Organisations Without Bosses, How Self-Management Works with Paul Jansen - OrgDev Episode

What if your organisation didn’t need a traditional hierarchy to thrive?
Are endless meetings, layers of approval, and rigid structures holding your team back? Could self-management be the key to unlocking greater agility, innovation, and trust?

These are questions we've been wanting to explore for a long time on the OrgDev Podcast.

In this episode, we’re joined by self-management expert Paul Jansen, who shares what it really takes to make self-management work – not just as a concept, but as a practical, sustainable way of operating. From decision-making without hierarchy to building accountability in a distributed system, Paul brings both clarity and experience to one of the most misunderstood ideas in organisation design.

Whether you're curious, cautious, or already experimenting with self-management, this one’s full of insight.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
■ Key insights from the episode
■ A reflection prompt
■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

Transcript

(00:00) hi and welcome to the Org Dev podcast what if your organization didn't need a traditional hierarchy to thrive have you ever felt that endless meetings layers of approval and rigid structures are slowing your team down is self-management the key to unlocking innovation agility and trust in your workplace these are questions we've wanted to explore for a long time on the ORD podcast but we were searching for the right person to help explore them and that search ended when we met Paul Jensen paul has dedicated much of his
(00:28) career to helping organizations realize their full potential by unleashing the capabilities and intrinsic motivation of their people he's created several employee owned social enterprise and also non-executive director for two social enterprises as well he's also the innovative of the brilliant podcast the work punks podcast with Colin Nulan and Ben Simpson where they give their refreshing and original views on how to deal with the challenges at work and I've listened to every episode and it's
(00:52) really good as you can imagine Paul's extensive work experience is backed by a strong academic background with an executive MBA from INSEAD and an MSE in industrial engineering and management science from the University of Einhovven so so welcome Paul we're so glad you could join us today [Music] we'll start with an easy one so just tell us a bit about the work you're doing now and what that involves yes at the moment well I founded together with my former colleague from the borg days Tanya Iba i founded Trust Works which is
(01:27) a small consultancy that helps organizations explore these concepts of autonomy empowerment basically bringing more trust in the workplace and empowering those great employees that you attract for a reason so that's what we do we we provide consultancy but we also provide programs because we we believe that in a structured setup it's sometimes useful to explore those concepts together in a sort of a little bit more classroom style and workshop style environment and uh and we do a lot of coaching as well so we do team
(01:56) coaching as well as leadership coaching to help people through that process of adopting different ways of working self-management there's a lot written about it there's lots of you know LinkedIn posts about it and articles just tell us a bit more about what do we mean by what do you mean by that when you talk about a kind of self-managed organization what does that look like so self-management really acknowledges that actually all people in an organization have the capability to to make decisions and where we traditionally in a more
(02:22) hierarchical command and control environment we almost implicitly expect leaders and managers to make all the decisions for the workers for the people on the front line in a self-managing organization a lot of that decision making power is actually pushed as much as possible to the front line so that means that in an extreme case you may not even need any managers you may not even need any uh hierarchy because people on the front line with essentially together make all the decisions and organize the work in a way
(02:54) that is required to address the demands from from the market whether that's clients or patients or anything like that and what do people get wrong about the concept what are some of the myths that you see or the misunderstandings well there's a lot of the is it myths is it fear i'm not entirely sure but a combination of the two perhaps um is that self-management leads to chaos um because if there's no manager to to make decisions then people will enter into never- ending conflicts no work gets
(03:22) done because meetings are endless and there's always going to be debate of what to what to do next and ultimately the organization is going to be less effective rather than more effective what we actually see in self-managing organizations is is that they're much more conscious about these processes that are going on and much more challenged themselves to ask themselves the question why does this decision need to be made by a single individual who's not immediately affected by the outcomes of these decisions i.e the manager
(03:52) sitting somewhere in an office rather than the person on the front line who actually sees the effect of those decisions on a day-to-day basis and that then really requires those organizations to find solutions to how to make that work and that that conscious effort to almost break down again the principles of how organizations work and then put them back together in a different way results in that very effective working together and making use of the collective intelligence that organizations have i mean we all are
(04:23) used to making important decisions in our day-to-day private lives we decide to get married we decide to move house we decide to maybe have children decide to buy a car all these big decisions that we make in our day-to-day life are actually not questions but as soon as we enter the workplace all of a sudden we leave that decision-making power at at the door that doesn't seem to make sense so these self-managing organizations that really try to harness garner muster all of them all of them you can tell I'm
(04:54) a foreigner so sometimes I will be looking for words or or still using the wrong words actually I hope you try you understand what I'm trying to say they try to bring together that the collective brain power of their organizations and the collective passion and energy that all these colleagues and and employees can can bring to the four so Paul and and you touched on a really important thing which is like the the misconception that it's chaos there is actually a lot of governance that goes into self-management isn't it often and
(05:23) it's just from our understanding so we're really interested to hear what your philosophy is is that it's it's just about that things need to happen in their place at the right time with the right people what is what how is the governance structured in many of these sort of self-managed organizations well first and foremost I think it's important to realize and certainly the the philosophy that we come from is is that there is no one-sizefits-all methodology that you follow if you want to become a self-managing organization
(05:49) although there are some philosophies out there that sort of provide you with the template and help you to get started in that sense we believe it's much more useful to actually start almost from from step one and really ask yourself the some of the sticky big questions before you move into decisions about okay so how how do we then practically uh run our organization what should our processes look like how should we meet how should we make decisions how do we do this how do we do that it does mean that um you need to make some agreements
