Vivek Menon on ambidextrous organisations

Lisa: Leadermorphosis, the podcast exploring the emerging world of self-organizing teams and progressive organizations.

So Vivek, I thought we could start maybe by you telling us a little bit about Danfoss as a business and why you were inspired to start this journey of going beyond traditional hierarchy in your business unit.

Vivek: So Danfoss is a traditional industrial business. We provide a lot of climate energy solutions to our customers and OEMs out there. The four main businesses that we have is Danfoss Drives, Danfoss Heating and Cooling, and Danfoss Power Solutions. My business unit is part of Danfoss Power Solutions segment, which is primarily into mobile hydraulics business.

When you think of many off-road applications like tractors and harvesters, those are the kind of applications where our products and solutions go into. My business unit is called E-steering. We are in a division called Work Function, and this division per se is making products called orbital motors and steering units for vehicles. When you are sitting on a tractor and thinking of the steering units, most likely it would be our steering units that are the solution behind that steering that you’re driving. So that’s the part of business that I am part of.

Back in 2017, our divisional president Domenico Travis wanted to prepare the future journey of this division, Work Function. As part of that, his vision has been to kind of prepare it as an ambidextrous organization which is able to handle the traditional businesses like orbital motors where the technologies are quite stable, and what we are trying to drive more and more is to get more operational efficiencies out into the businesses.

On the other hand, he had new business areas like E-steering where, as you know, with the automotive world, the technologies around autonomous and electrification are changing quite rapidly. In his viewpoint, preparing two organizations which had a lot of stability and on the other hand a lot of agility, he felt that we needed to kind of work with a different kind of organization setup for the new business. That was the logic for starting to go thinking beyond the traditional way of organizing in our business unit. Then he actually hired me from the Drives business unit afterwards to kind of say, “Okay, how are we actually gonna set it up and actually work with it?”

Lisa: So you were given the mandate by Domenico to do something differently with this particular unit. How did you start that transition, and where did you get your inspiration from? Did you have a sort of blank canvas, or did you have some ideas of where you might start?

Vivek: Actually, that’s a very interesting question because I don’t think there is a single point where I got started on this. I think the very reason that Domenico and I came together was that we actually met as part of the internal intrapreneurial program that Danfoss had set up in 2016.

At that time, we were in Berlin doing some intrapreneurial activities, trying to see okay how do we work with the agile ways of working and how can Danfoss as a business prepare itself for the future in that direction. As part of that, I was based in Berlin and trying to work with one of my colleagues from Drives to prepare for this Lean Startup approach of setting up a business, and that’s where we got in touch.

Some of my original inspirations from my side came from there. I was coming from the world of portfolio management and waterfall and all of that stuff, and I felt that this was not the way that projects of the future and business of the future were going to be executing. From there, I moved on to inspiration from lean startups, working with design thinking, working with those methodologies was the original inspiration.

When the opportunity arose that Domenico was planning to create a new business unit and he reached out to me asking if I could consider this as an opportunity, I was like, “Yeah, this is exactly what I wanted to do” - not just run projects in that way, but a business in that way. That’s how it kind of came together initially for me.

From there, it’s always been part of the research that okay, now we have our opportunity, so now the canvas is there. Now how actually will we do it? Because it’s fine to say lean startup and reinventing organizations and holacracy and sociocracy and all the other ways out there, but what does it work for this team and how will we actually move forward?

Lisa: So how did you do that?

Vivek: I would say, I think the way we approached it is that I am a strong believer that first you need to explain the “why” to the team. I think that’s what I spent my initial time on first - we need to get the “why” clarified to the team.

For us, it was clearly about two things. It was about making the customer experience better than we had before, to be more faster and agile in this VUCA world. The technology is changing often - autonomous, electrification - every day the requirements are changing, and therefore we have to be more agile in the way we handle customers. Therefore, the customer experience.

On the flip side, we believe that the only way to do that is to empower the teams even more and make sure that as much decision-making is happening in the front lines. All research, whether you take Gallup or any of the research on engagement, shows that at best you have 15 to 20 percent of employees that are engaged.

So we just felt like that combination was just the two main elements that we need to focus on - increasing the customer experience and increasing the employee engagement to deliver the business results we need to deliver. So that became our “why,” and when that “why” was bought in by the team, and yes, that’s exactly where they want to go, then we kind of set up some of our key “must-win battles” to keep some of the strategic direction of where we want to head towards.

