Mastodawn

Trond Hjorteland

I managed to make a little dent with my series of posts on #SocioTechnical principles of the day, and thought it was due to do something similar, but this time in the context of modern organisations (especially #agile ones) and the modern version of #STS, known as Emery's #OpenSystemsTheory ( #OST). I'll list some systemic problems I have seen in organisations over the years and explain their causes using OST, one each day as I did back then. Probably way too ambitious, but let's see how this goes. Happy to take comments and rebuttals to each one of them, as the point of doing this is to trigger reflections and critical thinking.
Warning: these will probably be a bit more opinionated. 😁

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

The daily status report

Context: Your team is using Scrum and has been taught how important stand-ups are (daily coordination meeting), but it feels like a drag and a complete waste of time. Feels more like reporting to someone, be it the scrum master or the product owner. And you really do not care about what the others are working on, as it has little to no impact on what you're doing.

OST explains: This team is probably not a team at all; it's more like a group of individuals working on different things. They may contribute to the same delivery but have not been able to take control of the work design and the coordination needed to deliver it. This is not a self-managing team, but rather a delivery group assigned specific tasks by a manager, in charge of splitting the work so that all team members are working as effectively as possible. This is pure DP1 and nowhere close to the self-managing teams in DP2.

Trond Hjorteland Apr 8

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Passing the buck

Context: Have you experienced situations at work where you and your team want to decide on something of concern to you, and someone points out that you need to check with the grown-ups first? Passing the buck to someone else, for them to make the decision and, with that, take responsibility.

OST explains: The team is not self-managing, which is fine if they know that and act accordingly (in DP1), but in this situation, they act as if they can, but are unable to commit. If they were truly self-managing, this would not have been relevant even, as they would gladly take the responsibility for the decision and its outcome, as it is what needs to be done to reach their goals (in DP2). Instead, they are confused and uncertain, and afraid, which is a clear signal of laissez-faire, of missing a clear organisational structure. For most, this is even worse than DP1, because at least command & control is predictable and structured.

Trond Hjorteland Apr 9

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

The powerless retrospective

Context: You and your team have decided it's time to do a retrospective prescribed by the Agile methodology you are using. You all see the use of it and contribute with a lot of ideas and concerns about your work. You record them all and have a vote on the most important ones, but soon realise almost all of them are outside of your mandate to change. You note them down and hope the department lead can do something about it, but know that probably nothing will change, and the whole exercise feels like a complete waste.

OST explains: The members of the team come into this believing they are self-managing, at least to a level where they are able to adjust the work to make it better. Even the Agile methodology says so by incorporating the retospective as a recommended element. An essential element in learning is both looking back and improving going forward. The issue here is that the team is not self-managing, in a DP2 structure, as they are not able to change what really matters to them. Most likely, they are in an agile setup where the teams have been given some control, but most still reside in management outside, in the existing bureaucratic DP1 organisation. The retrospective and the learning it ought to provide are mostly ineffective.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 10

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Passivity in team workshops

Context: Workshops are for many a unique opportunity for people to get together and collaboratively work on a problem or a design of something they care about, be it EventStorming, Retrospectives, Design Sprints and such sessions. In larger groups, involving the whole team or even people from different teams, you frequently see people with more formal power join in, be it a team leader, department head, or even a intervening and controlling facilitator, and that often creates an unfortunate dynamic where the participants feel limited and restricted, so much so that many become inactive and passive, and not contributing in a way a way that they could have. Even though they probably really wanted to.