(06:19) with each other about various aspects of running your organization so you make you you need make some some decisions collectively about what behaviors you expect from each other how you are going to make decisions and how perhaps some of the delegating of decisions will work um because ultimately in most organizations that have adopted some element of self-management there are still some elements also of of hierarchy it's not that in all cases all decision-m power is completely shifted to the front line it's also about the
(06:51) processes i wouldn't say they're the they're the governance elements they're probably more useful tools and practices that help self-manage managing organizations to um to not descend into chaos and to encourage the behaviors that help those processes be effective for instance say there are methodologies out there and and some of them we adhere to which is really about how do you conduct an effective meeting when there is no manager at the table who tells you you know hammers through the decision or
(07:22) sets the agenda or what have you so how do you create an agenda how do you make decisions together in that meeting how do you make sure that everybody gets heard who is sitting at that table so that really you get into the habit of uh listening to each other and making sure that you indeed make the best of all the the brain power that sits around the table rather than just listening to the person who shouts loudest or has the most experience so there are a lot of both practices that are useful to bring in when as organization you're exploring
(07:53) this and then there are some some guidelines and principles um that are helpful to to to set as an organization and decide upon before you embark on that on their journey and it's not necessarily big bang it's not necessarily that you switch the whole organization over to self-management in one foul swoop it's often it's a much more subtle way than that yeah I think so so I mean there are organizations who have done the big bang and uh and some have succeeded and some have failed so you obviously can draw some lessons out
(08:25) of that um there is also a school of thought that says actually it maybe especially if you're an established organization that actually has a lot of explicit and implicit rules and behaviors that perhaps will no longer be useful in a more self-managed context then actually it can be useful to start small and perhaps start with I don't know a couple of teams or really keen to try this out or maybe engage in different start of conversations with some of your teams about actually what gets in your way in your day-to-day work
(08:56) and how can we try to organize this differently so that we remove that hurdle we remove that roadblock and then with that confidence that you build by seeing that the impact of that actually then take the next step okay well we succeeded in this we succeeded in removing this roadblock what can we do next and what can we do next and what can we do next and it actually grow that experience and grow that confidence in working in that new way and I can imagine it also builds a track record within the organization because some
(09:26) people will need they may be well attached to their old traditional way of doing things and this is quite an exotic so they obvious need to know that it works in this particular context before they get on board yeah that's right and and so therefore it's especially those cases that it's been done with a larger organization generally they start small they start with a couple of of teams they shield we often talk about the heat shield we you establish almost a a protective wall between the existing
(09:55) organization and this new fledgling organization and once they begin to really hit their stride and begin to get comfortable in this new way of working and others see the impact of that that's when you begin to hit sort of the the energy that's really latent in the organization that's the time to to begin to reduce the the heat shield and that protective wall and actually start bringing in those teams who perhaps may be knocking on the door saying we hear all these great stories can we start working in this way too and then you get
(10:26) gold yeah that's the most powerful way isn't they're coming to you rather than the other way around are there particular functions types of teams that are more inclined to take take on board self-management do you find like particular types of teams well I do find that there are two types of organizations very very bluntly spoken one is where teams are more of a operational nature and are therefore quite similar in essence and then there are other teams where or other organizations where teams are are much
(10:52) more of a temporary nature and perhaps are more say in in software design or architecture teams basically you could be a member of five six different teams at the same time because you each team has got a different purpose and a different duration and these two organizations do tend to approach it in a slightly different way i find operational organizations a bit easier to work with on self-management than the the nonoperational for one of a better word but apart from that there is no sector I can think of where these
(11:26) principles haven't been uh successfully applied we see it in in the world of healthcare we see it in the world of technology we see it in the world of finance um aerospace anywhere so in that sense yes it's it can be applied everywhere i'm I'm dying to ask this question because you've had such an interesting career looking back at your CV you started out in traditional banking and had a huge role there what was your journey into self-management how did you sort of find it and and what were some of the the big moments along
(11:53) the way where you started to think yeah this is a particular way of working that I really want to invest my career in yeah the the banking part of my career we we shall quickly put aside there was sort of the first half that which I don't regret by the way but I did have a mid-career point at which I I thought well do I want to stay in banking or do I want to move into something else and and obviously the decision has been to to move into something else that was initially the world of social enterprise organizations that are essentially run
(12:20) as businesses commercially uh win contracts or deliver services or sell products or services but for a for a social good uh is pretty much the sector that I focused on after I abandoned banking and what I learned from those initial few years of working in that sector was actually where those organizations were so successful I thought was that they were much more creative than the average company or the average governmentrun service in finding solutions to very sticky very different difficult problems and often these are
(12:54) societal problems problems about I don't know rehabilitation of ex- prisoners supporting people with disabilities people with drug and alco abuse issues whatever the issues these organizations tended to be much more forwardinking and ultimately much more effective in in tackling some of these problems not necessarily completely just eradicate them and solve them but certainly be much more effective and I and I felt that the key in those organizations to achieving that was that they really empowered their front line
(13:25) to to get on with it and at the same time having a very clear picture that they continuously enhance within the organization about what good looks like so this this is what we stand for everybody this is what we try to achieve here this is how we do things in our organization and with that clear sense of purpose the front line was allowed to just get on with it they were trusted to do the right thing these organizations generally believed and believe that that employees come in to do a good day's work and make a difference to someone's
