MANAGEMENT 3.0 IN PRACTICE, OR HOW TO ADJUST THE SYSTEM TO EMPLOYEES’ NEEDS?
Czas czytania: 6min.
In the Management 3.0 approach, the main task of the manager is to adjust the system in which people work daily to the individual needs of each employee. The main actions related to adaptation and adjustment are the responsibility of the leader and the organization (not the employee). The key ideas of the creator of Management 3.0 – Jurgen Appelo – on how he creates such a work environment can be summarized into a short list of six key activities. It sounds reasonable, because how many things can we handle at once? 🙂 The mentioned activities are:
- Energize people
- Empower teams
- Align constraints
- Develop competence
- Grow structure
- Improve everything
Energize people + Empower teams = engage the team in the co-creation process – goals, methods of implementation, deadlines, in the decision-making process. The more important topics you discuss together with the team (instead of communicating your decision), the greater the space for the feeling that we are actually creating our work environment together in the team. Examples:
- You need to prepare the budget for next year – sit down with the team and collectively determine what should be included (what are the priorities for the entire budget or parts of it)
- You are planning a team-building trip – during one meeting, ask everyone to suggest ideas on what you can do / where you can go for the integration.
- One of the team members is consistently late for meetings – during a team meeting, ask if you are the only one who notices this (maybe it doesn’t bother others, and then you need to reflect on yourself ;))
IMPORTANT FROM THE AUTHOR: before you rush to co-create everything with the team, consider its level of maturity. Particularly issues related to relationships and joint decision-making (e.g., conflict resolution) work in a co-creation model if the team demonstrates a high level of maturity (has a high level of trust and at least decent communication competencies).
Align constraints + develop competence = work that has meaning and purpose – if you are one of those managers who think: “yeah, right, I can already see the self-management of the team. How will they self-manage, so that in the end, I don’t get in trouble when it comes to reporting KPIs? this area will be for you! Because the mentioned self-management requires defining a certain territory (frameworks within which we can operate) and planning the development of competencies (so that the team matures to the ideal version of self-management). The tools that help structure the reality of the team in the context of M 3.0 are OKRs (for defining goals) and a clarified sense of the work performed by the team.
Here you can freely express yourself: we set goals, the values of the team that we should follow, agree on reporting, make competency development plans (so our geniuses become even more brilliant). Plan, execution, reporting, adjustments, and off we go for another year! Come on, come on, because the targets won’t achieve themselves!
Important: note that the above content contains the terms “-my” (we). We set goals that are most important (for the team or for the individual – if we are talking about development goals). We define the values that we want to follow in the team. We define the metrics of goals, which we account for within a specified time. This is a good starting point for giving a clear, common goal and meaning to the work we do as a team. In Management 3.0, what keeps our wild inner selves from becoming unruly, lazy, missing deadlines, and producing low-quality results is the desire to strive for something (motivation towards something), instead of imposed constraints (motivation away from something – avoidance)*. In a certain simplification.
*Of course, motivation towards something and away from something is not as simple as I presented it in one sentence. That’s the nature of human nature. But if this topic interests you, let me know – write – and I will prepare a text clarifying how it is with this motivation.
Grow structure + improve everything = improve the system by creating a structure that supports value creation AND people – think of processes and procedures in your organization as something that is subject to change (sooner or later). This means that with the right arguments (and the right amount of time), you can change those elements of the system that most ‘hurt’ your team. When planning, preparing, and implementing changes, think about systemic solutions that may one day become the new status quo.
- Is your team frustrated with the poor quality of data provided by another department? Instead of saying ‘that’s our process,’ it’s better to spend some time brainstorming ideas on how we can improve it or reduce its impact on our team.
- Are tickets from clients coming in with rude comments, lacking substance, and without specific information? Consider with your team what tools you can use to engage clients in improving the ‘quality’ of the information they provide.
- Is the system you are using outdated and limited in functionality? Prepare a proposal for a good alternative to present to decision-makers while testing elements of this improvement in the meantime (e.g., semi-automation with the help of the immortal Excel spreadsheets).
IMPORTANT FROM THE AUTHOR: as a creativity psychologist by education, I come from the romantic assumption that everything can be improved and the world is open to us. Later, I completed postgraduate studies in clinical trial monitoring (the pharmaceutical industry in its skeleton and bloodstream has rather-unchangeable-procedures) and I understood that… well, we are not always standing before the opening we desire (editor’s note: apologies for the author’s less sophisticated humor). In practice, if you have a boss who will never change something that really ‘annoys’ your team, it’s better to think about how to reduce the feeling of that annoyance rather than commenting ‘sorry, that’s the way it is.’ If the market is doing quite well, it is always worth considering the option: ‘which employer provides the opportunity to create an environment that will be good for my team?’
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