OST explains: This dynamic is very common in autocratic hierarchies, where power over something, be it people directly or even a certain subject like architecture, creates a dynamic where people often submit themselves to that person simply because of their position in the hierarchy. And not because of their expertise or good arguments. These emotional anxieties, often unconscious, can take different forms, in this case a dependency on the leader, but can also be a fight/flight reaction or subgroups forming. These are referred to as Bion's basic assumptions, "bas", and the only way to get rid of them and replace it with real productive work is not having an appointed leader present. Always go for DP2 in workshops, regardless of how you are organised otherwise.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign

Trond Hjorteland Apr 13

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Forming–storming–norming–performing

Context: When putting together a new team or making big changes to an existing one, many recommend using Tuckman's "forming–storming–norming–performing" model to turn the team into a coherent and well-oiled unit. It begins with Forming (orientation), moves to Storming (conflict), progresses to Norming (cohesion), and ends with Performing (high productivity). Leaders are advised to manage this process closely as progress is not linear; teams may slip back to previous stages if new members join or goals shift. And conflict is regarded as necessary, as the "Storming" phase is essential to growth.

OST explains: Tuckman's model only makes sense in an autocratic bureaucracy, especially those of the Theory X type, and aligns with Taylor's view that people must be managed to perform properly. This is classic DP1 thinking, whereas in the DP2 style, McGregor's Theory Y is the model, which assumes employees are self-motivated, enjoy work, and thrive under trust, empowerment, and autonomy. Grouped into self-managing groups that have designed themselves using Participative Design. No need for either storming or norming; the teams jump right to performing after forming.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 14

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Analysis paralysis

Context: An agile team is working on a rewrite of an existing legacy solution and feels that its success depends on the function parity it must have with the old one. They therefore end up doing a detailed and extensive analysis to account for as much as possible, even tracking down former developers to get details on some of the more obscure parts. And, even more problematic, they have to figure out which business people own which parts and who all their users are. This drags out in time, and although they have started the work, the extensible analysis prevents them from releasing anything. They are stuck.

OST explains: Agile as a concept is pretty much designed to handle these kinds of situations; at least that is what many may think. It focuses on small increments and puts things in front of the users as soon as possible to tighten the feedback loop, so it makes sense. The thing, though, is that this is not product discovery, as it is an existing product with external product owners and users, both internal and external, and the team has no real product ownership of the app apart from the technical bits. They are not a self-managing product team as a DP2 style should be. Only when they have end-to-end ownership of the whole product, not just a part, can they take full responsibility and accountability so that they can manage it as they please.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 15

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Individualism

Context: Often, there is a large disproportion in how much people are celebrated for their achievements and when blame is placed for accountability when something goes wrong. This feels natural in most parts of the world, as we want to take care of the people and make them feel as good as possible so that they'll feel well and stick around. Being human, as we say. Even toward the people who clearly take on the accountability, and are even paid good money to do so, often leading to few or no consequences. We value the individual when celebrations are due, when heroes are praised, but hide them when there is not. Typically, hero cultures are also a power play, as the ones praised become stretch goals for the rest, showing what lengths they have to go to feel respected and truly valued.

OST explains: This focus on the individual is almost anathema in OST, not because the individual is not valued, but it realises that the group is the basic unit of life, be it your family, your friends or your colleagues. It's founded on the belief that people have both the need for autonomy and homonomy; be able to self-govern and fit in with the group. Actually, valuing individuality as an acontextual thing hides a vital paradox, as it inevitably isolates people as the problem because there is nothing else to blame. It even goes beyond blaming the victim; it creates them. By instead focusing on the group, and having it take responsibility and accountability, it can take both the praise AND the blame. The individual is protected in the group, and it can jointly grow and learn from successes and failures. As it takes them to their shared goals.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 16

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Quiet quitting

Context: During the COVID-19 pandemic, many things were exacerbated in the population, including how people feel about work. A major trend in America was referred to as the Great Resignation, in which many cited the quality of work as a reason for leaving. Another trend that surfaced about the same time was Quiet Quitting, where employees who are fulfilling their job requirements, but not taking initiative, working overtime or volunteering for extra projects or responsibilities. In short, people are not engaged at work, something the Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report confirms, saying that only 20% of are engaged and 16% are actively disengaged. So not only are sick leaves and absenteeism a problem; when people are at work, just a small minority are actually enjoying it.

