Category Archives: Leadership
Radical Management. It isn’t just W.L. Gore
It isn’t just W.L. Gore who has a very unique management structure. This morning I received Adaptive Path’s Newsletter, and in it is an article explaining their own management structure or Advocate Program. It’s very interesting and I couldn’t help relate it to W.L. Gore’s structure. I’ve pasted the article below but for context first read Peter Merholz brief summary and then come back here.
P.S. If you want the article leave me your email in the comments or DM me on Twitter and I’ll forward it to you.
In the beginning
The Advocacy Program started in 2006 when Adaptive Path was about 16 people big. As we grew, an ad-hoc management structure began to emerge, and it started to look and feel like a traditional reporting structure. As an entrepreneurial and egalitarian culture, that didn’t seem to be a good fit for us. Janice Fraser in her role as CEO introduced a different approach: a 1:1 support structure we called the Advocate Program.
The Advocate Program is a communication system designed to support and empower all employees. The role of the Advocate is to support, guide, push and to advocate for your success. Every person at Adaptive Path has an Advocate, and each Advocate/Advocatee relationship is unique to its members; this is part of what makes the program so special.
Adaptive Path was founded on principles of personal responsibility, creativity, curiosity, mutual respect, self-determination, a healthy tolerance for ambiguity and a collective commitment to design that delivers great experiences that improve people’s lives. Having this foundation of shared values was an important starting point for a program that relies so heavily on interdependency.
Contributing factors are in play, of course. The Advocate Program isn’t the only organizing structure we have. The nature of the work we do (consulting, our public events, R&D) is very project-centric, and project teams define their own working practices. We have different lines of business that organize tasks and responsibilities for their work. We have smaller groups that focus on fostering ideas and thinking about UX approaches and methods. We also have multiple studios and the Studio Directors coordinate work in each location. We have a running-the-business group that herds all the cats. But for overall people-support, the Advocate Program is the glue.
Overall, the structure of Adaptive Path looks less like this:
And more like this:
The program in a nutshell
The basics:
- Everyone has an Advocate.
- Advocatees ask someone (anyone) to be their Advocate, and the partnership is confirmed by mutual agreement.
- People can change their Advocacy relationship at any time, for any reason. This is true for both the Advocatee and the Advocate.
- No closed loops; you can’t be the Advocate for someone who is Advocating for you.
- Advocates generally have no more than three Advocatees.
What do Advocates do?
- Advocates do lots of the things that in a traditional business would be done by a manager:
- Help set goals, give feedback, find inspiration and move you beyond your comfort zone.
- Help you cope and deal with issues and act as an escalation point if needed.
- Coordinate feedback, reviews and goal-setting with the people to whom you’re accountable.
From a tactical standpoint:
- Advocates and Advocatees meet at least once a month for a check-in, but many pairs meet more often.
- Advocatees work with their Advocate to set direction/goals for the year.
- Advocates gather ongoing feedback for their Advocatees.
- A listing of Advocatee/Advocate relationships is available on an internal wiki, so that everyone knows who’s with whom, and who they can go to with feedback or issues.
A good Advocate…
Like a mentor, a good Advocate is someone absolutely credible whose integrity transcends the message, be it positive or negative. They tell you things that may be hard to hear, but in a way that leaves you feeling you have been heard. An Advocate interacts with you in a way that makes you want to become better—better designer, worker, person—and makes you feel secure enough to take risks.
A good Advocate gives you confidence to rise above your own doubts and fears and supports your attempts to set stretch goals for yourself. They also identify opportunities and highlight challenges you might not have seen on your own. And on a more day-to-day level, they can help you get things done. In a previous newsletter, my colleague Pam wrote about doing some goal mapping with her Advocatee while her own Advocate helped document the process so Pam could share it in the newsletter thus fulfilling one of her own goals to write more. This is just one example of the kinds of advocacy activities happening at any given moment within Adaptive Path.
How do people choose their Advocates?
Reasons for choosing an Advocate are personal and unique to each staff member. Some common reasons that people have mentioned include:
“I chose my Advocate because he is doing the kind of work that I want to do.”
“I chose my Advocate because I trust her to tell me the honest truth…even if it’s hard to hear.”
“I chose my Advocate because she is willing to go to bat for me…and sometimes I need a kick in the butt.”
“I chose my Advocate because he’s been around and has Adaptive Path company history.”
It’s recommended that you choose an Advocate you think you can learn from, someone who has succeeded in an area you, too, want to be successful. You can choose an Advocate who does entirely different work than you, who can expose you to something new or to a different way of thinking about or approaching your work. Some of our non-practitioners, for example, find it really helpful to team up with designers to bring a little of that old sticky-note, whiteboard ‘magic’ into the way they tackle things.