The fourth strategic battle for us was self-managed teams. So we made it that it is part of a strategic battle - not just the “what” but the “how” we actually get to do this became also part of our must-win battles. That is the first thing - getting the team on board with the “why.”

Then we started to say, okay, now with the “how.” For me, when we got started with that, I think we kind of said, okay, this team is requiring some sort of structure and guidance to how to do this, because it’s not like they’ve thought a lot about organization and organization building before. They have always said, “That’s HR, somehow that’s the HR world,” and now I’m saying, “No, that’s not HR. That’s the way we have to organize ourselves.”

So once they bought in the “why,” they’re like, “Okay, now tell us the ‘how,’” because this is very abstract, fluffy stuff to us. Especially “Reinventing Organizations” is very philosophical in its approach and it says the right things but has very little “how.”

So then in my research, I felt that I started my base with holacracy and sociocracy as the main inspiration because that’s where I felt the strength of the “how” was much higher as a starting point. Instead of starting to build up from scratch, they say, “No, let’s start with what is there in holacracy and sociocracy,” and start as our starting point to build the E-steering way.

I was very clear from the start that I don’t want to have a holacracy way or a sociocracy way or something else’s way, but my business unit’s way. But holacracy and sociocracy became our key inspirations as a starting point.

So then we use that as, okay, now we are taking away the hierarchies. Around May 2018, we took away the hierarchies, we set up the circle structures around the cross-functional must-win battles, and then sub-teams around that. We said that “E-steering leader” became the title for all of us, and then we started to work with the structure.

So structure came first, but then we followed it up with processes. We said, okay, now how do we replace people management processes in a self-managed organization? And then we said, okay, after the processes, we along with the processes need to work on the mindset and the behavior part.

Then we had to work on how to train people to take conflicts because before they could just avoid conflicts or escalate them, and now neither is what is healthy for a self-managed organization. So you have to be able to get people on board with taking conflicts, taking prioritization discussions, taking decision-making into areas that they are not comfortable with from the past, which were traditionally given to managers to take decisions on. This kind of stuff was something that we had to step-by-step work on.

So after the “why,” the “how,” and the “how” was these three elements of structures, processes, and mindsets, and we started to work with all three of them around that timeframe.

Lisa: I think that’s a really good way you’ve divided into those three things. One thing I was reading in some of your blogs that you’ve written to chart your progress, you mentioned that you often get asked this question by people like “How do you work without managers? How does that work?” I think you articulate in a really good way how you’ve taken those management roles and kind of split them into functional and people roles. Can you say something about that?

Vivek: I think the fundamental thing is that just because you don’t have formal people managers doesn’t mean that you don’t need people management. I think everybody wants to work with people development, or there is a need for people to have support from their organizations in that area. I think you cannot escape away from the fact that people need help and coaching and mentoring in these kind of discussions.

So what we have done is that by splitting these almost impossible roles of saying this one guy who is gonna be perfect to lead you functionally and is gonna be perfect to lead you from a people management point of view - we are just shattering that myth that such a person exists and calling a spade a spade basically.

Then just saying, “Okay, no, you have the option in a self-managed organization to choose your functional leader and your people support leader.” In the functional area, we have tried to decentralize that traditional functional leader role so that not a lot of the decision-making and the authority is again centered around just one role.

That’s where we used holacracy’s inspiration of saying, okay, there is a role of the lead link whose focus is to look at the direction going forward, there is the facilitator who is trying to make sure that the meetings are running in a non-hierarchical way keeping the team in the present, and the secretary which is the history keeper and the decision processor.

In a traditional organization, these would be all roles in a single person. I think that is a huge amount of authority and decision-making that gets consolidated into one role. So by decentralizing those roles, we have managed to get the decentralization of functional leadership.

Then when we look at the people leadership role, what we have said is that first and foremost, it has to be employee-driven. So you have to take the self-ownership of your own development - that’s the fundamental aspect of what we do. We provide you a sparring partner so that you are challenged on your own development plans.

Maybe you’re not comfortable receiving feedback or collecting feedback about you and your work with your colleagues, so then there can be somebody to help facilitate that discussion to make it not personal but make it action-oriented, or make it in a way that you are able to synthesize the message and take the learnings out of it for yourself.

So the self and the sparring partner became two key roles within the development and the feedback loops. But we also kept that we can clearly see that employee well-being is an area that the traditional manager has been used to taking. So we created well-being ambassador roles to be able to take some of these well-being, safety, fun at work - a lot of these items that we kind of clubbed together. People volunteer to step up into those roles as well-being ambassadors.