OST explains: The reason for these dreadful numbers drops right out of OST and all the research it builds on since the 1950s. Given that the extrinsic motivators for work are satisfactory, such as security, work hours, and pay, the defining reasons for people enjoying work are how well their intrinsic motivators are being fulfilled. A minimal set of six psychological job requirements is the basis and they measure how well a job design works, be it the processes, the technology, the organisation, or the colleagues. If people score well on things like ownership, learning on the job, variety, support and respect, meaningfulness, and career path, they will not only enjoy work, be engaged and produce better results; they will also get a better quality of life.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 17

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Team leads

Context: Most teams in modern agile organisations may not formally have a manager in the same sense as before. Many still have someone they report to as an employee, dealing with yearly reviews, career development, and any job issues, but they are not formally involved in the daily work. It should therefore be possible to have leaderless teams, where all members are peers and have the same say in everything. No ranking. Still, many teams end up being appointed a team lead, often because the organisation wants one contact point and one person in charge of the work done. Many in this position try to deal with this dissonance by taking on a coaching type role, seeing themselves as a "servant leader," giving space to the team and protecting them from the outside. Some even try to switch, being directive sometimes, supportive at other times (aka situational leadership). Not only is this a tricky job to have, but it also creates so much confusion in the team about who really decides and is in charge.

OST explains: DP1-type organisations require personal leadership positions, as that is how control, coordination and alignment are managed. Agile tries to counter that for efficiency, having teams take more control of the work, in an attempt to shorten the feedback loop and the learning. This is similar to DP2, with self-organising teams, while adding team leaders is not and is an attempt to adapt them to the existing bureaucratic DP1 model. The problem with this is that DP1 and DP2 fit together like oil and water; they are fundamentally so different that no matter how good the adapters are, they will lead to confusion and operational problems. You can remove the need for this adapter by ditching DP1, having teams everywhere and letting them take responsibility for their own goals and the integration needed to work with other teams. Teams may decide to appoint a leader, though, for their own needs, either permanently or when needed, but it is not a formal position of power. It is a participative democracy through and through.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 20

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

The company's strategy is unclear

Context: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." A common quote used to describe a lack of understanding of and commitment to the company's strategy. Top management is frustrated by the lack of alignment, projects and departments not seeing the bigger picture clearly drawn up in the strategy document. At the same time, the people at the coalface constantly report back that they miss a clear and concise direction to follow when making decisions. All attempts to hold town hall meetings, clearly visible pages on their intranet, middle management sharing it frequently in their weekly status meetings, and even motivational phrases posted on the office walls seem to help.

OST explains: There are many explanations for this dynamic, like a strategy not really being a strategy but rather a lofty goal that provides no clear guidance, or poor communication lines between the top and the bottom. Let's focus on something often missed instead. A strategy must make operational sense to people; it should give them a clear, relevant purpose for their work, feel relevant and relatable in a way that inspires and motivates. Cool and fancy wording is not the point, not even how and how often it is communicated, but how engaging it is. The best way is for people to take part in its creation, but that is not feasible in large organisations, so at least it must have agents in all parts of the organisation who do, someone the people trust and can relate to. This is what middle management ought to be doing: making the company strategy relevant and actionable for people.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 21

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Workshops not working

Context: You have probably seen and even experienced being invited to workshops that you may or may not have that much interest in, but still obligated to join, and although it was carefully planned and executed by the facilitator, it still felt forced, unengaging and maybe even like a waste of time. This is an unfortunate situation as workshops are really the place where important and constructive work ought to happen, where people really feel energised and collaborate at the top of their game. Is it the participants that's the issue, or could it be something else?