Many people at Adaptive Path have held management roles in the past: they’ve led others, run teams, departments, businesses, and have coached or mentored people both formally and informally. That said, the most important qualities for an Advocate to possess are honesty, thoughtfulness and a strong desire to help their Advocatees be as successful as possible—in whatever form success takes for each person.
How has it evolved?
As we’ve grown, we’ve made some changes to help the program adapt and scale.
In 2009, we formed the Advocate Council to support the Advocate program. The Council has four members: two roles specifically for people-related functions which are Director of HR and the First Advocate. The First Advocate helps all our new hires get into the groove and find their way as an Adaptive Path newbie. The other members are selected annually by the whole company. The goal is for the selection process to be as lightweight as possible: a call goes out to fill the open seats, and a short web survey is provided for staff to select the names of people they think would be a good fit for the role. The new members are welcomed in at a company meeting.
Picking an Advocate is a personal choice, and it means you have to know who people are so that you can find a good match. With 50+ employees, that’s a lot to ask for new folks, so now there is a First Advocate who serves the role for the first three months. During this time the First Advocate encourages you to meet new people, go out to coffee or work on a project with specific co-workers, and overall helps you get socialized into the Adaptive Path culture. After three months, you’re ready to talk to potential Advocates and make an informed choice.
Once a year the Advocate Council hosts Advocacy Open Enrollment, which (like a health plan) is a designated time to refresh and renew Advocate relationships. This may mean finding a new Advocate, or it may mean renewing a current relationship—whatever is best for each employee.
There aren’t a bunch of forms to fill out or a lot of red tape. The process is designed so that nothing gets in the way of open and personal conversations between people. These conversations are key to making a good match. And a $5 coffee card given to each employee helps grease the skids for the conversations. Additionally, each person who wants to be an Advocate creates an Advocacy Profile outlining their approach to Advocacy which we post on our internal wiki to be browsed by those looking to make an Advocate/Advocatee match.
The Advocate Trophy (a bronzed unicorn—long story) is awarded quarterly to an Advocate (nominated by their Advocatee) who has gone above and beyond in supporting their Advocatee. This is a way to see what kinds of support are helpful and appreciated, and is a way to acknowledge great support models and techniques.
But wait. Isn’t this really complicated and time-consuming?
Yep. One thing we know for sure it that it’s more complicated than a traditional command and control structure. But the purpose is less about maximizing organizational efficiencies and more about supporting overall individual and collective effectiveness and creating space for people to do their best work no matter what their role is within the organization. The process relies on a level of self-awareness and self-knowledge that is important in fostering true collaboration and creative progress. The culture at Adaptive Path demands that people are intentional about charting their own course and having the internal motivation to realize their best work. This is hard, but the rewards and personal fulfillment that result make it worth the investment.
Although the specifics have evolved, the underlying principles that were the inspiration for the program are still fundamental:
- Mutual respect and trust in each other
- An honest desire to see every individual succeed
- Manage the work, not the people
- Support personal growth and inspire people to move out of their comfort zone
- Celebrate trying new things
- Honest, frank conversations
- Be a good company citizen
It’s a challenge to scale a flat(ish) organization, and the models for coordination and collective leadership are not as well known as the business-as-hierarchy approach. But Adaptive Path is not in the business of running trains or manufacturing hard goods. We’re a design company where the challenges are wicked, the focus is on people and the speed of change is rapid. The 1:1 support model means that we rely on each other to do our best work. The Advocate Program was designed to enable this to happen. To quote Janice Fraser, “The best work happens when we are all smarter for having worked together.”
What’s next?
As Adaptive Path continues to grow, we’ll have to revisit how the Advocate Program can scale, especially across three studios. Perhaps in the future it will transform into something very different. But the underlying principles of investing in each other and supporting the team are fundamental to being the kind of company we want to be.
Other companies that we watch and learn from also have the strong commitment to employee support and people-centric programs. Pixar, Netflix, Southwest Airlines, Zappos…all are known for their strong internal cultures and their focus on making an environment where individuals can participate fully and realize their full potential. These companies are also known for incredible customer loyalty and strong financial performance.
That’s a model we’re happy to work with.
Radical is just a matter of perception
What’s more radical, not getting married but live together or getting married after knowing someone for 1 month?
What’s more radical, setting up a gym inside your company and paying employees to use it or paying employee’s gym subscriptions outside the company?
What’s more radical, having two kids or ten in the modern day?
What’s more radical, having a customer wait until you decide to serve them or serve them when they want to?
What’s more radical, treating employees like cogs in a system and telling them what to do or trusting their judgment to make the right decision?
What’s more radical, designing products for people without asking them what they want (Apple) or doing what the customers asks (everybody else)?
You’re probably thinking these questions seem stupid but bear with me. Steve Denning recently pointed out that radical management in not really radical but common sense. It’s perceived as radical because we’ve been following the same rule book for so much time that the opposite seems well, radical.