(13:57) life so that sort of once once that sort of began to click with me uh and and a few years down the line in my career in the world of social enterprise I then bumped into this organization called Bour which is originally a Dutch community care provider which has uh which has basically become really well known around the world for its self-managed team concept and they have about 900 teams of care professionals mostly community nurses district nurses who deliver care in small teams of up to 12 people all over the all over the
(14:33) country with great success they do this without any hierarchy there is one CEO there is one director of of support processes of the business operations but other than that there are no team leads no middle managers and no nothing and as it happened they do this very successfully so they've get better clinical outcomes their their clients their patients love how they're being looked after and how they are supported and their their care professionals their employees absolutely love this trust that they are being given that they are
(15:01) professionals that they've you know trained to to be a district nurse so they are being trusted to apply all that knowledge and all that personal passion and creativity that they can bring to the job to to do the best thing they can for their for their clients for their patients so the organization is hugely successful not only for their employees and their patients but also financially they are much more effective financially much cheaper than most other care organizations so obviously that that as a model attracted an awful lot of
(15:29) attention and in the UK as the NHS and also the world of social care is always looking for better ways of doing things there was a huge interest also in the UK to to see how cracks this conundrum so for a number of years I worked with NHS trusts and with local authorities and other organizations i helped them to understand the secret behind bureau success and we tried to run pilots to find out whether that way of working could also work in the UK and and if not what sort of the importance of the context is that obviously UK brings a
(16:03) brings a different context in many aspects so to what extent that context determines the applicability of how Bour works or perhaps not so many questions to ask about this I've got 52 now so if we go back to the kind of origin in in in the kind of the Dutch model what what is it from your perspective that makes that work what the what is the secret to the making it successful you know in terms of patient outcomes client outcome um customer satisfaction the financial what are the what is the secret that makes it work there well first and
(16:32) foremost there's not one secret i thought you were going to give us a silver bullet and yes sorry about that um but there are there are a couple of silver bullets perhaps uh in combination first and foremost it is that clarity around what good looks like that that the founders of Bto have completely infused the organization with and they uh they perhaps also benefited from the fact that they started from scratch the founder Yos the block uh started with a couple of of friends and and colleagues uh back in 2006 or 7
(17:05) setting up BTO really with one two three four teams at the most I think with a very clear vision of what good looks like for them good looks like or good care is is about getting the patient as quickly as possible to regain or retain their independence so this is not about task time and task so okay I've got five minutes to help this person to get up in the morning 10 minutes to give give him a shower 5 minutes to give him breakfast blah blah blah no this is about how can we get Mrs johnson to to achieve what's
(17:38) important to her so really build that relationship with with with the patient with the client as calls them find out what really is important to her and work together to achieve that and 99 times out of 100 that is all infused with regaining their independence so that means that in in the beginning a bio team would really try to work quite intensively with with a client that's about building that trusting relationship between client and and care professional and that's about really getting those building blocks in place
(18:10) that allow a Mrs johnson to to uh to regain her independence and and continue to live an independent healthy life as much as possible so that that that principle of what good look like is is really important and then that trust that follows almost immediately after that in the capabilities of the care professionals to do the right thing is is really essential in Bur as well and of course 99 or maybe 97% I'm not going to argue over the number but by the vast majority of our employees come in to do a good day's work every day they're not
(18:49) out there to to take it easy to take the mickey out of the organization and and and have an easy life no they're there to make a difference so with that philosophy Bersto really tried to put the things in place that help therefore their frontline professionals to deliver a great service as much as possible and take away all the things that distract from that so take away the bureaucracy take away the the things that are are um time wasters and let them get on with it and support them in that with what what
(19:21) the things are that really matter for instance for a care professional on the front line it's really important that the IT system that they use is really intuitive and really asks only for the stuff that really helps them in their work so that they designed a bespoke system that really is very intuitive very simple to use makes the right suggestions that helps them deliver better care connects them perhaps with colleagues if colleagues could help them answer some questions that they might have don't require them to send in all
(19:51) sorts of reports or scroll through all sorts of different pages that are not relevant to them or have to log on in five different systems to get their work done and if that if their laptop for whatever reason is broken they don't have to go for three different signoffs to get a new one no they just contact it and the next day there's one uh waiting for them because it's been delivered by by the speediest possible service so that they can get on with continuing to deliver a great service so all of these
(20:19) things they've been made to to be very easy so that in indeed they can deliver the best possible service to their client and just to continue the opposite of that whereas at the same time the the the center takes away a lot of the burden from the teams so say if they decide because the teams are also empowered to decide on their own office which office they they want to work from or maybe this is a little shop on the high street or whatever they feel is is the right sort of location for them in their local community the team decides
(20:50) which it's going to be but then the center will help them well actually will take care of all the paperwork and all the the licenses that are required and the and um the utilities and all that sort of stuff so the team can just carry on with with delivering the best possible service sounds like a sea change in organizations because obviously there's a lot of things that you're talking about there but it's essentially a rebalancing of power within the reorganization within the organization many organizations are
(21:18) managed through spreadsheets and so I think in one of your podcasts you were talking about Boeing and where it went wrong where it started to sort of manage through spreadsheets and looking for efficiency so so for example an organization like BSO a trap that it might fall into is on a spreadsheet how do you increase financial performance then well you just reduce the amount of time between calls or the amount of time spent with the patient or the client or the service user and that then leads to more on the bottom line that that's the