So I think that kind of became the way we decentralized both the functional areas but also the people areas.

Lisa: When I was reading about what you’d written around sparring partners and also employee-owned development and employee-owned feedback, I was really curious to learn more about that. How have you built a feedback culture in this kind of decentralized business unit?

Vivek: I would still say that we are still building it. I think it’s important to say this is a work in progress. Traditionally, it’s used that once a year you get feedback from your manager - that’s what you’re used to. I would say that the sense of ownership and the way every employee and every manager dealt with it, even though there was a standard process around it, I think the value that was there for each employee and for each manager varied.

I think what we wanted to kind of challenge was that, okay, now in this approach, you are not limited to going to your manager. You can choose the sparring partner of your choice. So some people would still go to their former managers, but some are not. So you can already see that there is a shift of some people who are like, “Okay, I would like to get feedback on a different area or a new competency, or maybe I just didn’t feel comfortable with the former manager.”

So there can be various reasons for why I would choose a different sparring partner, but then I make the dialogue more authentic. So getting the dialogue authentic was the first value increase.

Then we said, okay, now it’s not just that you have a sparring partner - you cannot sit in your own shell and ask the sparring partner to give you feedback. He’s a facilitator of your feedback. You have to get feedback from the people you work with.

That became the next step - that people are going to, “Okay, now these are the five or six people I work with most often, so I invite either written or verbal feedback from them,” and get that process going. Once that feedback loop is completed, then you have a dialogue with the sparring partner on that feedback.

We have tried to keep it guideline-based so that people can do it as a formal process where they call for a meeting. If you see the video that we have released on the self-managed development, that’s one of the examples where they have done it as a formal setting. In some cases, they say, “No, I like to get written feedback on email and get the feedback there,” and then take the dialogue with that. Both are possible, and then the sparring partner is there.

The sparring partners are there to challenge you, not just be your buddy to say all the nice things. What we have trained the sparring partners is that they have to also challenge the person - “Why did you choose those people for feedback? Why not choose some of the other people who have given you feedback? Why did you choose those questions for feedback? What do you think from the feedback that you received?” These kind of things is what we’ve trained the sparring partner to challenge on, and therefore then help build the development plan of the employee together with them.

Lisa: That’s really interesting. So it’s very individual depending on your preferences for how you’d like to receive feedback, and then your sparring partner is sort of coaching you and maybe asking some questions and encouraging you to reflect on that.

Vivek: Yes, and for us, the next step is to get this as a natural feeling. Because right now, feedback and asking for feedback - both giving and asking feedback - is not natural yet. It is still in that uncomfort zone of “Does it get personal or not get personal?”

I think we have experience of people opening up and feeling attacked, and we have people who are not asking for feedback and hiding somewhere sometimes. So we have both aspects of this. What we want to get to is a level where it’s safe to give feedback, that it’s just a normal process. As regularly as possible, people give feedback to each other.

I think that the whole giving and feedback process is about helping your colleagues improve. If you come with that kind of a mindset, and if you think from that angle, both the receiver and the giver are able to move beyond the uncomfort part of feedback. But that’s what we need to continuously work with people on.

Lisa: I’m curious what the relationship is between this employee-owned feedback process and, for example, pay performance. Have you decoupled those?

Vivek: We have decoupled those. I think that’s one of the things that we are different from the traditional setup in Danfoss. We have decoupled the performance and the feedback process, and actually that’s also where we are discussing a lot with corporate HR and other functions because they are also curious how we are doing this.

We feel that by decoupling it, you actually get authentic feedback loops instead of driving it either from the manager point of view or from the employee point of view, because neither is the right approach. You have to get value on both sides.

I think you need to do performance feedback and you need to do normal feedback discussions. I still believe there is a learning curve yet to kind of differentiate the two. So by keeping it separate, we have actually encouraged people to be more authentic on the feedback part. But you cannot escape away from giving critical feedback also on performance, and that’s a part that they are also developing the team into as we progress.

Lisa: I’m interested in hearing more about this mindset and behaviors, this third part that you mentioned, particularly because there are people in your team (yourself included) who were formerly managers, and now you’ve taken away that sort of title of managers. You mentioned about the sparring partners and that they’ve been trained to sort of ask questions and coach. So it seems like there’s been some work there. How have you navigated that mindset and behavioral shift?

