Guest post by Ralph van Roosmalen
Imagine this: You are working as a manager at a company, you work there already for years and things are not going bad but you know there is room for improvement. You heard about Scrum, Agile, the Agile Manifesto… and you decide to learn more about it. You visit a few conferences, attend a Scrum training and yes.. this is what your company needs.
You decide to implement Scrum. After many sleepless nights, headaches, success, failures, happy moments, sad moments… you wake up one morning and realize you succeeded! You did it! You implemented Scrum successful, you know it is not 100% perfect but the retrospectives are going well so you are convinced it will work out.
No worries, there is still plenty to do. In Management 3.0 we believe everyone is responsible for management. Indeed, management is a verb. It is not a role, but yet in some organizations there are people who spend a lot of time on management.
They are called managers, there is nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t mean other people are released from management. It will be your job to get other people also into management, and to create an environment where not just teams but the whole organization becomes self-organizing.
- Energize People
- Empower Teams
- Align Constraints
- Develop Competence
- Grow Structure
- Improve Everything
Energize People
Empower Teams
Teams are self-organizing but would you like to delegate everything to the teams? Would you like them to decide on which office they are located, which tools they use, which color of sticky notes they use or who should get a bonus? I hope you will answer yes on most of the previous questions 🙂
Align Constraints
….High Autonomy and Low Alignment will result in something… but not sure if it will be the results you are looking for. As manager you need to make sure your teams have a vision, you need to involve them in setting defining that vision. Management 3.0 is not about Command and Control, so telling your team what the vision is, is maybe not the way to go.
Additionally, you also need to think about metrics. What metrics are you going to use? Should they be connected to money? Should they be easy to understand? If you have metrics in place, you can also show the organization if you are heading in the direction of the vision.
Develop Competence
Grow Structure
Improve Everything
Let’s imagine you implemented the previous five areas, and you think you are done. Sorry, you are wrong. You are never done. As said already, things are changing so fast nowadays. You will need to create a culture of continuous improvement. It is already partly there in your organization because of Scrum. However, it goes beyond Scrum.
How do you make sure all teams and departments learn about improving things? In Management 3.0 we believe there is no silver bullet to solve a problem, so which change management techniques are you going to use to implement improvements? Will you celebrate failure or will you celebrate success? As manager you need to think about this, what would you like to celebrate? Maybe not failure and success, but maybe you want to celebrate learning?
A personal take away
I did a Management 3.0 workshop a few weeks ago and one of the attendees said at one moment… “this is difficult” when we talked about motivation and team members. He is correct, management is difficult and no one said it’s easy.
However, when you focus on the right areas as manager, you will create a great organization where people love to come. Where happiness will lead to more success!
So which area will you focus next: Energize People, Empower Teams, Align Constraints, Develop Competence, Grow Structure, Improve Everything?
Main topics: Management and Leadership, Complexity science and Systems Thinking, Energize people, Empowering Teams, Align Constraints, Development Competence, Grow Organizational Structures, Improve Everything.
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Management 3.0: interested in finding out more?
You can practice these techniques and discover more about Management 3.0 through practical hands on learning, during the 2-day Management 3.0 Workshop