(21:46) balance where you're trying to trust people more isn't it yes exactly and and I think if you manage by spreadsheet you you you live in a parallel world that doesn't acknowledge the complexities that are out there on the front line so even if you are in a more traditional organization that that that perhaps works more in this fashion and of course that ultimately is the majority of organizations out there then I would recommend that you every so often tag along to a team that really operates on the shop floor and just see how some of
(22:17) the decisions that you have made at a head office how that affects people you know on a day-to-day b business on a day-to-day basis and sometimes you know those decisions are made well let me correct myself most of the times those suggestions and and policies and decisions that are made ahead of us are made with the best intentions but you only see this part of the world and the world is generally more complex and more messy than that so what Bard has actually done differently is is completely acknowledging that by
(22:51) reversing how the the power dynamics work the front line is essentially the more powerful one because they understand that that's where the information comes together that determines how care is delivered in the best possible way and therefore you should also give the power to make decisions to that part of the organization where that information lies and and I guess you're really starting to touch on the organization's core beliefs as well aren't you as you were sort of saying and you send them the
(23:19) laptop the next day I can just hear and say yeah your butt what if and if I do it for one then I got to do it for everyone and it's I think with any organization there will always be a certain number of people that may push things like sickness policy or procurement policy to its its max but we're we're having to think of the majority here aren't we in terms of how they sort of conduct themselves yeah I think that's absolutely right and and of of course if if out of your organization of 10 15,000
(23:47) employees 9,000 are ordering laptops for their neighbors and friends then clearly you've got a problem but organizations in reality don't work this way do they so there are a couple of I often talk about alternative controls so the traditional controls are okay someone needs a new laptop well the manager needs to sign off on this and determine whether this is indeed the right course of action and then someone in finance needs to check whether there is still budget for this and blah blah blah blah blah we go through all those hoops and
(24:13) then once those hoops are all jumped through then someone will ultimately send that laptop and it will be will be used but the damage that is done in that process to the organization is significant right ultimately the person in the front line who doesn't have the laptop that she desperately needs can't really contribute to the organization in the meantime patients may even be harmed as a result of that weight lists may become longer all these things that are happening but also there are there's
(24:40) that level of distrust that you essentially one of my former colleagues talked about organized distrust a lot of these things are about but but what if things go wrong what if someone is trying to fleece the organization or what if what if what if what if whereas um and of course we can all think of rules and regulations and policies and procedures to try and minimize that risk but the message that this sends to everybody is well you cannot be trusted to do the right thing whereas uh the benefit of actually sending the message
(25:11) that you can be trusted actually empowers and energizes 98% of of your workforce that who's would never think of of um abusing the system as such um and then there are of course some clever things like I said uh alternative controls that help you uh in not having your organization spiral out of control and one of those things is for instance the fact that teams are kept small self-managing teams we always say really keep them small so that you have the personal connections that make sure that yeah people don't take the mickey but
(25:48) also if they do take the mickey that the rest of the colleagues feel co-responsible for addressing that you're collectively responsible as team for the success of your team uh and therefore if you see that one of your team members is not pulling his weight or perhaps is raiding the the office cupboard or whatever then you feel the ownership and responsibility to speak up about that and address it because it doesn't go unknown it's much easier to get away with that kind of behavior if you're on a large anonymous organization
(26:20) right and secondly it also means that when these personal relations are there and also with your clients is that when your clients are unhappy about something they feel more comfortable in addressing it with your team immediately because you've built those relationships with your client and they know you personally so if they know you personally they might say well you've got this new colleague right he came to see me this morning but he did some funny things he did this this and this okay well you take it back to the rest of your team
(26:48) and maybe you have quite conversation with that new colleague about they're a bit uncomfortable about the things that apparently happened i would have done it differently what's your story so that ownership and that visibility I think help in also as alternative controls to asssure that the right sort of quality is being delivered that that image of what good looks like is perpetuated in the organization and in the more extreme cases also that if you know money disappears or whatever that things get
(27:17) addressed fairly fairly quickly so you talked about bringing that model to the UK how did that pan out what were some of the kind of challenges so we discovered first and foremost that that there is no massive difference between a a Dutch care professional and a British care professional and we also discovered that there weren't massive differences between Dutch patients and British patients so the the model those aspects of the model actually can work equally well if the organization is supporting the care professional in that way then
(27:45) they will generally thrive and if patients are engaged with and if relationships are built with patients i mean there were was this case where um a patient had been for for more than one or two years been looked after very capably by the local district nurse and it was ticking over nicely and and the patient was quite happy to be honest but once the buzz style team came as part of the pilot and engaged with this individual and started to really have these personal personal conversations about what's important to you and how
(28:16) can we help you achieve that then ultimately long story short this patient could be discharged after after two months because all of a sudden things started to click into place and that there was just a level up of care and effectiveness and outcome that could have been achieved so we saw that all of that good stuff and encouraging stuff quite quickly but we also saw that and this is no big surprise um that the that the gravity pool of the existing organization with existing culture its existing processes and procedures and
