Читать книгу Agile 2 - Adrian Lander - Страница 34

People have tried to figure out if organizations can be structured in a way that authority can be bypassed. Perhaps if there are governance rules, then everyone can be equal, and the system will become collectively governed. Everyone has a vote, in a sense. The most well-known approach for that is the holacracy model.

Does it work? It can, if you hire just the right people. But no one has shown that the model is easily repeatable. And it is not clear that it actually works that well. Medium tried it and abandoned it. According to Jennifer Reingold, writing in Forbes about Medium's experience,

“The sheer number of rules and regulations, combined with the potential for politics to seep in in different forms, makes holacracy, in my view, a questionable replacement for the classic management system, as flawed as the latter may be.” ⁷

What about giving up on governance altogether and just letting people self-organize? Let leaders emerge—whoever they may be.

It seems that a lack of structure actually leads to hidden power structures that are as stifling—or more so—as formal structures can be. An article in Wired relates the story of Jo Freeman, a 1960s women's liberation movement icon. She complains that “If anything, the lack of structure made the situation worse.” That is, the hidden power of male-dominated systems was more oppressive than entrenched but explicit power structures.⁸

Perhaps authority structures are needed, but simply fewer of them. This leads to the idea of “flat” organizations—ones that have fewer managers and therefore fewer levels of hierarchy. Google famously tried that approach in 2002, but it did not last long. According to an article in Fast Company, “Folks were coming to Larry Page with questions about expense reports and interpersonal conflicts.”⁹

Perhaps the preference for self-organization is cultural. One of the members of the Agile 2 team claimed that the Agile community's beliefs about leadership and team behavior reflect a Silicon Valley perspective. Another pointed out that Silicon Valley culture tends to value, in his words, “innovation, freedom, entrepreneurship, collaboration, shared ownership, and anarchism.” Those values seem fairly well-aligned with Agile values and attitudes as they are typically expressed.

Does this make Agile incompatible with some human cultures? We are not sure; but to us, the conclusion must be that people need to be able to be selective about Agile ideas and apply them in their own way, rather than using a one-size-fits-all set of practices.

There is an inherent belief in Western society that democracy is a fair process; and yet, democracy can lead to “tyranny of the majority,” whereby the majority vote to subjugate a particular minority. Democracy is not inherently fair. German sociologist Robert Michels proposed the “iron law of oligarchy,” which posited that any democratic system will inevitably devolve into an elite oligarchy.¹⁰ Thus, the assumption that even a completely egalitarian team operates in a fair manner cannot be assumed to be true.

Another problem is that in any self-governed system, leaders emerge; informal authority develops. And so even though there are no appointed leaders, there are still leaders. No one appointed Genghis Khan to lead the many tribes of Mongolia to create the Mongolian empire: he appointed himself, through the influence and power that he developed. No one appointed Augustus to lead the Roman empire.

In any group, leaders usually emerge, irrespective of any governance structure. In the United States, Donald Trump was not even a politician but managed to develop enough influence to get elected to be a US president. Influence is leadership, and influence creates its own kind of de facto authority, and it is not always good leadership. Adolf Hitler became a world leader not through peaceful ascent through the ranks but through party politics and the popularity and therefore informal influence that he developed through his speeches, writing, and acts of intimidation, with disastrous results. Leaders can, with effort, undermine any governance structure. Russia has a Constitution, but its leader seems able to do whatever he chooses. Rules of behavior do not ensure that a team will behave well or that there will not be a lot of unfairness going on.

A study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology has shown that in-person teams tend to choose leaders who are confident, magnetic, smart-seeming, and extroverted; but in the study, remote teams chose leaders who “were doers, who tended towards planning, connecting teammates with help and resources, keeping an eye on upcoming tasks and, most importantly, getting things done. These leaders were goal-focused, productive, dependable and helpful.”¹¹

The implication is that in-person teams do not necessarily choose good leaders but instead choose leaders who “look good”—who look like leaders but might actually be poor ones. This indicates that one should not trust or rely on emergent leadership—at least not for in-person teams.

Self-organization also assumes that a team will eventually learn to avoid or resolve conflict. However, conflict can easily tear a team apart. Organizational psychologist Marta Wilson writes about the dangers of conflict if it is allowed to persist.

“Once disagreement takes on a life of its own, the chance that resolution will arise simply out of the group dynamic decreases, and a real conflict begins to gain a foothold.” ¹²

Having leaders available to help teams to resolve conflicts is essential.¹³ Such teams are therefore not entirely self-organizing, but are mostly self-organizing.

Conflict is a natural result of differing opinions being discussed. It is an outcome of group creativity.¹⁴ This means that if a team avoids conflict, it might be doing so by stifling discussion of important topics. It is therefore important to view a moderate level of conflict as natural and valuable, as long as people behave respectfully. Avoiding conflict is not a good strategy, but since conflict can lead to team disruption, having external leaders available who can help to stabilize things is important.

Leadership is a critically important issue, because if you have good leadership, the methodology that your teams use will matter less; things will likely go well. Conversely, if you have bad leadership, things will not go well—no matter what methodology your teams use.

This means that the questions of leadership and authority cannot be bypassed. We cannot remove leaders from the equation. Leadership and authority—formal or informal—will always exist in any collection of people, and we must take it into account and not wish it away.