OST explains: It is rarely the participants who cause this issue, even when workforce engagement has reached rock bottom. Systemic problems like this have different causes, ranging from the larger structural issues of autocratic hierarchies that inhibit collaboration and put people up against each other to simply bad facilitation. Let's focus on the latter now, as that is an easier adjustment to make. Make sure the facilitators are only in charge of managing the process; they should not own the decision to run the workshop, the technique or process to use, or be involved in the content. The reason for this is that the point of a workshop is for people to own the content and the output, and any attempt to lead will result in Bion's basic assumptions: dependency on the facilitator, just doing what they're told; fight/flight, opposing the whole thing or just not participating; or creating factions that do their own thing instead. Suspect many have experienced these, and they can only be avoided by removing the leader and letting the facilitator serve the group, not the other way around. DP2 instead of DP1.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 22

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Communication problems

Context: A common trope in larger organisations is that the root cause of so many problems and dysfunctions is bad communication. That people are not talking to each other and conveying information properly and promptly. Things are taking too long because of all the people that have to be involved and such. People are therefore often seen as the cause of this problem, and a common way of attempting to deal with these problems involves giving people additional communication skills. Something that fuels a huge training industry. Another is to simply limit the communication needed, for example, by setting a cap on team size (often citing Metcalfe's law) or by putting up human adapters/bottlenecks as the team leads mentioned in another post.

OST explains: OST states that these types of communication problems are endemic in DP1 structures and that it has nothing to do with people's ability to communicate. It is not even the primary human property, so why try to fix that first? Many situations can be observed where communication channels exist but are not used at all. What is a determining factor is the organisational structure, having one that is motivated to use the skills and where the number of channels is as few as possible. In DP1, each person is connected with the policy makers through intermediaries, in a non-reciprocal manner, while in DP2, this is reduced to real reciprocal connections between teams that do productive work. Not only is the number of connections fewer, but so is the quality of communication, as all relations are negotiations between peers, far from the asymmetrical relations between the superior and subordinate found in DP1. Think async vs. sync communication; the former is chatty, the latter is not. Also, Metcalfe's does not fit, as people communicate well and efficiently with peers who share the same goals and purpose as themselves.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 23

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

HiPPOs and dungeon masters

Context: In bureaucratic organisations, the formal ranking of people is usually well known and clear, where people higher up in the hierarchy have certain mandates over people they manage and/or that reports to them. Anything else would be chaos in that world. Still, there is also a lot of informal power, ranging from age difference and gender to more subtle things like years of experience and size of salary, regardless of formal power. This is problematic when decisions are to be made, as these informal power structures end up trumping data and expertise.

OST Explains: Facilitators especially try to counter these tendencies in workshops, for example, by using different types of techniques. A common one is sometimes called Silent Writing, where people are asked to work on the problem alone first, at the start of the workshop, so that all voices are heard. Sometimes this is taken a step further, as in 11-2-4-all, where the next step is joining a colleague to draw up a joint design, before joining up with another pair to create one they all agree on, and so on, before all get together and decide. This works well to get input from everyone, but does not silence the one with rank, as they will dominate regardless. And potentially lead to failure. In the techniques developed in OST, the focus is instead to create a community from the start of the session, instead of fortifying the differences, as these techniques do focus on the individuals. The Search Conference does this by focusing first on the shared goals and wishes for the future, showing that they all agree on more than they disagree on. And, if they do agree on something, put that to the side immediately and focus on what joins them instead of what separates them. The assumption is that we share the we all share the values that lead to the desirable future.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 24

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Local optimisations

Context: Any work group of people want to improve their way of working if they could, removing unnecessary work, resources or waste, as Lean calls it. Agile gave the teams that ability, at least to a large extent. Some may only be able to adjust technical issues, while others may even be empowered to decide how they want to do work. For example, one team decides they want to move to an event-driven architecture, while another wants to replace Scrum with Kanban. All great local optimisations that they should be able to do, but often are prevented from doing so, as they need to interact with other teams and are not able to get them to adjust. Or management may not let them because of the impact it has. Again, teams are stuck.

