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Episode Transcript
Lisa: So Edwin, what is it about self-managing teams that interests you personally?
Edwin: It started a couple of years back, back in my internship. Let’s say that’s 8-9 years back. I did an internship and a research on new ways of work. Back then it was called Enterprise 2.0 and social networks, so how social tools like Facebook was coming up could help the informal networks within an organization.
So my interest was - I was pretty intrigued back then but didn’t do that much with it. I started some consultancy roles, but I was always looking at how can I empower the teams to be more autonomous. And I joined the management team here at the Rotterdam office at Incentro four years ago, and then I saw the formal networks within Incentro and also how the employees are empowered within Incentro, and the big difference it was for our employees and other companies in our market.
So what I was trying to do together with a couple of management team members back then was to find new ways of work, how we can get even more empowerment within our office and how we can be more transparent in order to reach more happiness for our employees. And yeah, the most fascinating thing for me about self-management is this empowerment thing - how can I get and give more energy to my colleagues and other people to get more out of themselves and to reach their goals.
Lisa: So Incentro was interested in investigating like new ways of working and that’s where you kind of came in to start introducing self-management and things like that. So it kind of was born out of an interest in finding new ways of working, or was there a business driver as well?
Edwin: The mission of Incentro is digital happiness. So we believe that if our employees are happy, the rest will follow. So they will achieve excellent results and the clients will be happy as well, but it all starts with happy employees. And it’s digital because we are an IT consulting company, but the most important part is the happiness.
So every office is completely autonomous within Incentro, and every office has its own strategy on how to reach the highest happiness level possible for their employees. And within Rotterdam office, we did some research on all the challenges we had and on the new ways of working, and then we came up with of course the book “Reinventing Organizations.” And yeah, once we read that, once we read some inspiring articles about Buurtzorg as well, we defined a vision and a strategy on how to implement self-management within the Rotterdam office. And that was about three to four years ago, and yes, so then it really starts.
Lisa: What were your starting points or what have been the milestones along your journey towards becoming a self-managed organization?
Edwin: Let’s start at Incentro wasn’t an ordinary company at first. So the basis in Incentro is already that we are a great place to work, happiness is our mission. And still we have some challenges with finding new employees, retaining the employees, and keeping them challenged as well.
So when we started, we’re defined and we tried to - a little bit in an old-fashioned way - as a management team, we had a vision and we had a plan how to implement it within the organization. And of course all the employees said they didn’t want it the way we proposed. So there was one of the biggest learning points - is that we tried to create the self-managed teams ourselves, and then they could choose in what team they want to join. But yeah, and we tried to motivate them, and if they didn’t choose, we helped them choose a team. But that wasn’t very helpful because they wanted to choose their team themselves and find their own purpose.
So there was a pretty disappointing start for us, but the vision about how can we get our employees more empowered and how could we get them even more involved in the process and getting more happy as a result of that… So it was - we called it a kind of opt-in process. So there was one team that was very interested in starting as a self-managed team, and we did a lot of coaching, a lot of helping that team in what it takes to be a working team and working almost a working company within a company but then in a smaller level.
So when they hit a couple of successes as a self-team, they were ambassadors. They were completely autonomous, they were completely free to decide how they spend their money, which client they want to acquire, which partnership they started. And other employees of the Rotterdam office were intrigued by that as well and wanted to start their own team. And in a while there were five teams, and let’s say that was over a year and a half ago. There were five self-managed teams, but there wasn’t any decision-making process over the complete office. So we had to - we still had some employees that weren’t in any team, so they were part of the office but not part of a team.
And so we decided to start with two other things. One is called “cel-deling” in Dutch. In English it’s something like “cell division,” but it’s a meeting where every cell sends out one representative. So in that meeting we discuss all topics that concern all the teams or the office because back then we didn’t have - we did still have a very small management team. But by starting to create a meeting for all the cells and the management team, we took all the decisions into the hands of the employees. So that was a very important milestone and we stopped with management team meetings and things behind closed doors and tried to be as transparent as possible.
So also transparent in all the shared folders and all the information that was needed to run a successful self-team. You need all the information and for that as well. So we created dashboards for the financials, we created trainings so that we can share our experience on certain topics like how do you do your sales, how does marketing work, recruitment, finance - all those topics we did trainings for everyone who wants to join.
And so by creating those teams, by creating a process on making decisions with your office, we started beginning to look a little bit like a self-managed organization, but still very immature. So it was very hard to make those decisions. The process was very long because everyone has its opinion, but when doing it let’s say for a couple of months, everyone gets familiar with the process, everyone knows what their role is all about.
