Kanban Self-Organization - Part 2
Manage the work; and let people self-organise around it, postulates Kanban for knowledge work. After I clarified the basic terms in the first part of my article series (What does self-organization actually mean?) and argued for the company-wide use of visual work management (Where is Kanban anyway?), this part is primarily about the why? In other words:
Why does Kanban need self-organization?
The experience of companies using Enterprise Kanban suggests two conclusions: continuous improvement builds on autonomy and managers who continuously optimize the framework conditions for it. Only through an understanding of leadership that consistently relies on distributed decision-making authority, individual willingness to take responsibility, and shared learning can the existing forces develop well. I cannot repeat often enough that we do not only need intelligent systems for this. We also need people who bring these work systems to life. It's about commitment and passion, about creativity and esprit, about heart and soul and the willingness to lend a hand when the situation demands it. However, all of these are highly emotional categories - which, by the way, also applies to much-used terms such as commitment and ownership.
Kanban techniques, according to my thesis, are not enough for this. Even the most sophisticated tools are of no use if the working world is characterized by hierarchical control and personal dependencies. Instead, a vital culture of improvement thrives on basic trust and the freedom to work together. From this perspective, self-organization marks the headline for a wide range of design elements.
my latest book using the example of more than 40 self-organised companies this ranges from a consistent customer focus, transparent management, a willingness to experiment or a lean organisation to ongoing training and coaching measures.
To put it in tech-friendly terms, self-organization is the engine that gets kaizen going and keeps it going. As Sabine Eybl and I describe in our blog "Why self-organization?" companies use different fuels to do this: culture, strategy, structure, and business. Here's a quick overview.
Cultural forces are often at the heart of self-organisation. It is about more fairness, more democratic conditions and an employee-friendly working climate in which joy and fun are not just nice words. Such a climate can be strengthened by Kanban on all levels. One relies on the competence of the experts and holds them not only to the technical implementation, but also to the management of their own work as well as the necessary coordination with the work of others. In this sense, responsibility is distributed on many shoulders and, in line with the third change management principle of Kanban, leadership is promoted at all levels. After all, we don't talk about a culture of continuous improvement for nothing, which, as already mentioned, depends on the willingness and ability of all employees to learn.
Viewed through Kanban glasses, self-organized work does not depend solely on the corporate cultural context, but also on the focus of visual work management. If Kanban is used at the highest level, the strategic aspects of self-organization naturally take center stage. Here, the main concern is to perceive lucrative business opportunities as well as impending market risks as early as possible. The professional visualization of these opportunities is an essential building block for this. This provides an overview and sharpens the attention for the most promising options. But such attention thrives on improving the perception capabilities of the entire company.
When volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are the signs of our times, companies need a sensorium that is up to these challenges. Since Ross Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, we have known that external complexity can only be answered with internal diversity. In other words, it's about the broadest possible perception of the market from the most diverse perspectives. All employees should now put out their feelers, as it were, and act as sensors for environmental events, as outlined in the figure below.
For this model to become strategically relevant, however, it also requires intelligent networking of the sensors so that different perceptions can be exchanged and the right conclusions drawn for further action. Kanban at strategy level offers a good opportunity to strategically bundle such conclusions. This can be seen, for example:
in the openness of the options pool: everyone in the company is invited to contribute good business ideas;
in being able to choose promising options in the short term rather than sticking to long-term fixed plans;
in the gradual change of strategy development from a bureaucratic act (keyword: annual planning) into a continuous learning process (keyword: iterations)
in the accompanying change from a purely managerial matter (keyword: supreme discipline) to a forum in which many employees are involved - which can be promoted by a cross-departmental and cross-hierarchical staffing of strategic standups just as much as by professionally moderated strategy forums that deliberately rely on the power of large groups.
However, Enterprise Kanban does not only rely on new forms of strategy development. Strategic agility goes hand in hand with operational agility. After all, what good are the most beautiful options if we are not able to implement them quickly and in top quality? For this purpose, we create a lean set of structures and processes with Enterprise Kanban, so that different people can coordinate with each other in the best possible way. In coordination systems (Flu Level 2), however, teams rather than individuals come together. The game-changing question is how these teams, or their representatives, ensure that strategic plans are implemented. How do they ensure that the work of the different teams pays off in terms of the common strategy? How do they ensure smooth work flows across organizational boundaries? How are these flows unified into market-oriented value streams? And how are decisions promoted that are as close to the customer as possible?
It has been said that answering these questions leads to more than just dealing with current blockages. As is well known, Kanban not only allows critical thinking, it even challenges it. This sometimes leads to changes that go far beyond fighting symptoms. This can involve new technical solutions, new core activities or new team or department structures. The dynamics of self-organized work with Kanban is not limited to the method. After all, the focus is not on Kanban, but on what is called organizational design in the jargon. This sometimes raises radical questions:
Is our current organizational structure consistently oriented towards the market? What does the customer actually need? What is particularly important to him? What else could be valuable?
Do our current structures and processes support the ongoing improvement of our workflows? How well do they help us deliver as much value as possible with as little effort as possible?
Is direct interaction with customers encouraged? Is regular involvement ensured? For a trusting communication? For intensive feedback up to joint development work?
Is our current organizational design focused on leanness and simplicity? Do we reduce dependencies wherever we can? Do we promote autonomy? And are we equipping ourselves appropriately for this?
Answering these questions has required many companies to increasingly rely on decentralized units of manageable size that are focused on a specific customer group, product or region. After all, agility is also known to be a matter of weight. If a whole apparatus of superiors and specialist departments has to be mobilized for every decision, the entrepreneurial agility that everyone seems to be dreaming of at the moment is over in a flash. The recipe for success is a flat hierarchy, a minimum of central functions and guidelines, and a maximum of self-determination.
Which brings us to the final answer to the question "Why Kanban and self-organization? It is: the combination serves the business. It is about business agility, i.e. the entrepreneurial ability to perceive opportunities and risks quickly and efficiently. Working self-organized with Kanban is not an end in itself. At the end of the day, it is always about measurable success. Management philosophies also have to pay off.
The fact that we see Enterprise Kanban and self-organization as entrepreneurial means does not mean, however, to reduce them to purely capitalistic purposes. More democratic conditions, more respect and recognition, personal eye level are more than desirable side effects. Just think of the importance of corporate culture for current employee satisfaction, retaining good people or attracting young talent. Nonetheless, the cultural, structural and strategic engines serve equally to boost the company's success - or at least to keep it running.
In my experience, the synergy of Kanban and self-organization helps to cultivate a special circle of angels. Customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and profitability are by no means mutually exclusive. On the contrary, when employees are more motivated, when they manage what they do well themselves, when they coordinate better with each other and with relevant stakeholders, and when they do all of this with their eyes open, so to speak, this also has an effect on customers. And if the customers, for their part, feel better taken care of, if they have the impression that their wishes are really being taken care of and that the much-cited extra mile is being gone in between, this in turn is reflected in better feedback. This in turn increases the motivation of the employees, as they can see the meaning and benefit of their efforts. And so on and so forth.
Kanban and Self-Organization - Part 2