OST explains: This issue is not directly related to OST necessarily, but more to the parts-to-whole relation that comes out of systems thinking, which OST clearly is. Local optimisations in a part are perfect if it does not affect anyone else, which is rarely the case as parts are interconnected with other parts, often even through the shared relation they have to the whole. In a purposeful social system, even more so, as not only must the changes physically fit, but they must also align with the shared purpose of the system as a whole. Most organisations deal with this paradox, the interest of the parts vs. the whole, by designing top down, creating guardrails for the parts to operate within, giving them limited freedom. OST, on the other hand, replaces this centralisation of command and control by distributing it to the parts, where they can design their own work as long as they make sure it aligns with the goals of the system as a whole, like business goals and strategic plans, and, just as importantly, coordinate with all the affected parties. This enables local optimisations for the benefit of the whole.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 27

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

The frozen middle

Context: Assuming you are a team member in an organisation that has gone through an agile transformation. Your team have been given more autonomy and is expected to self-organise, make decisions, and deliver value faster. Yet somehow, almost everything still takes forever. Decisions get stuck, information does not flow, and initiatives die quietly without explanation. The teams are doing their part, but something above them seems to absorb all energy and momentum like a sponge. Middle managers are busy, always in meetings, always promising to follow up. But nothing moves. A frequent excuse is Things Take Time.

OST explains: This is one of the most predictable side effects of a partial DP2 transition to self-managing teams. When teams are given more autonomy while the surrounding DP1 structure remains intact, middle management gets caught in the middle. They lose their traditional role of passing work down and status reports up, but gain no new meaningful function. The result is a layer of people who are neither coordinating in the old DP1 way nor participating as peers in a DP2 fashion. They become a dampening layer, unconsciously protecting the existing power structure while appearing to support the change. This is not a people problem; it is a structural one. In a full DP2 organisation, the coordination is managed by the self-managing teams themselves, coordination work between peers, and not through proxies. The frozen middle is not resistant to change; it is simply a DP1 organ that has lost its purpose but not yet been replaced by anything coherent. Until the whole system transitions, it will continue to insulate the top from the bottom and slow everything down. The bottleneck has shifted.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 28

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Fear of making decisions

Context: One issue many teams in an agile organisation face is the stalemate that frequently happens when they need to make a decision that will impact other teams or other parts of the organisation. They have been empowered and given autonomy to decide for themselves, but they still want to be good players and are afraid to do something that could negatively impact others. Some may even be worried whether the change is allowed at all, like changing their work process or tools to use for things like ticketing, or changing the technical architecture by using a different data storage platform. Good ideas and suggested improvements are often shelved or even abandoned.

OST explains: This is another predictable side effect of a partial DP2 transition to self-managing teams, where the teams are given autonomy to self-manage, but do not feel able to. Or, maybe now they are not really empowered, as they know all too well, there are DP1 (bureaucratic) structures still in place that can and will stop them. And, even if they were in a pure DP2 setup, they still need tools to coordinate. One that works well is referred to as the "advice process" and was first described by Dennis Bakke, later by Laloux and Harmel-Law. In it, anyone can make any decision provided they follow this simple rule: first seek advice from 1) everyone who will be meaningfully affected, and 2) people with expertise in the matter. So instead of drawing up everything and then getting approval from someone who cannot possibly understand it properly, or going rogue, you formulate the decision as best as you can and then seek advice on it and adjust it to your liking based on that. Not only do you make better decisions, but you also own them. No more blame game, which DP1 creates, and no chaos, which the mixed mode induces. Participative democracy in practice.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 29

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Psychological safety as a patch

Context: Your organisation may have realised that psychological safety is of the essence for good collaboration. Maybe it came out of a retrospective, maybe someone read the Google re:Work study and Amy Edmondson contributions, or maybe it was a leadership initiative after too many people stopped speaking up in meetings. Either way, there are now workshops on it, a section in the onboarding, maybe even a survey to measure it. Leaders are coached to create it. Teams are encouraged to demand it. And yet, somehow, people are still not speaking up, still not taking risks, still not challenging the decisions made above them. The patch does not seem to be holding.