Vivek: I think mindset and the behavioral shift is the toughest and the most intangible of the three. Structure is very visible - day one I took away the hierarchy and the titles, and people were like, “Okay, that’s visible.”

Processes come next because then people say, “Oh, but how did you do your split of your performance and your feedback process?” That becomes the next question.

Then the third part is, “But now how do you actually get people to give and receive feedback?” That’s where the mindset and behavior part come in, and that’s the most intangible of the three and the most important also. Because that’s where you need to invest the time as a leader in a self-managed organization to help the organization lift its traditional soft skills base to a much higher level to be able to handle these kind of discussions.

What we have done is that we have done the training and also the hands-on and made the space safe for people to try it. I think that’s the only way you can do it. So we give people training on communication, on facilitation, on the rules of holacracy, we give training on conflict resolution - the psychology of it and how to deal with it, what is your style of conflict resolution, and how can you try different things. Same with questioning techniques and so on and so forth.

Then you have to make people feel safe to try, because if you say, “I’ve been trained,” but the moment they try to do something, it’s like, “Oh, but you cannot do it,” you should be able to do it. Making that safe space has been the second element.

I think then people just using it and trying it, and then coming back with their own stories around, “Okay, I tried something that I could not try in the former organization, and I got things done better, faster, or surprisingly in a different new way than I thought from before.” Those stories become the catalyst to further mindset and behavior change. That’s probably the elements.

Lisa: What have you noticed for yourself personally as a leader in role-modeling a lot of these mindset and behavioral shifts? What have you learned? What’s been challenging for you?

Vivek: I think first and foremost, it’s important that it’s a personal change for anybody, so including me. It’s not to any leader who is trying to do this that I would say, “Don’t think of this as something happening to the team, think of this happening to you first and then to the team.”

Even though I have been a very strong believer over the last two to three years that this is the future way of working, that this is where we can have more decentralized decision-making, that we will be more purpose-driven, that we’ll be more network-driven instead of hierarchical, and so on and so forth…

What we have been brought up with and what has been our genes from university onwards is everything on the traditional hierarchy. So giving up on that hierarchical style - I call this victim-savior mindset or parent-child mindset - that “I am the manager, I am the leader, so my job is to save the world, to make decisions, and to have the right answers to every question,” and to saying that, “No, I don’t have the answers, but I can help you find the right answers, or I can maybe even help you find the right questions” - that is the change.

It’s that shift of my own leadership style to move from that traditional way to a more self-managed way where the leader is now more a facilitator and an enabler, providing the transparency for the team to make the right decisions, and putting the right context for the team to take those decisions. I think that’s been a big shift.

I have caught myself initially a lot stuck between, “Am I hierarchical or non-hierarchical in this decision? Did I take a hierarchical decision because I disagreed with somebody?” And then, “Okay, now I’m saying it’s self-managed and you can take your own decisions in that area.” That was a big change, and of course that’s something that you have to get comfortable with as a leader personally. That was a change.

Getting the team on board with the “why” - that was also a very big aspect of the change because I might believe it, but the team doesn’t necessarily all believe it because they don’t see the burning platform. They’re like, “But we are fine exactly how we are.” So that was a big transformation to do that also.

And then trying to build the “why” and building it asking for a log - because that’s one of the things we say, “They want to have a roadmap of things that are coming ahead,” but there is no roadmap and there are no bullets. So I say, “But how are you sure that this will work?” I have a belief that this is what will work. I ask you to take a lot of faith in me in kind of working this way and then switching if things are not working. So what I say is that I promise that we will switch if it doesn’t work, and then moving it in that direction.

I think that’s also some of the things that has changed in me. Before, as a leader, I am used to giving, “Okay, this is the plan, there is the roadmap, the execution,” and then we follow that. Instead of saying, “No, I don’t have all the answers. This is the general direction we are going in, and then we will change and modify to the betterment of the team as we go.” So in those three aspects, I would say it has changed me as a leader.

Lisa: One transformation is, of course, the former managers shifting, and then there’s also this other piece of the non-managers sort of stepping up, so to speak. How has that been in your division, and how have people been handling that? Because I hear often stories of people saying, “We’ve announced self-management. Why aren’t people taking the initiative, and why are they still waiting?” How has that been for you?