(28:48) habits was so strong that um these these positive pilots and even the most successful pilots ultimately got sucked back into the main organization it was just a leap too far for most organizations to say "Wow this works now let's do this at a bigger scale." They actually the organizations couldn't bring themselves to take that step there was there was too much fear I guess that would lead to um yeah undesirable outcomes let's put it that way yeah and I guess you're touching on like it's the
(29:21) power of cultural patterns isn't it and how to break them and even if you have different actors involved people still feel follow familiar patterns don't they even if it's illogical for the what the organization needs those patterns remain we just love that kind of consistency don't we yeah I think so and and of course a lot of these patterns are also they're difficult to unlearn for first and foremost especially when it's about behaviors and language and the softer sides of culture i suppose if you are a
(29:48) manager for instance who's come through the ranks you're used to making decisions you've been promoted because you're good at making decisions you've been promoted because you're good at problem solving so that's what gives you probably your motivation your buzz and all of a sudden you're now being told actually we now want you to become more coaching style manager and we want you to support your frontline team and let them make their own mistakes so that they can learn from that um and you're
(30:15) sort of thinking well where's my status where's my ego going to get well exactly that's really hard and of course it's not unlikely that you feel also a sense of lack of control because you feel still feel responsible for the outcomes of of your team but you don't have the levers that you normally work with and you still feel that you're going to be held accountable by by your next level up for the outcomes of your team so that's a really hard position to be in as a as a middle manager so to yeah to
(30:43) make that transition is really really hard secondly I think a lot of the the elements that underpin the beliefs in which the or on which the organization has been built are solidified in a lot of the processes and procedures and systems that we use so if to come back to the laptop example of course nowadays ordering stuff goes all electronically um and there are all these decision trees right that have been and and workflows that have been implemented in your computer systems so even if the organization said "Well let's do things
(31:15) differently let's have the the front line decide if they need a laptop the computer system is still going to ask you for a sign up somewhere or you have not you don't have the right level of authority or you cannot see this piece of information because you're not of the level of you don't have the authorization to to access this so if you do this properly especially in an established organization you also have to look at those elements that send certain messages to your front line one of the things like I I for many years
(31:46) was fighting against because I just couldn't see it done well and my I've fallen back in love with it is the whole idea of being very clear on purpose and vision and mission and just the power of what that does and you were sort of talking about one of the joys of working with a social enterprise is that often the purpose is really clear you can actually see X effort equals Y outcome so people's jobs feel significant and meaningful that feels like an essential part of this doesn't it is it's like the
(32:12) prize of what we're going through is so great that it is worth unlearning all these these big things at a micro and and macro level as well what can organizations do maybe don't have such a sexy purpose that where it is about earning a shareholders return um to create a purpose that is meaningful that is going to carry initiative like this through yeah it's a good question of course yeah not not every product is is sexy or not every service is going to change the world having said that every organization starts for a reason right
(32:41) they they start either because they they see a gap in the market and think see that things can be done differently better more efficient whatever their reason is for for jumping in that into that opportunity and solidifying that and really grabbing hold of that nugget that really core kernel of what what makes is the reason why your organization exists is the one to really shine the spotlight on and really explore that I think and not just in the senior team but also with other other parts of the organization to really
(33:11) bring that to life and ideally personally I would I would steer away from grand statements you know mission mission statements along the lines of you know we want to be the choice provider of XY Z in Western Europe or something like that i don't think that necessarily grabs people's attention i think it's more about stories i was talking the other day to the CEO of of one of the organizations I'm I'm a non-exec director of which is a community dental provider they pro provide dental services to to people who
(33:40) otherwise don't have access to to dental treatments such as people with disabilities or people with extreme anxiety or or children that need extensive dental work etc and she was telling me this story about yeah sometimes we get someone in the surgery who um or when she was a dentist and and obviously had risen to the level of CEO and she said uh we perhaps wouldn't quite tick all our um criteria or criteria in terms of being uh eligible for a treatment um but clearly have suffered for god knows how long with
(34:12) with these horrible dental situations um so I asked her so so what do you do then do you then send this person away or uh and and she said no no no we would still treat her um but obviously we we would have conversation afterwards also with the commissioner of the servers and the admin team etc of you know how to deal with these kinds of referrals but the fact that she was so adamant that actually you treat the person I think felt a great felt like for me like a great story of this is how we do things at community dental services this is we
(34:46) still see the person we and just see the referral or the you know the the there's so many broken teeth or whatever the situation was so if you share those kinds of stories with your organization and explore them together what are the kind of stories that really summarize what we're all about and how we do things here then I think you begin to get onto something because that's the kind of thing that guides decisions and actions in those kind of gray moments where we're not quite sure what the
(35:15) ethical and right thing to do is and that has a profound impact doesn't it on the end user and then that creates those stories again one one thing you talked about on one of your podcasts and we'll put a link to your podcast in there because it is really good you guys were talking about um a particular situation where someone was feeling overwhelmed by reports they're having to do them on the weekend all this kind of stuff and your your co-f facilitators were talking really positively about co-designing
(35:39) sitting down with the end user and saying "Do you really need this?" And you were like "No stop all non-stutory reporting because there's so much wastage in organizations we always love to add to things but we never take things away there is so much bureaucracy in organizations and often there's a logic behind it initially or thought behind it bureaucracy is a is a huge friction and attacks on organizations is it do we have to get as revolutionary as that to make changes sometimes?" Well it
(36:04) works for some organizations they're obviously the the more extreme ones are the the most courageous ones but it is one way of of really testing whether these these reports and these processes are still adding value and let's face it every process every report it triggers al so much work and all that work costs money and it's time and energy and money spent on something internal that is not about external services helping your clients so that should be a great motivator for organizations to be much
