The Loop Approach: How to Transform Your Organization from the Inside Out: How to Transform Your Organization from the Inside Out, plus E-Book inside (ePub, pdf) - Softcover

Klein, Sebastian; Hughes, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3593511207 ISBN 13: 9783593511207

Verlag: Campus Verlag, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Going round in circles to get ahead

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Sebastian Klein ist Psychologe und Organisationsentwickler. Er ist Holacracy-Coach, Partner in der Transformationsberatung TheDive in Berlin und Herausgeber von Neue Narrative, dem Magazin für Neues Arbeiten. Sebastian Klein is a psychologist and organizational coach. He has worked in management consulting and has co-founded several startups in the media field. Currently, he's a partner at the transformation consultancy TheDive, which helps organizations of all sizes explore new ways of collaboration.

Ben Hughes hat einen Hintergrund in Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Psychologie und angewandter Mathematik. Er hat in mehreren internationalen Managementberatungen gearbeitet und leitet den Content-Bereich von Blinkist, einem Start-up, das mit Kurzfassungen von Sachbüchern Tausende Menschen neu fürs Lesen begeistert. Ben Hughes (M.Sc. Tech.) is a speaker, author, and leader. A former management consultant, he spent ten years building and leading the content team at the Berlin-based start-up Blinkist. Based on his experiences with self-organization there, he co-authored the book The Loop Approach. He speaks about hybrid leadership, self-organization, and the regenerative transformation.

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Part 1: Launch

Check-in

Let’s start with a check-in.
Whenever we want to do something well, we always start our work with a check-in. Checking in is the simple act of stepping back, taking a deep breath, and affirming to others that we’re really there, present in the moment. Making time for this short break helps us understand our own intentions and communicate them to others, thereby getting everyone on the same page. If someone’s mind is still dwelling on last night’s Margarita Monday or on their life crisis, they shed such preoccupations here.
Typically, a check-in takes the form of two simple questions, which everyone present answers in turn. So to get you started on your journey of working through this book together with us, please answer the following questions.
What’s on your mind?
What has your attention right now?
Take as much time as you need.
Just like you, we find ourselves taking part in a major transformation that’s gripping the world right now. A transformation that’s fundamentally changing the way people work together in organizations. The rigid hierarchies of old are being replaced by new, more flexible organizational models, and this will be arguably the greatest organizational upheaval since the Industrial Revolution.
And as with most revolutions, there’s just no ignoring this one. New organizational models will become the status quo, and traditional hierarchies will fall along the wayside of history, like steam engines and fax machines before them. We can’t imagine going back to a world without electricity, airplanes or the internet, and soon, the same will be true of these new organizational models.
But why is this revolution happening? If you’ve ever worked in a corporation that’s organized as a traditional hierarchy, you probably also recognize and appreciate that change is sorely needed. Until recently, it was commonly accepted that if you wanted to get any larger group of people to work together, the pyramid1 model was the only way to go. But today, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the era of the pyramid is over. And while there are many reasons for this, we want to highlight three:
First, people find it very demotivating to work in a rigid hierarchy, where they’re just expected to do as they’re told. Young, well-educated professionals entering the workforce today are no longer willing to sacrifice years of their career to just following orders from pointy-haired bosses. After all, they can afford to be picky: the market for good talent is competitive, meaning employees are no longer desperate to cling on to whatever stable job they can. The most sought-after professionals demand much more than a steady paycheck: they want meaning, flexibility, and to be trusted with the authority to make decisions that actually impact the organization.
Second, the rigid, hierarchical pyramids of the past are just too slow and cumbersome to succeed in competition with young, agile upstarts. Without the burden of a pyramid on their shoulders, the newcomers are much faster at adapting to their changing environment. As a result, they are inventing and reinventing businesses faster than the old guard can even fathom, let alone compete with. If established corporations used to laugh off small startups operating from garages somewhere, their smirks have since been thoroughly wiped off their faces. As companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google have proved, any scrappy newcomer could skyrocket to the top of the Fortune 500 list in under a decade, leaving former industry leaders in the dust. The age of the dinosaurs is over―the mammals are here, baby!

Third, if we take a big picture view, we rapidly see that our world desperately needs new kinds of organizations. From accelerating climate change to increasing inequality, we believe that many of humanity’s biggest challenges today stem from our sadly out-of-date organizational model. Countless organizations emerging today have already adopted the greater purpose of changing the world for the better, and they only continue to evolve around this purpose2. Many such companies have already entered the spotlight via Frederic Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations. And in our own work, we see more new purpose-driven companies similar to Patagonia, Burtzoorg, and Zappos emerging every week. What’s more, we’re also excited to see many larger organizations―or at least parts of them―take on the challenge of reinventing themselves and boldly reorganizing how people work within them.

A new mindset
What we’re currently witnessing in the world around us is a great shift from one dominant type of organizational operating system3 to another. The old, hierarchical management pyramid, which for millenia seemed like the only viable option for running any larger organization, is finally being replaced by more network-like models. But this “update” isn’t going smoothly. Not at all. In fact, it’s generating lots of tension and friction.
On the one hand, we have a new generation of companies that’s instinctively embracing new way of doing things. They adopt ready-made solutions like Holacracy, or design their own, and just go with it. Meanwhile, most companies still run on the old operating system, and for them, updating to a new one is no easy task (yes, even worse than Windows 10). Though the software analogy can make it sound like companies just need to press a button to update and reboot, the truth is that it’s much more complicated and arduous. And the older and larger an organization, the harder and more painful the transformation will be.
So does this mean that all the old “tankers” weighed down by pyramids are doomed to rust in their old docks and sink? Or can they be refitted with the new operating system, making them agile and nimble skiffs once again? These aren’t easy questions to answer. But one thing we know for sure: it’s not enough to just put a fresh coat of paint on a rusted structure. What’s needed is a fundamental shift of mindset within the organization.
The classical management hierarchy operated under a mindset of “predict and control,“ with those at the top of the pyramid making plans and commanding those below to execute. But today, this mindset is being unseated by one called “sense and respond.“ Instead of a few clever brains deciding what should be done, the power to “sense” new information and make decisions as to how to respond is distributed throughout the organization. This means that every member of a company becomes an intelligent sensor, receiving and evaluating signals from the outside world and then responding to them autonomously, without asking their bosses for approval.

The upshot?
Rather than waiting around for information and decisions to percolate up and down a hierarchy, an organization can make thousands of smart decisions every hour. Even better, they are made by the true experts on the ground, not the suit bossing them around thanks to a degree in executive hand-shaking.
But how are these large organizations, which have basically ruled the world until now, supposed to “change their mindset”? With hundreds or even thousands of employees, what should they do and where should they start?

Failures and success stories
It’s no wonder that the prospect of this shift is already leading to great uncertainty or even panic within some organizations. And this isn’t helped by the constant articles, case-studies and keynote presentations recounting cautionary tales of transformations gone wrong. For instance, stories of some organizations trying to become more agile and self-organized but only ending up more chaotic as a result. Or how others got off to a promising start and scored some initial wins in the transformation, but then quickly ran into huge obstacles that no-one foresaw.
But these tales are only...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Campus Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 3593511207
• ISBN 13: 9783593511207
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 231
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Beltz Verlagsgruppe GmbH & Co. KG; info@campus.de; ; Werderstr. 10; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland