Organization and Self Organization
Can agile teams be 100% self-organized?
Is self-organization always a good thing? Is organization always a bad thing?
Introduction
Any experienced professional who works with “agile” takes for granted that agile teams must become self-organized.
But is it possible to have a purely self-organized agile team? And is it necessary? Is it desirable?
Most authors on the subject argue that self-organization is a precondition for agility.
However, over many years working with organizational transformations and agile teams, I (Tatiana) have observed with great curiosity the evolution of many agile teams, and I have come to ask the question:
Will a self-organized team always be a better team?
That is, should the search for self-organization be pursued to the fullest, regardless of the organizational context in which we operate?
My intuition has been that organization and self-organization co-exist in the real world, and that the search must be for these two forces to act in a balanced way, and not for one to overpower the other.
It was only when I read the book “Confluence” by Cynthia Kurtz that I found someone else with the same suspicions.
Confluence
In the beginning of 2021, I had the opportunity to read “Confluence”, before its publication, in order to contribute with my impressions about the book.
“Confluence” is a framework created by Cynthia that helps us to make sense of situations by thinking about how the two forces of organization and self-organization intermingle and interact.
In order for you to understand how I found the rationale I was looking for in “Confluence”, we need to bring some basic definitions from the book:
“Interactors” are “Things” that relate to each other, things like people or cars or birds or grains of sand.
“Local Interactors” are interactors that relate only to their closest neighbors, like cars driving near each other on a road.
When a global pattern — such as a traffic jam — arises due to the nature of these local interactions, the phenomenon is called self-organization. A pattern that emerges from self-organization might make us think that it was planned by someone, but it was not!
It just happened by itself!
By contrast, an “Organizer” is a “Thing” that can see and reach all of the interactors in a large area and can act with intention. When an organizer wants to create a pattern, it simply places the interactors where it wants them to be. When you see a building or a road, you can be sure that someone put it there for a reason. That’s organization.
In order for organization to exist, there must be an organizer capable of:
1.) Knowing about global patterns: Awareness
2.) Reaching, grasping, and moving interactors: Access
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3.) Having a clear purpose: Intention
If you think about traffic on a road, you can understand how organization and self-organization flow together on it. Someone obviously planned the road. Their organized plan has a strong influence on the way traffic moves on it. But traffic also moves in a self-organized way, slowing down and speeding up with nobody in charge.
The two forces act on the flow of traffic at the same time.
Life itself is a self-organized phenomenon, made up of many interactions among molecules, cells, organs, and organisms.
At the same time, human beings are natural organizers: We act with consciousness and intention, and we influence other beings.
•Agile teams are made up of human beings (self-organization).
•Those human beings carry out their work with intention (organization).
•Each team member interacts with the people around them (self-organization).
•Each team’s leader makes plans for the entire team (organization).
•Agile teams interact with other such teams, enabling global standards to emerge (self-organization).
•Agile teams work in companies whose leaders make plans for the entire company (organization).
At each of these three levels, organization and self-organization act on agile teams at the same time.
Not only in agile teams, but in any environment where there are human beings, organization is present interacting with self-organization.
The search should therefore not be, as I suspected, for self-organization to prevail over organization, or vice versa, but for us to understand how both forces influence each other — so that we can influence them, when possible, to act in a balanced way.
If organization is bad or good, it will always depend on the context … on the situation.
The ideal balance between the two forces can be achieved through continuous iteration and experimentation.
However, we should expect a moving target, since the ideal balance is likely to change over time.
The great news is that “Confluence” can help us seek balance between these two forces in our own contexts. To help us see how organization and self-organization relate to each other in a given situation, and what we can do when there is an unwanted pattern, “Confluence” uses a tool called a “Thinking Space”. We can place situations into a thinking space to think about how organization and self-organization are present in them.
For example, when starting a new project, it is best to create an environment that allows people to discuss and challenge the project, or to work on many projects at once, to diversify our response. The best mix for that context would be in the upper left part of the space, where organization is low and self-organization is high.
However, when building specific equipment that requires a great deal of specialized knowledge, it is best to defer to the judgment of an expert in the subject. The best mix for that context would be in the lower right part of the space, where organization is high and self-organization is low.
In each situation we can seek the best mix of organization and self-organization for the team in question, within its context.
Hence, “Confluence” is the result of Intentional plans and spontaneous patterns as they interact together in the real world.
Cynthia, thank you for “Confluence” and for all the light it will bring to organization and self-organization! It will certainly help the agile community in Brazil and in the world!
For more about Confluence, visit cfkurtz.com/confluence.
If you need any local assistance to start practicing confluence, please email tlima@brazil.businessagility.institute.
Written by Tatiana Lima and Cynthia Kurtz.
