Casablanca, December 2017. I question the group of people in front of me. A group of people dedicated to processes and quality. A benevolent and open group. “How many inhabitants in Casablanca?”, “Between 5 and 6 million”. “How many meals per day per inhabitant? Can I estimate three per person?”, “Yes”. “Well so let’s say 15 million meals per day, and let’s say a week or two weeks of meal stock. And they are all delivered, or rather eaten, without too much worry, every day, for a long time”, “Yes”. “Propose to me a diagram, a list of processes, a series of gestures, actions, an organization that would allow this to be implemented please.”

The only valid answer seems to me to be self-organization.

There is no other answer in my eyes. I don’t see any others.

Can you describe others? Imagine others?

Seriously?

Managing a system that exceeds us requires liberating self-organization.

No other solutions that make this possible, no other solutions that make this as effective. There is no imposition of the gesture just a clarification of constraints, the definition of a framework that everyone can adopt (as long as the constraints are not suffocating). And the innate capacity of living systems to self-organize. This example, luminous to my eyes, I draw from the book by Harrison Owen, “the practice of peace”.

At a time when everyone has the words “agile at scale” on their lips, cities, megacities, can become interesting references to which to devote time. They are certainly not large cold and mechanical assemblies. They retain a very organic aspect. They teem. They all have streets, buildings. But not one is really like the other. The conversation about Casablanca is a clear analogy on the importance of self-organization. This works with Paris, New York, etc. But not with all cities, not with all giant megacities.

Some collapse under their weight, some are sick, some no longer know enough how to self-organize, or never knew how.

Like some of our organizations for example.

Like slums for example.

In these unsanitary megacities, as in many of our organizations at scale, the arteries are clogged, resources exhausted, humans fatalistic. Yet we can feel this energy to (sur)vive but it doesn’t manage to aggregate into something satisfying. We have the impression of being at the foot of an open-air mountain of garbage and someone asking us to do selective sorting. The task seems insurmountable.

However, as in the case of Casablanca, or Paris, or New York, or <place the name of your organization at scale here>, directing the gesture seems vain, bringing a framework that allows self-organization to emerge seems to be the solution.

A fascinating little booklet on the improvement of favelas, Brazilian slums, can be found on the net: Slum upgrading, lessons learned from Brazil. It is a surprising source of insight for bringing a framework conducive to self-organization, which has borne fruit for these favelas. What emerges from this report?

The liberation of self-organization and thus the resolution of the problem of a system that exceeds us came – in the context of these slums – from the creation of a mesh of small assemblies whose main characteristics were as follows:

  • Give administrative autonomy (and notably – and symbolically – budgetary) to these assemblies. Give them the means to respond. For our organizations, this means delegating the decision to the right level, the right place. No centralization. A real authorization, a real feeling of control, at each level. Problem solving must be decentralized.
  • Propose a participatory approach in the choices available (habitats, etc.), nobody being better able to answer a question than the one for whom it is asked. The vision is collective, through consensus in these slums that are being cleaned up. Participation, involvement, observation of people drive continuous improvement. This participatory approach is supported by transparency and measures that make sense.
  • A modular network of resources that allows each group to adopt their own (more autonomy again). For Brazilian favelas, this means distributing water through micro-basins deployed in a network throughout the megacity instead of proposing a giant basin for everyone. For your organizations the principle is the same, a modularization of resources, no large point of contention, no silos that control a link in the chain and make the idea of autonomy obsolete.
  • Proximity of habitats to the workplace, and diversity in habitats. Everyone is free to settle as they wish but proximity must exist between people and their work. Physical co-location, or virtual co-location spaces (for new professions), the social bond is made of proximity, but it is not made of similarity (everyone comes as they are). We must encourage socialization, the creation of communities.
  • The team that accompanies this liberation of self-organization is multidisciplinary, it proposes continuous awareness, and a change of framework step by step. It integrates new heads, different people who bring a fresh look at things.

For people who ask themselves these questions around “agile scaling” this would mean that the team doing agile coaching should, and regardless of the frameworks used, even the famous SAFe, give autonomy to each group for its decision-making, and its access to resources (budget), autonomy in a word, real.

Real autonomy.

Put rigor and discipline into this achievement.

Rather than in the application of a gesture. It is your role as manager to liberate this autonomy, to protect it.

Propose a participatory approach at the level of each of these groups so that they adapt, change, observe, judge for themselves the progress of their work. Set up a social platform that allows each of these groups to share a common experience, but without this belonging to a group erasing the individual (everyone remains themselves, not everyone has to have the same computer, not everyone has to use exactly the same tool, not everyone has to have the same way of working, as long as everyone can work together).

Scaling is definitely not identical replication.

Have measures that make sense and are transparent, attached to meaning and to why.

Without this, no self-organization.

Without this, a system that exceeds us and that we cannot master because paradoxical as this may seem, it is by liberating self-organization that you master it, by playing on the framework, on the meaning.

Does this happen quickly? I don’t know. The speed of your scaling has no interest in itself. The only interest is: are you responding with the right rhythm to your why of scaling. But again, velocity (I’m not talking about the abstruse measure proposed in certain agile frameworks) will only be better if you liberate self-organization, rather than imposing your gestures on everyone.

This article is an echo of one from an extract of living organizations (like the alchemist who constantly returns to his work to recast it, revisit it, improve it, I never stop returning to my reflections, but I don’t know if I’m improving).

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

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