OST explains: Psychological safety is real, and it matters a lot, but what is often missed is that it is an emergent property of the structure people work in, not something you can install. In a DP1 organisation, people are inherently in a dependent, subordinate position, and the rational response to that is to be careful about what you say and to whom. That is not a personal failing; it is Bion's basic assumptions playing out exactly as expected: dependency, fight/flight, and factionalism are the natural human response to autocratic hierarchies. You cannot train people out of that while the structure that causes it remains intact. In a DP2 structure, on the other hand, psychological safety is not a programme or a value on the wall; it is simply what happens when people are peers designing and owning their own work. They speak up because it is their job to, and because there is no hierarchy of dominance to be careful around. Demanding psychological safety in a DP1 organisation is a bit like applying a patch to a system with a structural bug. It might cover the symptom for a while, but the underlying code has not changed.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland Apr 30

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

OKRs imposed from above

Context: Many organisations have adopted OKRs, but a common way of doing them is like a cascade: company OKRs are set by leadership, then broken down into department OKRs, then into team OKRs. Everyone has objectives and key results. The teams go through the quarterly ritual of setting them, reviewing them, and scoring themselves at the end. Some teams engage genuinely, while others may treat it as a compliance exercise. A common complaint is that the team-level OKRs are effectively dictated by the level above, with little to no room to define what matters to them. The framework says teams should own their goals, but the structure says otherwise.

OST explains: OKRs are a good idea applied in the wrong structure. In DP2, goal-setting is one of the core functions of the self-managing group; it is not something done to them. When goals are cascaded down from above, even with good intentions, the team is not really setting its own objectives; it is translating management's objectives into local language. That is a DP1 (bureaucratic) function dressed in DP2 clothing. The quarterly scoring ritual then becomes a performance review proxy, which is about the last thing a self-managing team needs. In a genuine DP2 structure, the team's goals emerge from its understanding of its own work, its environment, and the shared organisational purpose it has participated in defining. That is a fundamentally different starting point, and it produces fundamentally different commitment.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #strategy

Trond Hjorteland May 4

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

The agile terrarium

Context: Agile transformed how software is built. Iterative delivery, short feedback loops, cross-functional teams, and continuous improvement. These were genuine advances over the heavyweight waterfall projects they replaced. The lean movement provided much of the intellectual scaffolding: eliminate waste, optimise flow, respect the people doing the work. And yet, decades on, the research is clear that agile has not delivered the engaged, self-managing, high-performing teams it probably hoped. The process works reasonably well. The organisation around it largely does not. @einarwh described agile teams as terrariums: self-contained ecosystems that look alive and healthy from the inside but are sealed off from the real environment around them. Most people working in agile organisations will recognise that image immediately.

OST explains: The terrarium image is more precise than it might seem. A terrarium is a closed system; it regulates its own internal conditions but does not transact with its environment. That is exactly what agile teams are often designed to be: protected from the turbulence outside, given a stable backlog and told to focus. An open system survives by engaging with its environment, learning from it, and actively adapting to it. Sealing it off does not make the turbulence disappear; it just accumulates outside the glass until something breaks. The agile founders identified "structure" as the problem and removed supervision, but left coordination undefined and control in the hands of individuals. The result was not a move to self-managing groups, what we call DP2, but laissez-faire: an industry lost in the wilderness between DP1, the bureaucratic structure most people work inside, and the self-managing alternative. Research surveying the software industry found 55.7% of respondents were predominantly high laissez-faire, more than either DP1 or DP2. Agile is not failing because the process is wrong. It is failing because a closed system cannot adapt, and the industry has been trying to solve an open systems problem with a delivery methodology.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Trond Hjorteland May 5

