Self-Organising: For start-up founders

What is Self-Organising?

Self-Organising, or self-management, as it is sometimes known, is a way of structuring and running a business that does away with management hierarchy.

It replaces this with a hierarchy of purpose, where all employees are doing meaningful work in furtherance of the company’s vision. This makes the company more efficient, adaptable, and scaleable. And because there are no longer any managers, costs can be reduced considerably.

In Self-Organising all employees do the work they are good at and love, which means that innovation, productivity, and health and wellbeing are maximised.

A constitution provides a safe space

The company runs in accordance with a five-article constitution that clearly articulates all ways of working, policies, processes, rules, procedures etc and is available for everyone to see. This creates a safe space for employees to make informed decisions fast whilst giving founders peace of mind because they know exactly who is accountable for what.

A process for resolving tensions

Problems, or tensions, as they are referred to, are welcomed, because a tension usually highlights a gap in the way the company is running. The resolution of tensions is at the heart of Self-Organising, because each resolution nudges the company forward to become more fit for fulfilling its purpose.

How I can help

My clients are generally start-ups with 20-200 employees. I work with founders to help them stay focused on what they’re good at and what they love as their company grows, without them getting bogged down in bureaucracy and people management.

The end result is a system that distributes authority, matches individual potential to organisational purpose, and supports both rapid growth in the business, and employees’ personal development.

The move from hierarchy to Self-Organising

Whereas hierarchy is rigid, slow-moving and inflexible, the Self-Organising company is adaptable, dynamic and constantly evolving and that's why adopting Self-Organising is challenging. It's a paradigm shift and it's not for the faint hearted – but the rewards can be enormous.

As a starting point I run courses for founders and their teams to see if Self-Organising is right for them – more details below. But if it is a good fit, me and my team are able to coach you and your team through the adoption process so you become a fully functioning Self-Organising enterprise.

Building a company that is not dependent on you

Founders of start-ups begin by doing what they love and what they are good at. But when the company grows, they often end up doing things that gets in the way of this, including:

Hiring and managing people
Writing policies and procedures
Developing systems and processes
Creating organisational structure
Micro-managing operational tasks
Attending too many meetings

Often founders get their time taken up because too many requests and decisions have to be approved by them.

As a founder you want to build a company that is not dependent on you for its value. In an ideal world you want the business to run itself, enabling you to continue doing what you love and what you are good at, unencumbered by bureaucracy.

This is what Self-Organising can offer you.

What we can learn from termites

Termites self-organise through simple rules, environmental cues, and local interactions to build the largest structures on Earth relative to their size. They operate without hierarchy to build highly complex adaptive structures efficiently and cooperatively.

Every visionary founder should consider Self-Organising

Self-Organising is simultaneously the dream ticket for founders and the ultimate challenge. It has the potential to give you everything you want – rapid growth, scalability, non-dependance on you, happy and healthy employees – while the capital value of your business grows.

But it's a radically different way of operating that requires a shift in mindset and behaviours for both you and your team. It's not for everyone.

However, it is my firm belief that all founders should make an informed decision on whether to adopt Self-Organising. The best way to do this is to try it out for yourself in a small way, without risk, and see if you think it will work for you. My courses (below) are designed to give you this opportunity.

Using the Agile metaphor on the left – my suggestion is to build a raft and see if you like the idea of floating, before committing to building the boat.

Is Self-Organising right for you?

If you're a founder thinking about Self-Organising, I recommend trying it out by putting yourself and one of your teams through one or both of my online training programmes. There'll be numerous benefits to the business, even if you don't end up adopting Self-Organising, including:

Improved role clarity and accountability
Faster decision-making, both individually and as a group
Fewer and shorter meetings, but each one more effective

Team Clarity and Faster Decision-Making

This course helps you and your team get clearer about who is accountable for what. This increased transparency gives everyone clear expectations about what they need to do and what they can expect from each other. It also enables faster and better decision-making because everyone knows what authority they have (and don't have). The course also introduces the Self-Organising method for resolving problems that need fixing quickly and enabling rapid action on ideas they have for improvement.

Download the PDF to find out more >>

I highly recommend this course to any senior management team – or any team for that matter – that simply wants to work better, get more done and be happier in the process.

Founder & Director, UK charity

The Meetings Revolution

In this course you and your team will learn how to run more efficient and productive meetings. This means that you will have fewer meetings and they will be shorter. Self-Organising meetings have a clear structure and are run by a member of your team who we train to be a facilitator and who follows a clear process. Meeting outputs are captured and assigned to roles by a secretary using a trusted system that everyone has access to. The outcome is that productivity improves and people start actually enjoying meetings.

Download the PDF to find out more >>

Our team is now working together more efficiently and we're getting more done.

Operations Lead, US training company

FAQ: Self-Organising

They might, but if they did this would probably create a problem for someone in the organisation who is depending on them in one of their roles to get work done. This person could raise what is called a ‘tension’ and it would get resolved in a structured way.

Hierarchies tend to work when the emphasis is on becoming more efficient at doing the same thing in a world that is relatively static. In the complex, networked, ever-changing world we live in now, hierarchies are no longer fit for purpose. The symptoms of this include failing change programmes, employee disengagement, and widespread mental health and wellbeing issues.

In Self-Organising, people no longer have traditional job titles. Instead they are responsible for fulfilling a number of different roles that key into the organisation’s purpose, match their skills, and that they actively want to undertake.

Decisions are made by roles. Each role in the organisation has a clearly defined purpose and set of accountabilities and has the authority to make any decision in furtherance of its purpose, subject to agreed policies and within a specified remit (‘domain’).

In a Self-Organising system everyone manages themselves, which is why it’s sometimes referred to as Self-management. Managers in hierarchical organisations that are transitioning to Self-Organising transfer to roles where they can use their skills and experience to further the purpose of the organisation. This means that they do more of what they love and are good at.

Growth happens by mastering multiple roles or deepening expertise within a specific domain. Every organisation has a different way of doing it, but progression is more often driven by personal initiative and demonstrated value.

Tensions, as they are known in Self-Organising, are welcomed because there is a clear and structured way of processing them. Tensions are only considered processed when the person who has the tension agrees that they have what they need.

Aristotle

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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