There are a standout quote that keep surfacing in my mind. I write it here because the the mindset change at Double was tough, but worth it.
"I knew that self-managed working environments can act as an incredibly powerful catalysts (if one is open to it) for greater self-awareness and growth. These are spaces where you are almost inevitably confronted with yourself, your limits, strengths, weaknesses, triggers, unhealthy coping mechanisms." Elena Denaro, Reflections on practical self-management: week one.
Here is where the hard work started. To believe in (or want) the first quote statement to be a reality we have to understand the second statement is also true. As a practical example I will tell the story of how Double Retail [Double] became a self-managing business, shedding the need for a classic organisational hierarchy and a command and control operating model. As Elena Denaro expresses, it requires us all to dig deep. [Fig. 1 - not a traditional hierarchy]
Fig. 1 - An organisation as a interdependent entity within a living system
To make some sense of what this is I have compacted my 10-years as co-founder history of Double (13 if you include the thinking about it, planning, procrastinating, and setting up). It looked like this:
A potted people & emotion history of Double
You may have noticed I used the feeling of 'Loss' in the list of 'Constant Prototyping' above. Our learnt behaviours are so deeply rooted that, for some, there was a strong sense of loss. Loss of the feeling of control - "what I can't 'manage' I can't control."
For some the loss of being given a to-do list was deeply challenging. After all, it requires a lot more active effort and care to, and for, your colleagues and commitments when that to-do list is your full responsibility.
There were so many bad habits we lost that, looking back, it's hard to list them all. Needless to say, when we chose to de-manage each other, hidden and wonderful creativity, energy, and self-motivation emerged in all of the team. This creative explosion allowed the business to evolve and achieve way more than its size and convention would suggest, a big gain.
Well, a loss, when flipped in the mind, can be a gain. That is what happened here. By working hard on our understanding of ourselves as individual and team, what was at first felt as a loss soon became a gain. In reality when you experience 'autonomy' then 'mastery and purpose' follow [a great little animation of Dan Pink's concept].