(36:36) more critical on their internal processes and again I appreciate that a lot of these processes have come about with the best will of the world and with the right intentions but over over time they may have gone still or sometimes they just completely missed the spot and that's that's hard to acknowledge when your career and your position perhaps depends on people complying with those those kinds of things but you have to you have to I think be blunt as an organization if you really want to raise your productivity be really efficient
(37:08) and make the biggest bang for your buck for your clients then you you have to be pretty sort of ruthless in in looking keeping looking at that yeah and I guess that's one of the things about self-management is this is not soft and fluffy stuff this is very hardedge stuff there's some very you know strict approaches to it people are accountable they're visible and we challenge each other and we challenge our processes as well i think sometimes that's the thing that's lost in translation isn't it yeah
(37:34) very much so because obviously it's it's it's not about anybody just doing whatever they feel like doing on that particular day there are clear boundaries that are applicable in what um what people are there to do it's just that within those boundaries they have lots and lots of freedoms in order to to deliver on those those objectives that I think is really important and secondly developing those skills and applying them internally within your teams about holding each other to account is also a
(38:02) really tough skill there's nothing soft about it it's really hard to say to the to your colleague why you're working why are you working in this way or why you're leaving early or things like that when there is so much work to do these are things that we really find difficult usually to address and therefore helping helping teams helping individuals and helping organizations to adopt these kinds of behaviors these behaviors of of being quite candid saying being in a safe space to say these these obvious
(38:31) things is really essential so we work with with teams therefore on on these kinds of elements as well as these meeting practices and some of the decision-m practices that I referred to earlier so how do you feel safe in a team to ask that stupid question or how do you feel safe in a team to to challenge someone who says we should go left here whereas you might be thinking well everybody seems to be nodding along with this person but I actually think we should be turning right so you know how do you feel safe in order to do that and
(39:01) establishing that sort of nature and culture in the team so yeah those are the sort of skills and elements that are absolutely crucial and ultimately also being held to account even in a in a in a super fat organization like Bur there will be every so often individuals and sometimes even a team or two who go rogue and feel that they can step outside of those boundaries that have been agreed and are not delivering on those boundaries that have been agreed and the targets that have been set and are ignoring or rejecting all the
(39:32) support that they are being offered from the center to get things back on track and then ultimately you have to also make a clear statement to the rest of the organization that actually that is not acceptable and then tough action needs to be taken and even that that has happened in the past so if there's a a leader of a team or you know a chief exec of an organization who's listening to this and is feeling attracted by the idea of moving to kind of more of a self-managed approach where would you suggest they start what are the first
(39:59) steps that you you would get them to take well it's always good to be read uh about those pioneer organizations that that have gone before us and are do this are doing this on a day-to-day basis i think that's very inspirational it also raises your your confidence that ultimately there are different ways of organizing and leading in in organizations and there are some famous books out there um good start is reinventing organizations by Frederick Loo you might want to read Maverick by Ricardo Simler fantastically
(40:30) inspirational book very funny as well uh but there's plenty of others and actually I I in my blogs I I also do quite a few book reviews so you can always have a look there and see if any anything takes your fancy then secondly obviously I would suggest that they contact me and sign up for our moving towards self-management program um I say that obviously because I want to sell the program but also we designed the program for those who want to explore this and want to get to grips with some of the concepts and what we try to
(40:59) achieve in that program is especially getting across that there is no one-sizefits-all you ultimately have to find your own way through this world of self-management and and because the fact that you make your own choices gives you that ownership of making it work it's not a coloring in by numbers kind of exercise and it also provides you with some opportunities to to anticipate the the roadblocks that you're going to encounter there will be and we saw this in our pilots actually there will be things that go wrong staff members team
(41:32) members that perhaps don't quite embrace this or go rogue or whatever or patients that you know things will happen basically and then how are you going to respond are you going to respond by retaching back in your more familiar behaviors so I think we need more management more supervision more reports or are you going to hold the course and ask yourself the question how can I support this this group of people to to get through this and of course that's much more easily done when you're thinking about this in a in a safe
(42:03) environment than when you're under a lot of operational pressure so that's why we designed the program to sort of anticipate what's going what's likely to happen when you embark on a journey like this and look at it from different angles so both from from the leader from the middle manager and from the from the team's perspective so that you begin to get a a fairly complete 3D impression on that and then it's it's really about what we already touched upon whether you think that this is something that you
(42:29) want to explore quite carefully and maybe start small and you know just begin to work from the bottom up or whether you're so passionate and think that this is um a big bang kind of thing for you and your organization or maybe you're a startup or or an organization that's actually still forming and and establishing its its cultural traits and its and its structures and maybe this is a good time to anticipate some of those uh patterns that we typically fall into when we are a growing organization and
(43:01) actually already make some important principle decisions before you get to that point so that you um you build in that new culture from from from day one rather than day 100 so what do you do what do you enjoy most about the work that you do Paul i enjoy most when when when I see the penny dropping with people and not just about understanding how some of the example organizations that that we touch upon in in our program or in our work with clients how they how they make it work but especially when I see the the confidence
(43:33) grow and think "Oh yeah actually we yeah I think we we can start here and I can see how this this benefit might actually be the result of that." And they actually be you just see it it's a bit like when people are walking around a house that they might be thinking of buying and they start to talk about "Oh yeah I think our couch can go there and our picture can hang over.