Vivek: I think that’s one of the very fundamental questions of the success. A lot of people ask me, “How will you scale, and how will you see if it’s a success or not?” I think the fundamental success factor of how organizations can work in this direction is this balance of stepping back and stepping forward.

If either of that is an imbalance, then you will not succeed with self-management. Because if people aren’t stepping back, then you will call it whatever new sticker, but it’s still the same old people taking the same decisions in whatever new ways. If you don’t have enough people stepping up, then you will actually have chaos because then what will happen is the people who have given away the decision-making and have stepped back, and now suddenly there is a vacuum of decision-making and there is a vacuum of prioritization of daily activities and tasks and so on and so forth.

So this balance is very critical, and I would say that one of the reasons we’ve been successful - and I’m very proud of the team about that - is that they have managed to handle this balance in a good way. It was step by step that for whatever areas that people could not step up in, we said, “Okay, but the former people have to take those decisions as long as we don’t have people stepping in.” And then we started to see the success cases of people stepping in.

So we had a hardware engineer who wanted to test project management. In a traditional role, I would have to open a job requisition for a project manager, and he would actually be last on the list to qualify because he’s just a hardware engineer and has just done the project management training. Everybody else would apply with at least five to ten years of project management experience.

Now we gave him the chance to run project management on projects, and then he showed that the project is successful and working. Then it made other people around him feel safe about that space.

Another case: we brought people’s passions to work. We have some of the pictures that you see behind me - these are taken by one of our test engineers, and he is passionate about photography. We kind of brought his passion of photography and videography to the videos that we made. So the videos that we have launched is not done by a marketing department, but is done by the team, including the script and including the actual editing of the videos. So suddenly you have bringing people’s whole self to work.

The last one was one of the stories where one of the former product specialists changed the process around new prototype creation. He’s been doing this for 15 years, and he came back and said, “Wait, this is broken. I have been doing it for 15 years. I have said it many years - actually gave up 10 years back because I was so tired of telling the organization that has given - but now I am trying it for one time and see if it works.” And it did, and then we changed the process, and then he got to announce it to the team and change it around. Now people are working around the new prototype process in the way that he said.

This is what then builds it up, and that’s where the stepping up and the stepping back balance has to be there. But it also requires the managers to kind of say, “I don’t have all the answers, and yes, if you are asking any questions, I will try to give you my input as everybody else is giving input. You can take my experience as an input giver, but you can choose to not listen to it.” That takes a lot more courage also from the former manager to say, “Maybe my recommendation is not taken in as the way forward,” and I am very happy to be working with colleagues who have managed to step back in that aspect. So I think that balance has been quite strong.

Lisa: I think that balance between stepping back and stepping up is really key. It sounds like as well, I think a misconception sometimes about self-management is, “Oh, everyone can do whatever they want now,” which is not the case. In those examples you’ve given to me, it’s a good example of if someone has a proposal or a suggestion or sees an opportunity or challenge, they say, “Great, try it, test it out, and if it works, then it works,” rather than a complete free-for-all. It’s very much experiment and test and learn and iterate.

Vivek: I think that’s the main difference. People think it’s chaos, it is not consensus, it is not everybody can get what they want. I think it’s an important element that you need to have - it’s not about self-managed people, it’s about self-managed teams, because I think a lot of people confuse self-management with self-management. But what we’re talking about is how do we get self-managed as a team. So that if we as a team are having different viewpoints, how do we move forward to fulfill the purpose of our team in the best possible way? That’s the discussion that is about. And that means all of these discussions - decision-making and conflicts and priorities and all of that stuff - we need to be able to handle it.

Lisa: People often ask me, “Is it possible to have a self-managing team or unit within a traditional hierarchical organization?” especially when you’re talking about a large organization. I’m interested in how that works, how the E-steering team kind of interacts with the rest of the organization that’s structured in a different way, and also how the rest of the organization is viewing this sort of experiment. Are they curious, or are they a bit threatened by it, or a bit skeptical of it? How is that dynamic working?

Vivek: I think it’s a whole spectrum of emotions. What I fundamentally believe is that any organizations of the future have to be preparing themselves for this combination of traditional versus new. You will not get every company becoming a Buurtzorg. They’re not going to split themselves up into 4,000 business units all running self-managed with very little common principles. So that is a CEO-driven decision, and he has taken ten years of developing that organization into that kind of a way.

I see the way that we are doing it is going to be kind of the template that you will see - pockets of business units and teams within large organizations that are gonna work in this way in collaboration with the traditional businesses. That’s what we very clearly discussed - that’s why the ambidextrous part of the discussion.