And we stopped as a management team as well. It was a thing, let’s say 3 to 4 months later, we stopped as a management team. So there wasn’t any manager anymore you could hide behind. And the management team that was left, it was already a lot smaller than traditional offices, we reformed as a support team. So my role was managing director and now I am coach, and I’m supporting and I’m helping all those teams, trying to be as much helpful as possible with my experience and the knowledge that I have.
So no management team anymore, five self-managed teams. We had a process on decision-making and there was - we introduced a thing called “task forces.” So there are teams across all other teams based on specific topics. For example, sales and marketing, and also one for finance. So within every office there is one role that is responsible for, let’s say finance. Then we create a task force for all finance roles within the teams, and we discuss - we only discuss the finance topics and decide on those topics. And that helped a lot with collaborating between the teams on specific topics and helping each other with the experiences they had on different topics within their teams.
Lisa: What are some of the practices that you’ve developed? For example, you talked about decision-making. What process do you use for decision-making in Incentro now?
Edwin: We are, for the last three months, we used consent for decision-making, and it was really helpful because we started with a minor step back. That was deciding which role you had in the meeting and from which role you are deciding, because in meetings our colleagues tend to decide based on their own opinion and not based on the responsibility they have from the role they are attending the meeting.
Lisa: Were you sort of inspired somewhat by Holacracy and then consent is more sociocracy? Is that the case?
Edwin: Yeah, that’s really the case. Because of course we looked at Holacracy, but the thing with Holacracy is it’s really strict and you really have to follow it by the letter almost, and then you can use the software they provided as well. But we really don’t like the processes and documenting all things possible, but we really like the clarity about the roles and some things of the process. So we borrowed the roles concept of Holacracy indeed, and we borrowed the decision-making process of sociocracy.
And that is not at its final stage yet. So we still have to decide if this is how we want to work. But I think the most important change over the years is not that we are a self-managed organization, I think it’s more that we are a learning organization. There is a theory called “deliberate developing organization,” and I think we are more leaning towards that philosophy. So that every challenge we face, we try to do it our best way possible, and if we fail, we learn from that challenge, and next time we will do it differently.
Lisa: Has it been difficult or challenging for any of the management team to shift from being kind of managers to more on an equal with other team members? Has it been tricky for them to let go at all?
Edwin: Yeah, of course, even for me. And it’s because we worked the traditional way. And it’s still not that traditional because we only - we are working based on the principles of Eckart Wintzen, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him. So his philosophy was that every office is completely autonomous. That’s what we had already. And if it grows bigger than 60 employees, you split up into two. So that’s why Incentro already has nine offices for only 300 employees. And every office has a very small management team, and we don’t have any staff functions like HR, IT, and Finance - we all did that within the offices.
So it wasn’t that traditional, but still the management team was the team that decided the strategy, the innovations, who to hire, and all things that were concerning the profit or loss of the company. And we always did it because we thought we would help the employee by deciding. But when you change to a self-managed organization and you decide everything for your employees, that’s just not helping them, it’s getting in their way.
So once in a while I try to make a decision, and then I turn it back and ask the employees and my colleagues in the office: what was your opinion and what do you think we should do? So sometimes it’s hard, but overall we really like to change because we could share our knowledge.
Lisa: So as a coach, what are some of the things that you’ve supported teams with? What are some of the struggles or challenges that they’ve had?
Edwin: One of the nicest things there is as being a coach is that you have the overall picture on the office and the specific teams and the maturity of the teams and how they are performing as a self-managed team. So you can share the practices of one team that is very successful with the teams that are less successful. So that is very interesting, and I can share my experience on how to be a team.
So it’s not all about selling your product to the clients, it’s also about being the best. I wrote the article about the “Minimum Viable Team.” So being a team is more than only a couple of people together, it’s about the shared vision, a shared purpose, but also which personalities are involved in the team and what’s the right balance between those personalities. And of course if you ask the team themselves, then I think they are completely balanced, but looking from the coach perspective, you see a lot of gaps. So helping them, showing a mirror, asking the right questions, and helping to create a shared vision and shared purpose for those teams.
Lisa: And would you say there are certain soft skills that are useful or essential when working in self-managing teams?
