many organisations have layers of management, with equal layers of process, all designed to tell people what to do and how to do it. And — surprise surprise ? — layers of disengaged employees. I myself find it challenging to imagine these big, hierarchical organisations even contemplating, never mind implementing the self-management model. And yet, what is that old adage about the first sign of madness being to keep trying the same thing when you know it doesn’t work? And anyway, what is it that we find so challenging about self-management?
Self-management doesn’t have to mean chaos and anarchy. Holacracy, the creation of Brian Robertson, is one version of a way of being in business which (while not everyone’s cup of tea) provides a very structured version of self-management. Laloux himself is not suggesting throwing away the hierarchy. But his research shows the success of many organisations which have found a way of integrating the principle of self-management into their cultures with fantastic results.
On a personal level, I am convinced. I am at my best when I am free to make my own decisions and choices. Self-employment has been a great test of that. Added to which, as someone that values freedom of thinking and action so highly, it doesn’t take much to get me enrolled in the idea that enabling more organisational cultures that are based on this principle, may take us an almighty step towards creating more of the things we say we want in our organisations — namely trust, engagement, satisfaction, accountability and high performance. I am excited about the possibilities organisationally and have ideas and experiments to share with you.
So who is up for it?