It' all about connection!

Image: public domain

I spent a recent weekend engrossed in a CTI Co-Active® Coaching workshop. Among the coaching skills we practiced were reframing and geography.

Both of those skills focus on looking at an issue or problem from another perspective. Sometimes we called it "viewing through a different lens."

I've been looking through various lenses ever since.

As I awoke this morning, I was thinking about my Hacking Holacracy project from a different perspective. I "zoomed out" to try to capture the larger view of what Holacracy looks like; not a view of what an organization practicing Holacracy looks like, but rather a view of the interpersonal dynamics that a successful Holacracy implementation calls for.

I was trying to look at Holacracy through the lens of Project Aristotle.

That's when it struck me. Successful Holacracy implementations (or any major change in an organization) aren't just about the structure and the processes. A successful implementation is far more than the Holacracy Constitution, Governance, or Roles. It's about team dynamics, how members connect to each other and how they relate to larger themes.

Project Aristotle and Psychological Safety

Project Aristotle, Google's research project that mapped out the key factors that correlated with successful teams at Google, found that it's not about who is on the team or about the experience or tenure of the team members. It's about how team members interrelate, about how they work together.

Fundamental among those factors is a sense psychological safety. If team members cannot disagree, out loud, or raise their hand and say, "That was my mistake. Let's discover how I could have done it better," then they are holding back. They are guarding their words. They aren't fully participating. They're not fully engaged.

It could be worse. If a team member is spending cognitive and emotional energy on the lookout for threats from within the team, such as harassment from peers or criticism from their team leader, then they are focusing that energy on innovation and problem solving.

As Simon Sinek puts it in Start With Why, leaders should strive to create a "circle of safety" around their team. Team members live and work inside that circle.

The Real World™, where the threats are, is on the outside. But if that circle of safety doesn't exist, then team members can't let their guards down. They have to be on the lookout for challenges from their peers, from their leader, and, for the leader, from their direct reports.

But back to Project Aristotle, Holacracy, and team dynamics . . .

Google found that other factors correlated highly with team effectiveness. (Nevermind the fact that the criteria for "effective teams" was rather subjective. That's a topic for another post. Let's just say that most people, executives, team leaders, and team members, all agreed on what an effective team looked like. And they could identify one when they saw one.)

Those other factors include:

• Dependability


• Structure and Clarity


• Meaning


• Impact

Dependability

Can I rely upon my teammate to do what they said they would do? Does my leader follow through? Can I rely on Google to live up to its promises?

When teammates answer any of those questions, "no," then trouble is afoot. That means that team members cannot predict the outcomes of their actions or of their efforts. The world isn't predictable, it's non-deterministic. And that destroys psychological safety. (See above.)

Structure and Clarity

Do I understand my role on the team? Do I understand what my teammates expect of me? Do I understand their roles and what I can expect from them?

This feeds back into dependability, which, in turn, feeds into psychological safety. Is my world predictable? Who can I trust? What can I trust?

Project Aristotle listed these next two factors as separate items, and I can see a very subtle difference, but they overlap. A lot.

Meaning

Does my work have a higher purpose? Does that purpose resonate with my personal values? Dan Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, points out that research shows that, when people can connect their personal values to the work they do, those people bring more emotional and creative energy to the project.

When people share values, when they believe in the project, in the work at hand, they don't just work for rewards or money; they work because it feeds their souls.

As Simon Sinek puts it,

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

Impact

The last factor that Project Aristotle found relevant, is impact. Can team members say that they are making a difference?

I used to think of meaning and impact as nearly the same thing, but there is a subtle distinction. Where meaning focuses on the object of the work, who or what benefits from the value that is created and delivered, impact focuses on my contribution toward that value.

In other words, "Does my work matter?"

Seeing the Chips Fly

My grandmother, who grew up in southern Oregon timber country, told a story about logging crew foreman who had a mischievous streak.

One morning, the foreman called his best lumberjack over. This burly man could cut down a tree with his axe before that foreman could finish a cup of coffee.

"Max," the foreman said, "I want to give you a raise. I'll double your pay if you cut down your next tree using only the blunt side of your axe."

"Sure!" And Max jogged to his next tree.

When Max came back to the logging camp for lunch, he stomped up to the mess tent and threw down his axe at the foreman's feet.

"I quit!" Max said.

The foreman took another sip of his fifth cup of coffee. "Why?" he asked.

"I can't do it! I can't bring that tree down. I have to see the chips fly!"

That phrase, "seeing the chips fly," became core to my family's ethic. We have to see results from our efforts. We don't do "make work."

We want to work on projects with meaning (a higher purpose than ourselves) and we want our part of those projects to have impact.

But, What of Autonomy?

I've longed been troubled by the fact that Project Aristotle did not have anything to say about empowerment, autonomy, or agency with respect to team effectiveness. I consider that fundamental to helping me engage fully in the work that I do. If I get to choose my work and have a voice in how I do that work, then I am more emotionally invested in that work. I will move heaven and earth to make that work succeed.

But if I'm doing work because I'm told to do it, not because I choose to do it, then I'm engaged in a transaction. The motivator is extrinsic. I'll do it, but I'll be more inclined to do the minimum work to satisfy the requirements.

That kind of work sucks.

Deconstructing Holacracy

My current project is to deconstruct Holacracy into its fundamental components then reconstruct those components, possibly augmenting those components, into a framework that makes Holacracy more compatible with the host organization's culture.

My initial goal was to avoid an allergic or immune system response like my team at Google had. Now I'm starting to see ways to evolve Holacracy implementations into higher, more complete frameworks for fully engaging members of the organization.

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Do you want help making Holacracy work better for your org? Let's talk: bkh@briankhaney.com.

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Image credit: Freepik