When I discussed with the head of Danfoss HR and all of that, that’s what we’re discussing - that it’s not about making the whole of the company into this kind of a self-managed way, it’s how do we work together and empower more teams who are having the right context for this.

For example, we are acquiring some startups right now. Those startups, they are not gonna be operating in the same way as the traditional business units of the past. So now we have a way - okay, now if it in the answers, we can handle both large acquisitions and startup acquisitions and then integrate them in a way that doesn’t feel suffocating for them, that they’re now stuck in this big world of bureaucracy and traditional hierarchy. But they have an alternative.

I think that’s the discussion we’re taking at the highest level within Danfoss - that okay, we have both options available.

With the different stakeholders, I have a lot of people who are curious. They want to do this - “How can we do this, Vivek?” Every day some manager within Danfoss or leaders are saying, “How do you do this? How can we do this ourselves?” And then there are others who are like, “This is - stay away, stay away” - this is known as anytime I talk about it, people are like, “Okay, this is not meant for us, it cannot work for us, it is not possible for us.”

So I think you have the entire spectrum, and what I say is always that with any such kind of a large dramatic shift that we are talking about here, it’s more important to consider giving. First you have people who are completely skeptical, and then you have people who are curious, and then you have people who will follow you.

It’s that progression we are on, and I think I am quite happy to say that we have moved past the skeptical part to very heavily curious and, “How can we also try some of these things?” And that’s how the progress of the interaction has been now with the rest of the organization. Because they have realized that we are not going away, they realize that we know what we are doing, and we are successful in what we are doing. So then they are saying, “Okay, so how can we learn and adopt, and is there something that we could learn from?” Not necessarily just copy-pasting what we’re doing, but individual elements of what we are doing is also a progress.

Lisa: What are some of the things that you’re measuring or tracking in terms of success factors for this? You mentioned some really great anecdotal examples there about prototyping a new project process and someone stepping into a project management role and doing a great job. What are some other things that you were tracking in terms of knowing, “Is this working or not? Is this successful or not?”

Vivek: Actually, we are doing a survey every quarter on fundamental few aspects. We said speed, agility, motivation, empowerment, transparency, and autonomy - those are the six factors. We said these are the six factors that we want to measure - how people are feeling as they progress on this journey. Are we improving on this?

It’s still subjective, but by keeping it on a regular rhythm, now we are on the third round of the surveys. We have actually, we feel that we can start to see if we are moving in all the parameters. For example, speed is, “How do we feel about decision-making speed in the business unit?” When we talk about agility, we talk about, “How many times have you changed roles since the last survey?”

So we have these sub-questions that kind of try to trigger what behaviors would impact those elements, and then kind of give feedback on the scoring in the rating and stuff that they can give on those elements.

Other than that, that’s the fundamental, I would say, the measuring factor for us. Always the business impact is a murmuration factor, right? So if the business is not growing, then people will say, “Yeah, but it’s not working.” Of course, then I have the naysayers also saying, “But how can you prove that your business is growing because of self-management? Can you prove that your business is growing because of hierarchy?”

So I think it’s some of it is still faith, and I ask the leaders, fellow leaders, to kind of also take that. If it works, then take it on that faith also. But of course, a lot of people want to have very objective ratings and scorings of every parameter and how, “Maybe you have lost efficiency because of this because of decentralization.” I get challenged on those aspects - “What about lack of efficiency because of decentralized decision-making?” I said, “Okay, but what about speed increase because of decentralization? Can I compare efficiency with speed?”

So it’s the golden million dollar question that all consultants out there are looking at - how can I prove that this is the right model for the future? And that’s, I think, the wrong mindset because that’s making self-managed versus hierarchy, and it is not. It should be ambidextrous - how can we improve the future of working? And if you ask yourself that question, then you would certainly adapt some elements of the self-management philosophy, and that should be enough for your team to be better, to be more successful than you mean to be.

Lisa: There’s some good metrics and I like your comment there about the mindset as well. It always makes me laugh as well that people are so skeptical and keen to point out, “Well, where’s the proof that this works?” And as you say, there’s no proof that hierarchy works either, and there’s a lot of proof that unnecessary bureaucracy, for example, costs trillions of dollars and all of that kind of stuff.