Edwin: Yeah, the soft skills - communication is even more important when you are a team player within self-managed teams than is important when you are just consultants. And social skills like communication and also feedback - giving feedback to your team members is very hard at first because you don’t want to be that rude or that direct. Even though it’s sometimes hard to be - they are almost friends with each other because they are a team and working closely to each other. But you still have to give feedback, and you still have to decide what amount of raise do you give your fellow team member.
Lisa: I’m curious about - because I read an article about the salary process that you developed at Incentro back in 2015, I think, when you had a decision to make salaries open and for people to set their own pay rises. Could you share a bit about how that happened and the things that you put in place to make sure that it runs smoothly, so to speak?
Edwin: Yeah, it’s a really nice article. And back in 2015, we decided we want to decide the salary raise with the complete office. And back then we still had a management team and a managing director in every office. But what we did was what we did with the self-management transformation as well. So we try to give them as much relevant information as possible without overflowing them with all the information, to try to train them in what is the impact of this decision on their own office level and also on their own salary.
And by giving the information, we had a lot of discussion and we try to be there, help them to see the complete picture of the office and what this decision is all about. And after giving the information, every employee agreed with - in the office decided the amount of raise, the average amount of raise for the complete office. And afterwards we had a discussion and we discussed the amount and also the comments they added to it. So the background information why they decided that percentage.
And based on that discussion, we decided as an office: “Okay, this year we should reserve this amount of money for all the raises.” And afterwards - that was the beginning of every year. We did that for a couple of years, and then the management team decided which everybody gets what percentage on individual level. It worked okay for the first couple of years. We learned a lot.
But that doesn’t work when you are in a self-managed office. So within our Rotterdam office, we took it a couple of steps further, and what we did last year, and I think that’s very interesting, is what we did is we did some sort of a retrospective of the last couple of years - how did we do it, what did we learn from it, what did we do well, what can we improve, we try to get inspired by articles online and by other offices. But it was very interesting that we try to find other articles about setting a salary within self-managed organizations. And when we asked it in a couple of communities, they pointed to the article that you referred to. So that was hard finding really inspiring articles for that.
So we decided to create our own process. And what we did was every self-team - so we had the task force I mentioned before about finance - and every self-team did a proposal on what average salary raise they wanted as a team, together with the forecast they have about the next couple of months. So every team gives its proposal, and then as a finance task force, of course you see five proposals in our office and you see the financial picture of the complete office if it is possible. And we used consent for this as well.
So if there is no obstruction or everyone approves, then it’s fairly easy, then it’s okay. But if there are obstructions or there is a lot of feedback about the proposal, then the team goes back with a lot of homework to create a new proposal that suits the team.
Lisa: So the evolution of the salary process then, if I understand correctly, is that now the finance task force is involved in shaping the proposal, and you then use the consent decision-making process?
Edwin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So normally we - at first we did it as a complete office with all the employees for the complete office. And now every team is able to decide their own salary raise, and within the teams, every team has its own process on dividing it and fairly dividing it into the team members.
Lisa: And what are kind of current challenges, you know, areas that maybe you can see might need some evolution in the future?
Edwin: That’s interesting because what we are doing the last year is every quarter we do a retrospective again on what can we improve and what do we have to do to make it even better. Because self-management is not the goal - the happiness is the goal. So every time we are looking if we are moving towards happiness of our employees, and if not, then we are changing things.
So that’s also for the next couple of months - we are looking for ways to collaborate on a deeper level on specific tasks like recruitment and sales, because we have those roles exclusively within the teams. But if you are a consultant for, let’s say, 32 to 40 hours, then it’s very hard to be a recruiter as well because it’s also about relationship management and also about keeping in contact with the right partners. So together with all the recruitment responsibles within the teams, we are looking for ways to improve that for the teams. And that’s for recruitment and sales as well. But I think that are the main challenges for us at the moment.
And a couple of challenges we had last quarter was, for example, the clarity on what’s the purpose of the task force, what are the scope and responsibilities. So we learned from Holacracy again for the definition of the different initiatives within Rotterdam. Clarity was one of the most important things. And also we try to simplify everything.
I was inspired by Buurtzorg - Jos de Blok, he has a philosophy of trying to make everything as simple as possible so that the self-managed teams are mainly focused on their purpose, helping the world around them with best healthcare possible. So as a support, as a coach in a support team, I try to do that as well - make everything as simple as possible and try to help all the other teams with being the best consultants possible.
Lisa: And when you say about measuring or measuring everything against employee happiness, that that’s kind of the most important thing in Incentro, do you have a way of measuring that?
