I have a confession to make: While reading the trending book “Reinventing Organizations” from Frederic Laloux, I was observing a rising feeling of disgust in myself when self-organizing companies where portrayed. Looking for the root cause of this feeling, I realized it is the understanding of leadership that I disagree with: In the book, leadership is reduced to direct and control. From up in the hierarchy the employee is told exactly what her tasks are, her own ideas and wishes being irrelevant. Taylor’s organizational structure with its pyramidal format is depicted as root cause for this and declared as common enemy.
Unfortunately, this leadership style is reality for many people, which is certainly a reason for the book’s popularity.
My experiences of leadership and how I live it are totally different: As a leader, I have an honest interest in the individual employee. I need to understand where she sees herself, in order to be able to give targeted impulses, by bringing talent together with problem to stimulate growth. Because only based on knowledge and experience competence is built.
An employee is not just a number, but a valued individual, that strengthens the company by living into her own professional goals. In most cases, a company’s targets can be reconciled very well with an employee’s targets.
Whereas in self-organizing companies it is on me as employee alone to fight for my interests.
Only what I recognize as a chance, I am going to use for my growth. Unaware of the risk that I might not be able to discern a chance in disguise due to my yet to be built competence. I might decline working on a project that I do not see in alignment with my goal-whereas my involvement would lead to me building the aspired competence. The employee is developing slower than in an environment with a leader who could point out the connection from a higher flight level.
But is behind the wish for more self-organization not the longing for more self-determination? To give self-determination more space is in my opinion an important factor for employee loyalty and a healthy ground for creativity.
Watch out for increasing cases of demotivation, resistance, or quiet quitting in your organization- the root cause might be the longing for self-determination.
This wish can be granted within the pyramid: let the employees find their own way to a defined goal and make them take over responsibility for results. Especially seek for alignment between employee goals and company targets.
To sum it up: Self-organization is not the antidote for bad leadership and should not be applied with a watering can over an entire organization. Instead, more self-determination is key, enabling every individual to bring themselves in to reach shared goals.