Tim's Weblog
Tim Strehle’s links and thoughts on Web apps, software development and Digital Asset Management, since 2002.
2013-04-09

Alex Pukinskis: 3 Ways to Inspect and Adapt at Scale

Alex Pukinskis – 3 Ways to Inspect and Adapt at Scale:

“We’re all familiar with top-down change initiatives. Senior leadership gets together, analyzes the problem, designs a solution, and announces it. Everyone else is left to react.

This approach leads to problems for two main reasons. First, people don’t know when change is going to happen, so they live in a constant state of low-level anxiety. Second, the leadership group never has all of the context.

[…] I talk to a handful of people 1-on-1. Sometimes I pair with another person on figuring out a process change. I write a clear, short explanation of what i’m proposing and what the underlying goal is I’m trying to achieve.

Then I ask for consent to move forward. […] I ask if people know specific ways the proposed change will harm the organization.”

He’s pointing to a technique called Holacracy, which sounds promising if a little secretive – I like this quote: “Managers are no longer needed, the leadership function is now distributed.”