Edwin: We started by using a Google Form with just one question: on a scale from one to ten, how happy are you and why isn’t it higher? But over the years we tried a couple of apps. But about a year ago we created our own app called “Mood Horse,” and that app is measuring on specific topics that we decided we want to know about happiness and engagement to help us give more insights on the happiness level of our employees, but also on what’s the wellness and how can we work on things like purpose and also office happiness.
Lisa: I understand that you’re currently writing a playbook about self-management. What advice would you give to listeners who are hoping to create or develop self-managing teams of their own?
Edwin: The book is a playbook, it’s some sort of a library of all the tools I created, I co-created, helping this office, and I’m already sharing that with other offices and other companies as well. It’s more of a collection of tools and practices you can use to create your self-team.
But the one thing I would advise, and the one thing I hear is that they want to implement self-management because they hear a lot about it. And I think that’s - without thinking about what is this about, what’s their vision on the future work, what’s their vision on what they want with the company, and then how can self-management help reaching that goal, reaching your purpose.
So stop using self-management as a goal - use it as a way you can reach your goal. That would be my first advice. And then there are a lot of practices you can use from self-management and from all the different practices and philosophies like Holacracy, sociocracy, and also you can create your own. But it’s all about what do you want to achieve.
Lisa: That’s good advice. So you’re leaving Incentro in May just now. Have you got plans in store for yourself? What are your plans for the next phase of your career?
Edwin: It’s kind of hard to leave Incentro for seven years. For seven years I did all different kind of stuff, and when I’m most enthusiastic about the future work, self-management, and empowering employees and my colleagues. And I want to create more impact on the world around me with my energy, with my belief on how to engage and empower your workforce or your team around you to reach new goals, and how to stay up to date with the new challenges of the world. So what I did within Incentro, I want to help other companies as well.
Lisa: Exciting! And what are your thoughts about the current landscape of work? Do you feel like there is more energy and interest for new ways of working like self-management? I think new ways of working, it’s not that it’s new, but it seems like there is more interest in it now. Do you feel the same way?
Edwin: There’s a lot of interest, and you see the same with a couple years back when for software development teams working agile and scrum ways - within Incentro we started about seven to eight years ago, and only two to three years ago it was very popular and everybody wanted to start using agile and scrum practices.
I think with self-management, or at least giving more autonomy to teams and how to collaborate with the digital workforce, these visions, these are not new practices, but somehow in 2018, it’s a time about how to change your organization into the future of work.
Lisa: And where are you getting your inspiration from currently? What organizations or thought leaders or authors kind of your role models at the moment?
Edwin: I’m really inspired by Enspiral. Of course you know them, the way they are organized as a network, it’s really inspiring for me. And that is one of the biggest inspirations, but also the practices of Buurtzorg, Jos de Blok’s work, and also a little bit differently but Ricardo Semler as well.
But most of the inspiration and things I learned the last couple of years about self-management was within Incentro and was from working with my colleagues, working closely with my colleagues on how to improve the way we collaborate and how we work together to achieve our goals. And every challenge we face, I try to find inspiration in the world out there on seminars, blog posts, podcasts like yours, and so on.
Lisa: I think there’s a really good message there about people in organizations - by all means, you know, look to other organizations or examples in books or seminars, but I think the key is practice and experimentation and finding something that works for you. And as you say, starting with a goal in mind and finding the right tools in order to get to your goal, of which self-management is just one. But self-management shouldn’t be the thing that you’re aiming for in itself.
Edwin: Exactly. Because then it gets really hard - why are we self-managed? Why do you want your employees to be more engaged? Then we progress towards your goal. Self-management is a lot harder because your employees don’t know why we are changing.
Lisa: Exactly. Can you see in the future self-management becoming the norm in terms of organizations and how we work?
Edwin: Good question. I think the term self-management is not the best chosen term, but it’s overall accepted as a term for giving more autonomy towards teams and individuals. But there are a lot of global trends that are shifting the way we collaborate and how we work together.
I also like things like the gig economy and the machine learning trends - they are all impacting how we collaborate with each other. And I cannot say self-management is the answer for those challenges, but what I can say is that you have to create an agile organization who can respond to every challenge they face and also the new digital trends as well.
I think that is one of the answers. Being a huge organization with all hierarchy and all staff officers, I think that’s definitely not the answer. And by creating autonomous teams and by creating individuals who can decide themselves and who are autonomous themselves and who can train themselves, I think there is the future.
Lisa: Thank you.