For things to change, someone somewhere has to start acting differently. In five years what seems radical today will be normal. The system will get stuck again and somebody somewhere will do the opposite and then he’ll seem radical. And five years after that the same story will unfold. It’s a cycle.
Want to get radical with yourself? If you want to try something radical today, take a different route to work. Say hi and smile to everyone you see in the street even though you don’t know them. Shake someone’s hand like you really mean it and look them in the eyes with purpose. Be a true friend. Treat your customers with respect, like human beings.
I could go on with examples but I bet you get the message: What seems radical to someone is common sense to someone else.
Thoughts?
Is innovation a matter of will?
“Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Most of the discussion around innovation revolves around strategies, tactics and the abilities organizations need to develop to do so, but not much is said about an organizations starting point: purpose.
Whether it’s incremental or radical innovation, most organizations do none. I know, and I’m sure you do to, organizations full of very smart people with great ability but zero desire to ‘innovate’. Here we are thinking they should be tearing up but no. Yet here we are writing/talking about specific tactics to be innovative yet most of the time what it comes down to is if an organization decides to do it.
No doubt ability has a lot to do with one’s or a group’s ability to innovate. But what about will? A deep sense of purpose and determined by one’s own choice.
A few weeks ago I had a great chat with Deb Scofield (@dscofield) about two of her clients and how they’ve successfully innovated in very old commodity industries. She wrote about one of them, Menasha Packaging Corp (160 year old startup) on Management Innovation Exchange.
I’ll provide the context here but please read the whole article:
In 2005, Menasha Packaging Corp (MPC), part of $1 Billion, 160 year old, Menasha Corporation, was not doing well. As the largest, and original, business in Menasha Corporation, they were a niche player in a commodity-based market without the economies of scale and scope to compete with the ‘big guys’. If something didn’t change, they’d be sold off. While their 160yr history as a privately-held family business provided a rich heritage, it inhibited their ability to grow because of entrenched perspectives. The relatively new leadership team had a lot at risk – the status quo – so they embarked on the creation of a new strategic plan to move the company away from commodity to value-based products and services. It was a bold move for a traditional company in a traditional industry. The new leadership team, led by Mike Waite (President), was diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, experience and viewpoints. Mike leveraged this diversity into lively discussion and debate to understand all angles of issues and create a common, shared vision.
Menasha is in very old, boring industry yet ‘they decided’ to be the cool kids on the block. What sticks out is how ‘they decided’ to change after experiencing a ‘moment of truth’ of being sold off. Win or go home! They got out of their own way and decided to win.
Closing thoughts…
Like people, organizations also lack the creativity and will to think beyond the obvious. It’s not that they can’t or won’t, it just that they haven’t decided to do so. Though a crisis may end up opening an organizations eyes, I believe it’s not needed. What’s needed is purpose from the outset. A decision to just go.
What do you think?
Related articles
- Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation (lateralaction.com)
- Can Corporate Boards Help Organizations to be More Innovative? ” Innovation Leadership Network (timkastelle.org)
- Breeding Good Ideas and Fostering Innovation in Your Company (webpronews.com)
Being creative has more to do with being fearless than intelligent
Being creative has more to do with being fearless than intelligent.
Fearlessness gives birth to new knowledge. It’s only by taking the unknown path, the road less traveled that you’ll find and create new knowledge. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, what’s wrong is not being open to new ideas, to change, to stumbling onto unfamiliar situations to being the best you can be.
I propose we cultivate fearless curiosity to explore our own potential. With that I leave you with a quote from someone who knows a little bit of being fearless:
“The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different.”
- 50 Cent
Prepare for the unexpected
Imagine that you are a pilot and you have to fly through a 5 mile canyon upside down. It’s actually kind of hard to imagine because it’s not something you’re trained to do but it’s something that could happen in a real life situation. It’s a scenario that’s outside your direct experience, you find it hard to accept it as possible and even worse adapting to it.
Now think about it this way:
What if businesses were judged on their ability to create ‘happiness for customers’? What if all those like buttons had less to do with becoming a fan and more to do with specific actions an organization took to actually make a customer happy? What if you hired people based on how happy they’ll make your customers? What if there were a ‘customer happiness index’ dashboard (Tweetdeck) and we’d all have access to it just like the stock market? What if businesses were penalized for wasting people’s time?
Imagine how every business would behave.
Same thing right? How can this be possible?
These may seem like outrageous scenarios but it’s definitely something we should be thinking about. As I argued before, delivering happiness is not business as usual, all it takes for things to change is for someone somewhere to start acting differently. This someone is Zappos, and pretty soon others will join their crusade.
This is not a new idea, but it’s been so long since it was replaced by impersonal mass marketing that it seems like new and it has taken everyone by surprise.
