By definition, self-organization is self-organized. So it’s not self-organization itself that we need to organize, but the context in which it can appear, emerge. Agile at scale, or more broadly organizations at scale, are the result of the aggregation of all their departments (or villages?), which are the aggregate of their teams, and teams are ideally self-organized (and are the aggregate of individuals).

The organization at scale is ideally the sum of the groups that propose value for it. I organize value creation at scale. For this value to have value I must be able to benefit from it: that is to say it must be independent; that is to say have intrinsic value, no necessary dependencies with other parts, even if the sum of the parts can generate even more value. The more modular they are, independent, the more they work on a small scope, the more the creation of this value will be facilitated and accelerated.

The more we can minimize investment and maximize value, the better it will be. It’s at the team level that this can happen the most. For many reasons it’s the most dynamic aggregate: it will be the most able to self-organize (and therefore have the best results), it will be the most able to deliver value by maximizing it and minimizing investments.

The agile organization at scale is thus the sum of its teams. And teams give their best results when they are self-organized. And by definition self-organization is self-organized. So it’s the aggregation of teams (the synchronization, the vision, etc.) that needs to be organized. And it’s the framework that allows each team to self-organize: not the way it organizes itself, but what it relies on to do so.

All of this is the role of management (which can be carried by managers, or by others).

This article has a cold tint but the field observations are warm: each team lives differently, everything is fluctuating, living. For each person doing management, it’s a challenge.

The first challenge is doing management in this complex world. Organizing the framework and not the gesture. Having a lot of introspection to think oneself about this complexity.

Organizing the framework is first knowing why: clarifying the target, the meaning.

Organizing the framework is then thinking about it in a way that favors self-organization. Thinking about one’s organization to facilitate the emergence of self-organization like the Brazilian favelas mentioned in the previous article.

Kauffman and Stewart (cited by Harrison Owen in “the practice of peace”) observed the framework that nourished the birth of life and self-organization on earth. Nothing less. This is summarized in five points:

  • A secure environment.
  • A lot of diversity in the environment with a capacity to have complex connections1.
  • A desire for improvement, evolution.
  • Few pre-existing connections (constraints).
  • A grain of chaos.

And if we look at this list from our organizations. We understand that to move, change, transform, people must be secure. Otherwise they don’t really try. They don’t make the right decision, the new decision, the adequate decision, but the one that secures them. In one sentence: without security, they don’t answer the question we ask them, but the question they ask themselves: how to avoid problems, how to survive.. It is therefore essential to secure self-organization.

Self-organization brings forth something new. The richness of this something will depend on the variety of debates, conversations, crossovers. It is therefore important to seek these mixtures.

Silos harm self-organization.

This may seem as surprising as the idea that self-organization sets itself up on its own, but it will only happen if it is desired. It may be obvious to you. But if you flip the coin to the other side: it is useless to seek self-organization, and therefore effective scaling, without desire, without wanting.

The question: “what do you want (related to our ecosystem, related to our history)” is therefore not frivolous!

There must be few pre-existing constraints. This is rarely the case in somewhat bloated organizations. It’s even rather the opposite. So we need to know how to de-construct, but rather than breaking, feel authorized to transgress the existing. Here too we need to be secure to feel authorized.

Finally, to arrive at new territories, chaos is necessary. Chaos, conflict, and confusion reminds Harrison Owen (still “the practice of peace”), are the blatant signs that something is alive, moving, advancing. Chaos is the necessary beginning for the emergence of a new state.

All the more reason to further secure the ecosystem.

We won’t want something that puts us in danger, in real danger. All the more reason to rely on desires (related to this ecosystem, related to this history). All the more reason to read the expressed desires as a measure of the authorization permitted and the security of people.

Secure.

Authorize.

Break down silos.

Follow the desires, the wants, related to the ecosystem, to the history of this organization.

And what emerges from self-organization is what is desired. Thus self-organization is an image of the future. “This self-organization reveals,” according to Henri Atlan2, “our unconscious will (and thus the future, toward which we tend), since we try to create organization starting from chaos according to our desires”.

This is indeed the role of managers or those who do the management we are talking about here. Not teams that will know how to self-organize naturally if we offer them a space to thrive.

The acculturation of managers to know how to create this space, hold this space is therefore fundamental.

Scaling is therefore first that of the culture of managers. Self-organization will follow quite naturally.

A small series on scaling (and self-organization).

And otherwise the event we are organizing around agile at scale with Dragos Dreptate:

  1. and not dangerous. ↩︎

  2. old reading (2013, 4 years ago exactly), “entre le cristal et la fumée (by Atlan)” ↩︎