The Future of Work needs Inner Work (eBook)

A handbook for companies on the way to self-organisation

Joana Breidenbach, Bettina Rollow (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 3. Auflage
X, 138 Seiten
Vahlen (Verlag)
978-3-8006-6432-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Most approaches to introducing self-management, agile forms of work, and 'teal organisations' are doomed to failure. After five years of extensive experience with new forms of leadership, we have seen this process happen over and over again. Most of the time, this is because teams focus exclusively on the external, visible dimension of change.
However, any external change in structures and processes must necessarily be accompanied by an internal transformation. For that reason, this book is particularly dedicated to the 'inner innovation' of teams. By this we mean the way that employees and teams can mature and grow in order to shape the complex, flexible, and accelerating world around them with competence and purpose.
Future work needs Inner Work is a practice-oriented manual in which we describe, step-by-step, how to introduce self-management into a team or company. We combine the perspectives of the entrepreneur (Joana, betterplace.org and betterplace lab) and the coach (Bettina). This combination allows us to use organisational principles, as well as concrete examples and exercises, to explore which competencies are important for reducing hierarchies and working flexibly and meaningfully.
Joana Breidenbach is founder of Germany's largest donation plattform betterplace.org and the Think-and-Do-Tank betterplace lab.

Bettina Rollow develops organisational and leadership forms, e. g. with betterplace lab and Ashoka Germany.

Textauszug

1Chapter 1

From hierarchy to the ­development of potential

2Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

David Bowie, Space Oddity

Imagine it’s your first day of work at a new company. You are warmly welcomed and asked to spend the next few weeks getting to know the company better. “If a project catches your interest, you can start there immediately. And if you have an idea of your own, try to get your new colleagues excited about it and start a team.” All the office tables have wheels, so that employees can move between projects with maximum flexibility. This is not a dream. A company that actually works in this way is called Valve and is one of the most successful American developers of computer games. Founded in Seattle in 1996, it now employs around 400 people. There is no management, and even the founder and president cannot dictate to employees what to work on or how to work.

On the other side of the world, in Berlin, the betterplace lab also works without bosses and managers. The non-profit think-and-do-tank explores how digitisation can be used for the common good. Its employees are responsible, among other tasks, for hiring their own colleagues. Each autumn, when planning the coming year together, they even negotiate their salaries with each other. Instead of a static organisational chart, the betterplace lab has developed a competency-based hierarchy in which the employees with the highest competency can make decisions independently in various domains.

Organisational development in the digital age

Our working world is undergoing a fundamental change. Conventional management and control functions, developed during the first and second industrial revolution, are proving, in the course of digitization, increasingly outdated.

New business models and value chains, as well as rapidly advancing automation, are exerting enormous pressures on the business world. Companies are forced to adapt to change much faster and to change more radically. They need to become more innovative and take more risks. The more complex the world, the less fitting do 3conventional hierarchies become. This is because the knowledge and creativity requisite for navigating complexity are not centralised at the top, but distributed throughout the company. Decentralised organisational forms, “startup thinking” and “digital mindsets” are therefore in demand. Such models call for the ability to act autonomously, to cooperate with others, to be flexible, to endure uncertainties, to embrace diversity, and to recognise developments at an early stage.

Another factor is that many people feel a widening gap between their own needs and interests and what they experience in the workplace. This applies to employees as well as superiors. It seems to employees that they have to “shrink” themselves in order to fit through the office door. Bosses get bored when they have to approve vacation days or settle disputes in departments instead of promoting innovations and researching new business opportunities. These tensions lead to continuously rising burnout and absenteeism rates, with associated human dramas and economic losses. On top of this, companies have to compete fiercely for young talents that have their own ideas about what makes for a good job.

In order to meet these challenges, many companies are embarking on the path of change. Terms that express innovation, willingness to change and transparency are coined for this purpose. New formats, structures and processes are developed under the catchwords Future of Work, New Work, Holacracy, agile companies or “teal” organisations. The measures employed range from cosmetic to despondent to radical. Some people already apply the label “Future of Work” to the monthly cultural evening in the canteen, the office dog, or the newly designed intranet. Others try to rejuvenate themselves materially, they tear down walls and set up table tennis and football, put free drinks in the refrigerator and bean bag chairs in the lounge. Many hire change coaches to rethink the company using design thinking methods, introducing flexible working hours and creative titles on their business cards. Digital collaboration tools are introduced: you communicate via Slack, Google Drive or Trello. The executive floors open up and C-level managers seek to exchange with employees. This often works well at first, but does not penetrate to the core of the challenge.