Zappos ‘delivering happiness’ strategy didn’t come out of a week long brainstorming session, it came about by the desire to build a company that’s designed for both life and work happiness.
This is a dramatic change from the familiar and it does provide a useful lesson for both identifying and exploiting change:
The importance of recognizing when the system is stuck. In this case the idea that businesses exist purely to make a profit. If you flip that script upside down, other options reveal themselves. Options nobody else can anticipate, strategies nobody can think of, ideas waiting for an owner to call their own.
Just like scripts become obsolete, so to do ideas have an expiration date. Think about what would be the opposite of doing what you currently do, how would that look and what options reveal themselves.
Key takeaway: Prepare for the unexpected and learn to recognize when an idea has reached it’s expiration date because if you don’t, you’ll be caught in an unfamiliar situation.
Related articles by Zemanta
- 5 Tips for Thinking Under Uncertainty (nathanmarz.com)
- A Simple Lesson in Trust from Zappos.com (psychologytoday.com)
- Engineer a customer-centric organization (customerthink.com)
- How to Be Successful When You Can’t Plan Ahead (lifehack.org)
To create change don’t be afraid to shake things up and take charge
“For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently.” – From the book Switch: How to change things when change is hard.
If you want your team to do things differently just send them an email right?
Just merely saying ‘let’s be different’, ‘let’s innovate’ in an email is not going to cut it. If you don’t like the present situation and see no end in sight, don’t wait for your boss to give you permission to do things differently. You already have the tools, all you have to do is take off your ‘it’s not my job hat’ and do something about it.
There are rahrah! people who will try to pump people up and then go and hide in their caves thinking they’ve just inspired even the company mascot and that all will be taken care of, and then there are the quiet ones who just make things happen. Which one are you?
Take an opposite approach to everyone else’s behavior and make it your responsibility to fight ‘sameness’, you’ll piss people off but that’s what it takes to do things differently.
Why purpose matters
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl
A big part of strategy making is differentiating your business from others, being able to help people notice what’s different between your product or service and mine.
In the beginning of the movie Dark Night when Batman has just fought off Scarecrow and a group of Batman wannabes, an interesting conversation takes place:
Batman : Don’t let me find you out here again.
Brian : We’re trying to help you!
Batman : I don’t need help.
Dr. Jonathan Crane : Not in my diagnosis!
Brian : What gives you the right? What’s the difference between you and me?
[Batman lowers himself into the Batmobile]
Batman : I’m not wearing hockey pads!
Although meant to be funny, I can’t help but notice that last question to make my point:
What’s the difference between you and me?
The difference between you and me is nothing more than how we answer the ‘why’ of our intentions: Why are you doing this?
Your answer will determine the intent behind your actions which have profound influence in how you’re perceived. While the ‘wannabes’ are trying to help Batman out, they’re not doing it for the same reason he is. Batman’s purpose is to rid Gotham City of criminals and he’s driven by the fact that his parents were killed by criminals, the wannabes just want a piece of the spotlight.
Purpose is a matter of life or death
Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl observed in a concentration camp during WWII that purpose is a matter of life or death. Frankl’s legacy, documented in Man’s Search for Meaning, included two major concepts that are critical to leading organizations:
- People have an unassailable ability to choose their response to any given set of circumstances.
- When people lose their connection to purpose they die.
Frankl relates an experience of being ill and huddling in the corner of a hut, simply trying to survive. Sick and fatigued, Frankl made a choice to volunteer for a work detail on the basis of how much good he could do for his fellow prisoners even though the easiest thing to do would be to stat put: a choice of action driven by purpose.
Even in mundane circumstances and even in the most routine of existences, people need some connection to purpose. The decisions people and organizations make about where, how, and why to invest their energy all stem from a need of purpose.
Frankl identified purpose as a basic life force by observing the way his fellow detainees faced the dire circumstances and indeterminate duration of their incarceration. People used several mechanisms to cope in the prison camps: mental games, conversations, and serving various capacities in the camp were all part of the daily coping rituals. Some prisoners’ sense of purpose consisted on surviving to a specific date; some aimed to survive to reunite with their families.
Frankl noted that those who lost their sense of purpose either died outright or committed suicide. One method for ending one’s own life in prison camps was to ‘run into the wire’. The barbed wire fences surrounding the camps were highly electrified and by running into them, people would electrocute themselves.
What this all means is that if we as leaders of organizations diminish the importance of having a purpose, we’re really encouraging people to ‘run into the wire’. On the other hand if we encourage a sense of meaning we’ll not only help channel the natural energies of people throughout the organization but also, as my online friend Ralph Ohr points out, we’ll connect with our customers on a deeper level.
The last paragraph points to an important question to drill point further: If your company went out of business, would anybody care? (customers, employees?)
Now that’s the power of purpose!
