One of The Reef’s foundational choices is to work together as a self-managed group. This means that there are no managers who steer the work and also that nobody in The Reef has formal power over any other Reefling.
Running an 8 million euro company together however, we really need to make sure that we make this work. This is why we are relatively religious about our governance and working methods. We cannot have no managers and not replace it with anything else.
As our project is moving along - thanks in part to the sociocratic practice of doing evaluations - we are learning as we go. We are learning what works and what doesn’t, and also about issues that might need some further clarification.
This post is a follow-up action to an evaluation by Team Governance & Working Methods of some recent frictions we had in the group. The purpose is to offer some clarifications on what it means to take up responsibility in our group.
1. Who is responsible?
: : Responsibility is collective
Doing away with all-knowing managers means that responsibility for the whole is now held by the collective. To make things easier, we have divided The Reef into different Teams who are responsible for certain domains, like e.g. recruitment & onboarding, conflict management, IT etc.
The responsibility for these domains is held by the entire Team. This means that every team member is expected to notice when something is not going well and to speak up about it. Contrary to hierarchical organisations (amber or orange organisations in the terminology of Frédéric Laloux’s “Reinventing Organisations”), where it’s the team leader or department head who is responsible for the overall performance, in teal or sociocratic organisations this responsibility is now held by everybody.
: : Increasing efficiency by empowering individuals
Holding the responsibility for a domain together can quickly get a bit chaotic though. This is why sociocracy recommends to empower individuals as much as possible. We define so-called “role descriptions” and organise a selection process to fill them in. This way it becomes super clear who is responsible for what, and also what these role holders can decide on their own without having to consult the entire team.
2. What is expected from people who took on a certain responsibility?
: : Ask for help
Taking on a certain responsibility is always optional. Because nobody has the power to oblige anybody to do anything, we are always free to join a certain team or to take on a task.
Once we have taken on a responsibility however, it is really important to be aware of the fact that the entire group is counting on you. That doesn’t mean though that you are on your own: life tends to get into the way and that’s really fine. It is always possible to ask for help and nobody will judge you for it.
On the contrary even: you are expected to ask for help, because we really want to be sure that the things that matter get done. So if you hear yourself saying “I didn’t have time”, “we didn’t have the resources,” or “I wasn’t clear about what had to be done,” please think about the interest of the group and ask for help as soon as you become aware you can’t make it work, so that we can see together what is needed and provide help or support if necessary.
: : Evaluate and learn
Working together without an all-knowing manager, we depend on ourselves to learn lessons from how things are going. This is why sociocracy insists on regular evaluation moments. We can organise them at team level – only with team members but ideally at some point also inviting input from the rest of the group – but we are also encouraged to organise them for people holding specific roles, like e.g. the Team Coordinator.
The way we do it is simple:
- For a team:
- Do a round on topics that you want to cover in the evaluation: e.g. distribution of tasks, relationships with the other teams, efficiency of the meetings, how a certain issues was handled etc.
- Then do a round for each of the identified topics, focusing first on what went well and then on what could be improved.
- For an individual (performance review):
- Make sure there is a shared understanding of the role description
- Do a round on things that are going well (with the focus person going first).
- Do a round on things that could be improved (idem).
- Ask the focus person to come with actions they can undertake to work on the things they could be improving and consent to it at the next meeting.
Reporting back on Edgeryders and/or to the Coordination Group puts the cherry on the pie.
: : Be accountable
Mistakes happen. They are a fact of life. The only way to not make any is to not do anything, and that wouldn’t get us very far.
Working together as a self-managed group requires us to take on a different mindset when it comes to glitches. The boss or client that criticizes or blames us in our day jobs doesn’t exist in our group. They tend to continue to exist in our minds though, because this is how we have been socialised throughout our lives. This is why many people have a reflex to pretend nothing has happened when something went wrong, or – when feedback has been given about it – to hear it as criticism.
In the long run however, this is detrimental to the health of our organisation. First and foremost, because we want to maintain an atmosphere of absolute trust. It’s really fine when things don’t work out as intended, and it’s important to remember that nobody will love you any less for it. It’s really important though that we can be transparent about what happened. Without that, trust will inevitably erode, which will have a severely negative impact on how we can work together as a group.
So if something didn’t go as planned, and you are feeling a bit stressed, first give yourself some empathy. Maybe you have a need for contributing to the group? Maybe you have a need for learning? To be accepted for who you are? Sitting with our feelings and needs for a bit can often reset our nervous system and calm us down again.
Then just think of our collective interest, and simply let the group or your team members know “this is what happened, this is what I’m learning from it”. We don’t need to apologize, because apologizing is rooted in the kind of guilt-based thinking that we are trying to get rid of. This way we have surfaced a learning that can be useful for the entire group, and we have also maintained our spirit of openness, which is our long-term insurance to keep a high level of trust in our group.