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Built for yesterday

Context: The strategy keeps changing. The market shifted, then shifted again. A competitor emerged from an unexpected direction. AI is rewriting the economics of the industry faster than anyone predicted. The three-year plan written eighteen months ago is already obsolete. Leadership responds with more planning, tighter governance, and faster decision cycles at the top. The organisation is working harder than ever and adapting less than ever. People at the coalface can see what needs to change, but cannot get decisions made quickly enough. By the time something is approved, the situation has moved on. The organisation is not slow because people are lazy or misaligned. It is slow because it was designed for a world that no longer exists.

OST explains: Emery and Trist identified four types of organisational environment, which they called causal textures. The third, disturbed reactive, is the competitive industrial world that DP1, the bureaucratic structure, was designed for, with large, similar organisations whose moves continually disturb one another. The fourth, turbulent fields, is categorically different: the environment itself is in motion, driven by forces in the field itself, like technological disruption, social change, and ecological pressure. In turbulent fields, the variety generated by the environment exceeds the capacity of any hierarchy to process and respond to it. DP1 is actively maladaptive here, because concentrating perception and decision-making at the top creates exactly the bottleneck that makes the organisation slow when speed matters most. DP2, the self-managing-group structure, distributes that capacity across the whole organisation, with every group actively scanning its environment, adapting, and feeding learning back into the system. We have been in turbulent fields for decades. AI has just turned up the intensity several orders of magnitude. To 11.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #strategy

Trond Hjorteland May 6

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day

Deploying AI into a broken system

Context: The organisation is deploying AI: copilots, automated pipelines, intelligent triage, and decision support. The pilots look promising; the broader rollout is patchy, with some people embracing the tools and others routing around them. A few raise concerns about deskilling, about oversight, about what happens when the AI gets it wrong. Leadership frames this as change resistance. The change management programme is expanded. Meanwhile, the tools are also being used to monitor output, flag underperformance, and justify headcount decisions. The people who were concerned start to understand why they were concerned.

OST explains: This pattern is not new. Sociotechnical systems research emerged in the 1950s precisely because organisations kept introducing new technology with enormous focus on technical capability and almost no attention to the social system. The result was that technology failed to deliver its potential, workers became alienated, and productivity gains were short-lived. The core insight applies directly to AI: you will not get the benefit by optimising the technical system alone. In DP1, the manager-led structure, people are defined by the task they perform. One person, one job, one replaceable part, so when the task can be automated, the person becomes redundant by the organisation's own logic. In DP2, the group owns the whole task, and each person brings judgment, context, and adaptability that no tool replicates; AI becomes an extension of the group's capability rather than a replacement of it. In a DP1 structure, AI is almost inevitably used as a tool of control, monitoring output, flagging underperformance, and surveilling the parts. We are in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution and making exactly the same mistake as the third.

#OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #agile

Thomas ◉ make it explicit May 5

@trondhjort nice! I call that decision latency in my work-feedback loop model. https://no-bullshit-agile.com/wfl/#decision-latency

Work–Feedback Loop – Conceptual model for organizational learning ability

A conceptual model for analyzing organizational learning ability. Not about practices, but about structural feedback coupling between work and reality.

No Bullshit Agile

Einar W. Høst May 4

@trondhjort Thanks for the mention! I think this topic is so interesting. How agile can a pigeonholed team be?

Einar W. Høst May 4

@trondhjort It's great that teams have "autonomy", but what can they really accomplish if most of the things they would like to change are outside their sphere of influence?

@trondhjort And often the bosses of the people in the "frozen middle" want the benefits both of things changing and things staying the same.

