Designing clarity contagion in startups
An organisation chart is the second biggest fairy tale for a startup after the 3-year plan.
They look beautifully simple. You can see who owns the decisions. But in practice, the process gets heavier over time, and decision making slows and dilutes as it smears throughout the organisation.
Energy is wasted shunting execution up and down decision-making hierarchies instead of action.
Four flawed assumptions of a hierarchy
The illusion of control from hierarchies executing a plan is based on some assumptions that often fail in practice.
The decision-maker is available and clear-headed at the point when a decision needs to be made. Usually, they are not.
Leadership has the best ideas and knows all the answers. Leaders drift further from the ground truth that guides decisions as to the organisation layers up. They are also shallow in the diversity of thought.
Ideas and decisions travel the communication lines without losing clarity.
The lower down the hierarchy, the less a team can think for themselves.
Modern businesses can’t compete like this. They become slow, dull and uncompetitive.
We can resist hierarchy, but we need structure.
The solution isn’t to avoid structure but to find a structure that works in an arena that is constantly in flux.
One approach that has worked for me is the “I intend to…” alternative to “What should I do?” that I learned from Captain L David Marquet’s book, Turn the Ship Around.
In this model, teams think about the solution for themselves and communicate clearly what they intend to do rather than asking for permission. The team owns the solution, decisions are rapid, and leadership is aware.
General Stanley McChrystal takes this one step further with his ‘Team of Teams’ structure, designed for military teams to operate in volatile arenas like Iraq.
It is “I intend to” at scale.
Create a medium for clarity contagion
McChrystal describes a structure in which teams are connected in the same way individuals inside teams are connected.
A network of networks. A team of teams.
This organisation chart looks more like a biological organism than a process diagram. Here are my take-outs that I’d like to apply more in my work.
Create conditions for individuals to communicate across teams. Allow pathways to form organically.
Note decisions made by teams and pass them transparently between teams.
Encourage ‘tours of duty’ where individuals spend time operating inside different teams to grow trust.
As trust grows, push decisions down for quick action in the field.
Tend to the teams like a gardener, not a chess player. Observe and tend to the garden as it grows rather than ordering the plants to grow in a specific direction.
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