A small but growing number of companies are taking a more fundamental look at the issue. They flatten hierarchies or eliminate them completely, including the bosses.

4They are prepared for a change of perspective, for example, by letting trainees run the company for a month. They make management decisions transparent and disclose salaries. They give teams responsibility for recruiting so that they hire their own colleagues. They empower employees to freely decide how much vacation they take, as well as from where, when, and on what they work. Some teams even negotiate their salaries with each other and develop the company’s strategy together.

Many of these more radical approaches are based on the conviction that companies should test and exemplify future lifestyles as role models. Founders and employees feel that in the early 21st century we have reached the end of an era, and are faced with the task of building more sustainable, just and healthy structures for society as a whole. But how can we demand new values and blueprints for so­ciety if we are, at the microlevel of our own companies, still trapped in old, often non-functioning structures? This is a burning question, especially for so-called impact companies, i. e. those that have expressly committed themselves to social and ecological change. More and more of them are becoming pioneers of the ­Future of Work movement and are developing the future of work in an exemplary manner within the framework of their own companies.

Why Inner Work?

However, almost all of the measures that go by the name Future of Work today are inadequate and doomed to fail. New forms of work are implemented, but they cannot achieve the expected system-changing effect.

They fail, because the implemented changes only involve the external world. Most companies act as if you only have to change a few roles and rules to make people more creative, responsible and self-determined. This approach overlooks the fact that any significant change in the outside world requires a corresponding change in the inner lives of individuals. Change can only succeed if we approach it holistically and actively include inner transformation. We must put the subjective sensations and perceptions of the ­Future Workers at the centre of change. When companies enlarge the scope for individuals – giving them more freedom and responsibility – they need to help them build competencies and mature, 5in the course of which employees become internally stronger and more self-confident. In order to properly implement the Future of Work and tap the potential of this great wave of change in the world of work, we need to focus on both outside and inside, objective structures and subjective experiences.

The fact that new organisational models do not work if teams only change their external working methods and organisational structures is illustrated by the fact that more and more companies that have introduced transparent (holacratic) and change-ready (agile) structures, stumble when faced with implementation. Even some Future of Work pioneers are now disillusioned and report falling sales and layoffs. The hoped-for innovation boost often fails to materialise. Supervisors blame the employees who allegedly cannot tolerate this much freedom and apparently require a directive management style. For their part, employees talk about increased pressure to perform, structures that lack clarity, and a general sense of uncertainty. After these experiences, many companies return to traditional hierarchies.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we combine external change with internal transformation processes, we can successfully implement new forms of work and thus take a big step towards a better economy, in which people can develop their potential in an unprecedented way.

This conviction shapes our work as well as this book.

Bettina’s journey

Bettina’s journey into the Future of Work began almost involuntarily. In 2014, after four years as a process consultant in a large automotive group, she reached a critical point in her career path. Equipped with a Master’s degree in International Business Studies and training in Gestalt Therapy, Bettina set out to make technical development and cooperation within the corporate group more holistic. To achieve this, she wanted to harmonise the structures and processes of the company with the values and needs of the employees. It was at this point, however, that her corporate career ended. Despite efforts on both sides, it quickly became clear that such a holistic perspective on work was not going to find its place there now, nor in the next few years.

6Bettina quit her job and planned a time-out to consider her next professional steps. It was at this very moment that the Future of Work entered her life, in the form of Joana Breidenbach and the betterplace lab.

Joana’s starting point

In 2007, Joana co-founded the donation platform betterplace.org. In 2010, the betterplace lab followed, a Think and Do Tank that explores how...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.7.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• Schlagworte: Change-Management • Motivation • Organisationsentwicklung • Organizationale Development • Selbstorganisation • Selbstverantwortung • self-fulfillment
• ISBN-10: 3-8006-6432-1 / 3800664321
• ISBN-13: 978-3-8006-6432-0 / 9783800664320