Small is simple

Remember when you were leading a start-up of 20 people, decision making was quick, people genuinely all knew one another and helped each other.  Now that there are over 100 people working for you, life is different, people you don’t really know are making decisions on your behalf; duplication and gaps begin to appear; perhaps worst of all, for many people work is not nearly as much fun as it used to be.

You are not alone

This unease can be explained by Dunbar’s number. This is a piece of evolutionary psychology theory based on studies of all sorts of human groups, over century’s and all over the globe that seems to  indicate the presence of a tipping point at around 150 people where the communal dynamic changes profoundly. The accepted reason for this is that we humans can only really maintain personalised, caring relationships with that number of people. 

Some of the inevitabilities of organisational life are not inevitable 

Many of us founders set up on our own because big business no longer thrilled us. One of the reasons we fell out of love with our corporate employer was management practices, and whether we realised it or not the underlying purpose of these is control. Despite bearing the scars of life in over-bureaucratic corporates, many founders feel that layering on the red tape is an inevitability as their business grows.  Spoiler alert: we don’t!

If we set out now to invent the norms and mechanisms of our organisations based on what we know about humans and human performance, what we’d come up with would bear no relation to what we see in most organisations today.

What if we were human-centric, not control-centric?

Since the industrial revolution our understanding of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and anthropology has progressed way beyond what was imaginable then.  And yet that scientific evidence is still not being heeded in most organisations today.  A moment of self-refection tells us, in the majority of circumstances, we humans do not respond well to being controlled.  Can you think of a time in your working life where you needed to be controlled to do a good job? Think about that before you adopt more controls; your organisation can be and should be different.

So, if not more bureaucracy, then what?

So, what should we be doing to avoid the perils of the speed wobble?  Here is a handful of randomly selected human-centric practices; things that will help maintain a great culture, bring the business results you seek AND avoid the red tape.

Have a “no rules” rule.

Prescriptive rules come with a whole heap of downsides.  They tend to alienate, they reinforce a ‘parent / child’ as opposed to ‘adult to adult’ dynamic. The alternative approach is to work with people to generate broad guidelines, defined around purpose.   These are more adaptive to the wide variety of situations. Also, they give people the space to use their knowledge and skills to deliver customer value, to innovate through experimentation, to share ideas and resources and to become more closely engaged with the business.

Power to the people; reconnect decision making with the work

It takes a degree of trust to delegate decision authority, but for those organisations and leaders who actively push the responsibility for decision making towards the action and not hold it tight at the top, there are all sorts of upsides.  Not least of all is trust.  Trust itself is a powerful thing and a two-way street; by demonstrating your trust in others, commitment and loyalty come flooding back in the other direction.

Be super-clear on purpose; then let your people determine the rest

Why does your business exist? If each and every person you employ were asked that question, would the responses be strong, consistent with each other and said with some feeling?   If not, then it is your job to make it so.  Purpose also exists at a team and individual level; ask a corresponding question to every team and every role.  What is their purpose, their contribution to the bigger purpose?   A useful tactic is to give people the space to work out the purpose of their own role, and then give them even more space to get on with delivering it. 

"An individual without information can't take responsibility. An individual with information can't help but take responsibility."  Jan Carlzon

Be transparent with everything

The larger the organisation grows, the harder it becomes to prevent unhelpful “them and us” divisions based on power, even if it is informal power.  One way to prevent this is adopting a mantra of radical transparency.   By making all, or very nearly all of the company’s information accessible to all employees is a healthy demonstration of trust, an advantage in itself, it also helps garner wider input to decisions, supports collaboration and nurtures a helpful “big picture” perspective.   There is more to transparency than changing the permissions on electronic files and folders though.   Leaders also need to demonstrate openness and honesty, often about mistakes and other unwelcome news.  Uncomfortable? For sure.  Preferable to hiding stuff and being found out? For sure.

I hope that at least one or two of those has sparked your curiosity.  None of these ideas are without risk, and no one will ever implement them anything like right first time.  The important thing is that you get started with something.  

In the speed wobble it is the leader who has the steering, the brakes, and the gas.

Speed wobbles, or even the mild pre-tremors of them can be really scary.  In order to emerge safely on the other side, you need to be brave and bold.   For a leader this can be daunting.  Where to start?  With whom? How to avoid inviting chaos where control once was? There are many things you could do, but what things will work best for your organisation?  And then there is the question of how?  If, as a leader, you would you like someone to talk those challenges through with we are ready to give you a damn good listening to.

This blog was guest authored by Ben Simpson, Co-founder of Organisational Vitality, and co-architect of The Vitality Index, a cultural diagnostic which helps teams experiment with more human centric management practices.