Vivek: Exactly, but that research is not valid, I think! Come on, it’s very funny. I try to give the examples of the Army and the Special Forces. Traditionally, the Armed Forces are organized in a very, very hierarchical manner, but then they have these Special Force units that are completely non-hierarchical and running.

So are they not coexisting? If you take your family, if you take your friends group, and if that’s the way that we are working in two-thirds of our lives, why can’t we work one-third of our life at work in those kind of similar ways also?

I think that’s the basic assumption, and then we’ll say, “But I don’t trust my colleagues. I don’t feel safe enough with my colleagues. I cannot empower my colleagues.” All of that stuff.

Good, now you are getting to the core of the discussion - that you want to increase trust in work, you want to increase safety at work, you want to increase collaboration at work. That means you don’t have to have the same kind of equation that you might have with your best friend, but you still need to increase trust. That delta is what we are trying to talk about. And that’s what I would say as a leader - that’s my focus. How can we get people to bring more authenticity to their work so that they are better at doing what they are passionate about?

Lisa: I’m curious about - for you personally, you seem to be really passionate about this. Even before you started this journey with the E-steering unit, it sounds like you’ve always been someone who’s been very curious about exploring and learning about these new ways of working and looking ahead and so on. What is it personally that motivates you with all of this?

Vivek: I think for me, what personally motivates this is really this whole aspect about how we can bring the employee experience and engagement to a whole different level. As a leader, I have seen around and being in the organization long enough to know that people are not always happy doing the stuff that they are doing. And that is definitely a lot of efficiency that is lost for the organization.

I cannot count it in the trillions of GDPs suddenly, but I feel it’s real. And if it’s real, what can I do about it? I found that this could be something that we could do something about. I guess it was just that question - what can I do to make sure that as a leader, I am preparing the teams and the organization to deliver more than they can, than they are doing now?

We all know that there’s a limitation of resources and constraints around money and people and all of that stuff. So there is this hidden potential that can be unleashed around people, and it requires not really investment in hiring of people so much, but getting people thinking differently.

I think that’s what drives me actually - being able to unleash the power of the team and the organization to the extent that they create an extremely high level of customer satisfaction, and then the business grows. So I think I’m just trying to think from, “How can I help the business grow and customers be happier while unleashing the potential of the employees?” I felt this was the way, and that was exciting for me to solve through this kind of journey.

Lisa: Finally, what words of advice would you give to listeners who are interested in developing self-managing teams, or perhaps they’re already in a self-managing team and they’re wrestling with some of the things that you’ve mentioned? What kind of insights from the journey could you share?

Vivek: I think first and foremost, be clear on your “why” and take that question with the team. I think that’s the part that people probably miss because they go jump into the self-management details, but why do I want to go self-management?

I just talked to one of the teams - they were working in a more agile projects way, and they could not see what would be the role of a line manager in such a team. I said, “Okay, now you have got to your ‘why’ because your ‘why’ is what is the role of a line manager in a completely agile project team?” Take that as a discussion of “why” as part of it.

So I think getting your “why” with the team is the first step.

The second step is get started. A lot of people will question, challenge, and say, “Hey, what is the proof? What is the stuff?” You need to get started on this journey and make yourself resilient to all the challenges that you will get on - “But this doesn’t work and see I told you, and this is not working,” and yada yada yada. But to start making those changes, micro changes every day.

I think this is the part that I see that most leaders - they want change happening to them and to their organization. They say, “Oh, but if the CEO decides, or if my president decides, or if my vice president decides…” I said, “Yeah, but what are you deciding? Are you not having N people who are reporting to you as a manager, and can you not change your team and setup?” “Ah, but it doesn’t work for me.” I said, “Oh, this is where people are getting lost” - that they think that it will only happen if the whole organization and the people around them change. And that is not true. So you have to start with yourself.

And I think the third part is structure is important, but focusing on processes and mindset is equally important. If you say, “Oh, I’ll change to self-managed, and now I am running self-managed,” and it becomes like a dictatorship, or it becomes “do whatever everybody wants,” and it becomes chaos, then you are already lost. So you have to remember all three elements have to go in balance - that structure, process, and mindset have to be supported together. So I think that’s the three things I would say to any fellow leader to try to work.

Lisa: Vivek, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story. I think it’s such an inspiring and practical example. And for people, as you say, who are stuck or feeling stuck perhaps in the middle of an organization somewhere, to realize that actually you can do more than you think, and it starts with self. So thank you very much for sharing your insights.

Vivek: Thank you.