Trond Hjorteland Apr 27

@cford Yes, they are the ones who should support the systemic change and even drive it.

anderbill Apr 15

@trondhjort This 1973 paper reflects some of what you highlight here. The Work Group Within the Organization: A Sociopsychological Approach
Peter M. Newton and Daniel J. Levinson Department of Psychiatry, Yale University Medical School PSYCHIATRY, Vol. 36, May 1973, pp. 115-142.
Citation: Newton, P. M., & Levinson, D. J. (1973). The work group within the organization: A sociopsychological approach. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 36(2), 115–142. Link (paywalled): https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1973.11023751
My own excerpts from that paper are here: <https://bandstands.praxis101.net/readingnotes/peter_newton_1973_the_work_group_within_the_organization_-_excerpts>

Trond Hjorteland Apr 15

@band Excellent! Thanks.

Chris Pitts Apr 13

@trondhjort I read that as “…aligns with Taylor's view that people must be managed to perform poorly”.

Time for a coffee….

Trond Hjorteland Apr 13

@thirstybear Darn, you had me worried there! I even started fixing the "bug." 😂

↑kne↓Apr 20

@trondhjort there's no data supporting neither Tuckmans phases nor their sequence anyway.

Trond Hjorteland Apr 20

@kne Wish more people knew that. Even he warned about it.

Alex Fürstenau Jun 2

@trondhjort I agree that you don't need a manager to manage the phases if you believe in Theory y, which I do.
I still think that the team needs to adapt when a person joins or leaves a team. You can consider all of this as forming or you put different labels on it but I am pretty sure that it happens.
The main point for me here is to keep every team as stable as possible.

Trond Hjorteland Jun 2

@afuerstenau Definitely, the team must adapt, but no need to follow this unfit process for that scenario. Additionally, you will encounter fewer problems when the team is in charge of hiring. I have a separate post on that specifically.

@trondhjort I have very much not found this to be true in practice. “Forming, norming, storming, performing” is not a process done to a team or that management leads through, it is a very real observation about what happens in a group even without authority. I’ve seen this play out both in self organized teams where there was no management (such as a startup forming) and on teams that were very much autonomous within larger organizations. I find it to be a real concept and a helpful thing to know about.

Ted M. Young Apr 10

@trondhjort What is DP2?

Trond Hjorteland Apr 10

@jitterted Thank you for asking. Has become a lingo for me, and sorry about that, but wrote this to clarify. https://hachyderm.io/@trondhjort/116374020682397482

anderbill Apr 14

@trondhjort good thinking and analysis in these posts. regarding Bion's ideas and the subsequent pyscho-dynamics or work groups and organizational learning: I think these perspectives are ignored and sidelined in our social-tech mediated work comms. Hierarchy be adaptive in some work tasks, and a social defense in others. As you mention emotional anxieties will impact my work, sometimes it is helpful for me to notice that. (would love to talk more about these ideas if appropriate)

Trond Hjorteland Apr 14

@band Hard agree. Obviously. 😋

EAvolving Apr 9

@trondhjort To avoid "almost all [ideas] are outside of your mandate to change", mapping ideas to Covey's Circle of Concern, Influence, and Control may help retrospective participants realize it may be more motivating to search for ideas closer to the circle of control.

https://www.modern.works/blog/the-power-of-coveys-circle-of-concern-influence-and-control

The Power of Covey’s Circle of Concern, Influence, and Control — modern.works

In the journey of personal development and growth, one concept stands out as a guiding light amidst the chaos of life's uncertainties: Covey's Circle of Concern, Influence, and Control.

modern.works

Trond Hjorteland Apr 9

@EAvolving Good bandaid to deal with the problem when you cannot dissolve it completely, like you can with DP2.

@trondhjort What does DP1 and DP2 stand for in this context?

Trond Hjorteland Jun 6

@mojala https://hachyderm.io/@trondhjort/116374020682397482

Trond Hjorteland Jun 6

@mojala The book will contain more on the conceptual framework. https://hachyderm.io/@trondhjort/116680079159853659