(43:52) " They just begin to make it their own thing already and when that happens I'm really I'm really chuffed and of course when people really start to embrace some of the process and and tools and techniques that sometimes we introduce to them and sometimes I'm really surprised how for instance what one of the tools that we um we sometimes talk about effective meetings because a meeting is ultimately one of the key tools on on how teams make decisions right and and one of the things we introduced to a a team in the
(44:20) health and care sector which was pulled together from all sorts of different parts of the system we said okay well let's put the agenda of your meetings together in a different way and let's make and and let's have you agree really specific time slots for each agenda item i mean it sounds too too basic for words right and then let's and let's have a process that if you see that you're in you're you're running out of time on a particular item because you thought it was going to take 10 minutes and you're
(44:47) already talking about it for 15 and you actually haven't nearly finished yet how you going to deal with that in the meeting itself so we practiced that a bit and and they took it away for their own practice and then a month later when we got together um one of them said I introduc introduced this to my colleagues and it was it blew our minds how effective it made our meeting and this was a lady who had been in a mid to senior um management position for probably more than 30 years and you sort of think wow when when these simple
(45:19) things can make that massive massive difference in people's perception of how they do their work or effectiveness of their work makes me happy i would be even happier if I could turn upside down the way the NHS works but ultimately that might be an ambition too far that's a whole other podcast episode isn't it just just one key point on that is you know what are the key capabilities that you think that need to be developed within an organization because it's one thing to sort of say right frontline
(45:45) people you can now make decisions but to a certain extent there is a capability behind it isn't there so sometimes there are things where people have had sort of maybe for better or worse like learned helplessness or they haven't had a chance to develop their practical judgment so that kind of intacid intuitive feel when they know what the right thing to do is how is it is it confidence or capability that you need to develop for a team to start really flourishing or is it a bit of both i think it's a bit of both and we start
(46:13) with a bit of capability so bring in a slightly different way of working this meeting example is is there for a reason we help them conduct their meetings in a slightly different way that creates a slightly different language um and that sort of sends a message okay we're doing things differently from now on that helps them to listen to each other to consider alternatives when they make a decision and to really take ownership for whatever decision it is that they make and we coach them in that so it's a
(46:39) really important that in the initial stages of this way of working you support these teams really give them the power but support them in the process that they go through in order to do this so that they begin to build that confidence so once the capability sees or once they get comfortable with with the process and get increasingly confident because actually the outcomes of the process are working for them then they begin to hit their stride and then of course the the coaching element can be dramatically reduced big question for
(47:09) you what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned in in your career today along this journey for me when I started in my my career as a as a junior project manager probably I thought this was all about um a toz of this is how you do change and this is about somewhere in a in an ivory tower designing the best possible solution and then communicating and gaining buy in we all know the cot process don't we and then implementing it and then everything will be hunky dory but of course I learned that
(47:39) actually the world is much messier than that um so I'm now much more of the belief that effective change really only happens if it comes from within the organization and if it's if it's bought into by by the front line especially um if it's um if it's small and incremental so that actually rather than have the the big grand vision you work with small incremental steps that you see the effect of much more quickly and therefore builds the confidence that that they can be indeed achieved whatever it might be what do you do to
(48:12) invest in your own learning and development what's that looking like for you at this stage in your career well I really enjoy speaking to people like yourself who are obviously operating in a slightly different part of the system so I I I try to speak to many different people who are doing interesting stuff that that I can learn from or that opens my eyes or or maybe checks me back on maybe I'm getting a little bit too uh too much out there and I need to be reigned back in or here what what went wrong at certain places so that's
(48:43) important learning for me i love that there's so many great blogs and books out there on on this and related topics that I can probably read 24 hours a day and still don't get on top of it i do some of that so yeah those are my my two most important sources of new information and learning and what's interesting you about the whole field at the moment is there anything that's kind of emerging at the moment that's like a new trend or like a classical principle that's coming back into vogue again what
(49:08) is it that's about self-management that's interesting you at the moment yeah I I'm curious about where AI will sit in this world i think one of the look at me you know I'm 58 58 years old so clearly I'm going to have to work hard to get my head around the the potential of AI but I'm doing my best i'd like to think that the potential upsides of AI are that they can help us deal with the complex world out there i think one of the great advantages of adopting some of the self-management
