Better ways of managing

There is a movement in thinking about work which is often being called “Agile”.  We prefer to talk about Open (and to say “adaptable” rather than “agile”).  There is much more to Open than the named Agile approach, it casts a much wider net to be inclusive of all modern trends in management. (In fact, changing views of work forms part of much deeper shifts to better ways of thinking about the world).

Here is how this page fits with other pages, with links to them:

[We are training ourselves to say “better ways of working” instead of “new”. “New ways of working” has been captured by remote work. Even more importantly, most of the ideas are not new, they’re just not widely adopted.  We know they’re better. Better results, better lives,  better society. So you will find both words used interchangeably on this site: new/better. We now think “better” is better.]

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This “agile” thinking is advancing IT, enterprises, government, and society. As a result, it is also called Business Agility, or we say Open Work, the sum of three areas: Human Systems Adaptability.  Its impact is far-reaching enough to talk of it as a renaissance in thinking, a refresh or step change that comes only once or twice a century. This is not an exaggeration.

Open thinking empowers people to be knowledge workers, to design the work and make the decisions. It treats them like they are over 18 and on the same side. Conventional management too often treats people like clerical workers, like plug-compatible wetware, like Human Resources, who can’t be trusted, who are evaluated numerically, who are an overhead to be minimised, who need to be told what to do and how to do it. Which one is more conducive to satisfaction and mental health?

The Open movement is leading to Better Ways Of Working: iterative, incremental, experimenting, exploring complex systems (our discussion of better ways of working is here, with reading list). These are displacing the ideas of big-bang projects; zero risk; certainty and accuracy; plan once execute perfectly; failure is not an option.

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At least as important, though, is Better Ways Of Managing, small-a agile Management, or our preferred term is Open Management. That poor world “agile” is asked to do too much.

Too often, management views the transformationadvancement to better ways as something done to improve the practitioner workforce, not management. This can’t be. For an organisation to change, the management must change.

And the governance must change to allow and direct the management to change. This is one of the biggest issues facing organisations moving to agile ways of working. Managers must understand and focus on empowerment, collaboration, agility, and flow.

Here is a one-hour presentation I did on managing Agile teams.

Managing change is not just about getting acceptance. We have to let go of command-and-control. Let the people doing the work design the work. Management should observe, navigate, and facilitate. People should be the change, not just concede to it.

Better management is about

• Invitation: you can’t make people do good work.
• Inversion: flip the hierarchy, servant, liberation.
• Inclusion: collaboration, respect.
• Transparency: open decision making, vulnerability

 

We make the better ways of managing a special focus for Teal Unicorn when we advance organisations and IT functions. We provide coaching and training to get there. We have our own model of it, (and a book).

For the practical application of these ideas, see our articles on S&T Happens