For years I was telling you how awesome self-organization and autonomy are in the context of organizational design.
Well, I lied.
Let me share a story about a company that has been a poster child of self-organization and autonomy, bringing them to the extreme and building its organizational culture around them. Everything was as rosy as you might have expected if you'd read books about progressive organizations. That is until it wasn't.
The engagement fell flat on its face. The atmosphere nosedived. Attrition crept in. Self-organization, vast autonomy, and radically decentralized control became as much a solution to address the old problems, addressing vastly outdated management principles, as a source of a ton of new friction.
We'll look at what went wrong and why. We'll make a sobering realization that making our organizations “fit for the future,” as some management thought-leaders propose, is much harder than it looks on paper.
It is a failure story. And a personal one, as I'm going to talk about the company, I've spent almost a decade with – Lunar Logic.
54. Building safety
Signals of connection generate bonds of belonging and identity.
Sharing vulnerability
Habits of mutual risk drive trust.
Establishing purpose
Narratives create shared goals and values.