(49:37) principles is that it allows you to uh be much more responsive in the this complex world that we operate in maybe AI is an additional tool in in that that will both help the top level you know organizations but also the front line in in dealing with that but whether it will or not I don't know but clearly this is this is the the topic in work land that uh that I think will will dominate the conversations for quite a while related to self-management is is the whole return to office versus working from home debate of course it's certainly
(50:10) been going on now for a few years but seems to be swinging back into the return to office section it will come as no surprise that I'm a firm believer of working with your front line on on solutions in in this sense really having adult mature conversations that that are about what works for you you how can we help you deliver the best possible service for our clients and then try and find a way that that addresses priorities that that uh that live on both sides so I think that discussion is not going to be finished yet but I do
(50:40) think that if it ever will but I do think that self-management as a concept and the principles the way we work will will be a great tool in in helping address that debate brilliant and then last question from us it's been a really fascinating discussion one of the regional intentions behind this podcast to inspire the next generation of practitioners coming through and obviously organization development is the is the umbrella term for the podcast but you know self-management is a core part of that what would advice would you
(51:09) give someone who's just starting out in the field now that's a that's a really difficult one isn't it um I think the um first and foremost be be open-minded try to try to absorb as much as possible different schools of thought in in this field don't latch on to to one of which you think chimes the most with your beliefs at this point in time but try and stay open-minded about whatever else is going on at the very least it will help you better understand where other people and other organizations might be
(51:38) coming from and why they might might be doing what they are doing or struggling in what they're doing and like I said earlier in answer to one of your questions I certainly have moved from one end of the scale to to to uh to another end of the scale and I think it's given me more empathy for people in leadership and managerial positions as a result of that if you want to know more about self-management and just want to spend 9 minutes on it I would certainly suggest and this doesn't just go for beginning OD practitioners but this goes
(52:08) for everyone i really love the the video by David Marquette called Greatness he wrote a book called Turn the Ship Around he was uh the captain on a or the commander probably I should say of a nuclear submarine and he used self-management principles to really turn that that that ship around it was an completely underperforming organization and he made it within 6 months he made it the top performing part of the American Navy and that 9 minutes is a wonderful video if you can find it on on Google look for greatness
(52:38) david Marquette with a with a Q is is certainly worth worth it and and might be uh of some inspiration brilliant well Paul want to say a huge thank you this has been a really I don't know engaging but grounded hugely practical but inspiring conversation and I hope it just does give people the confidence to wherever you are in your journey to start exploring the whole world of self-management and it isn't what it is and there's a lot of myths out there but the more you know about it the more you you know that it can be
(53:09) done in different sizes in your organization it's just a world of experiments that ready to be done um Danny what are you taking away from today's conversation um I particularly enjoyed the kind of how you broke down what kind of what's made it work so the idea that you being really clear on what good looks like the importance of trust and that that whole piece around taking away the distractions and providing support so people can focus on the real work thought that was really powerful i love the discussion about the kind
(53:33) traditional controls versus alternative controls almost that sense of the self-correcting mechanism um in place if you get it if you get your things right and then just the reminder of the power of systems to and the constraints just to draw people back to the status quo yeah absolutely and ditto for all those things i think just to build on any Denny's it's just the importance of psychological safety in all of this like if you're serious about leveraging the collective IQ of your people because
(53:58) that's what we're really trying to do here then you have to create the distance where that is going to flourish but that's hard and that requires consistency and courage on the manager's part as well so uh there's just so many takeaways in this paul if people want to follow your work you are prolific you you have a blog you have a podcast um you're always out there how can people follow your work or even connect with with Trust Works as well so obviously I'm on LinkedIn quite a few Paul
(54:22) Jansen's out there it's one of one of the most common names in the Netherlands uh I'm afraid company's called Trust Works um trustworks.co.uk is our website and you can find the blogs on there as well obviously I'd love to hear from from you out there if you're interested in having a conversation about what this might mean for for you and your your company and finally I really want to thank you for the invitation Garen and Danny it's been really enjoyable exploring this with you and uh I love the conversation
(54:50) so thanks again brilliant we've loved it well thank you so much for joining us Paul have a great time and yeah please do contact if you found this conversation useful and you think you know someone that would benefit from this conversation listening to it then please do share the podcast with it as well we get so many shares on each of the podcasts we put out so reach out to somebody you think might be struggling as well and also the algorithm gods if you love it if you like the podcast whether you listen to it on audio or in
(55:14) video as well but most importantly thank you so much for your time Paul thanks for just answering all of our questions with such depth and expertise as well so thank you it's been a pleasure [Music]