About 25 years ago, the Canadian comedy company The Kids in the Hall was planning a meeting tour. His last company had failed, so they tried something new. Months were simply “playing”, working new and old material, growing to learn and learn the sensations and techniques of others.
From the traditional commercial point of view, this was “wasted”, “unproductive” of time and work. From a sketch comedy, it was essential for the product. He made the trick. The tour was a success that led to follow -up tours in the subsequent years, as well as to a number or other projects.
This was not just a cycle of R&D D. It was a process that helped a group of individuals as a self -organized team. That is exactly the type of equipment that needs to build its software too.
Perhaps a comedy company seems away from the most sober working groups in the corporate world. Good news: it is not at all. The concept of a self-organized team has been written throughout business literature, including the Harvard Business Review-Memer exactly Clown College.
In his book Management 3.0, Jurgen Appelo describes the characteristics of a self -organized team. Here is our incomplete turn in those:
- Autonomy: A self -organizing team makes its own plan and work decisions related to it, to members who manage their own activities and take possession of how the objectives are. In the next chapter, we will see a variety in the leadership styles of sketch comedy. In some cases, in fact there are central stars, executive producers or other “main decision makers.” But even so, they postpone the team to do their internal work in their own way.
- Collaboration: Sometimes, collaboration is treated as an “optional” activity when something goes wrong, or you need to throw something on the finish line. In a self -organized team, properly to our area of interest, collaboration must be a characteristic, not an error. Remember the children’s approach: “I work[ing] With whom it was available, or attracted you. “My co -author Rob had an experience similar to the creation of” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart “: the morning task of every day immediately led to the training of provisional work groups. Instinctively.
- Shared responsibility: In self -organization teams, each team member must feel a comparable responsibility for the general task. As a corollary, each member becomes idrally for the different pieces of work. This is a powerful two shots that organically reinforce the equipment that both equipment and intrinsic motivation buy.
- Shared leadership: It is a little deeper: each member of a self -organized team must expect to step forward and become the leader in a specific subtarea or objective. In this way, the team obtains the bonus to experience the unique skills of each member. However, more specifically, it accumulates that the elusive fuel called “trust” we saw with the children. That allows both super tall creative risks and a team that moves as a unit, filtering a minimum energy to interpersonal differences.
- Participatory decision making: Here is one of the radical breaks with hierarchical workplaces: the team makes decisions, not someone outside or above. Or, even if they are made of great image from another place, the team has a direct participation in these decisions and how they are implemented. This is how the groups like the children rummaged that beautiful diversity of perspectives that we discussed previously. More voices are equivalent to better options.
- Adaptability: This is one of the greatest strengths that a company with such teams contributes to the market. The business, especially the knowledge -based business, is volatile and changes rapidly. So are self -organized teams. When new contributions and challenges arise, the team is not forced to try to draw a painful in the midst of the new needs and the old thicknesses of the office at home. Collectively combine their brains to detect the course, as often as necessary.
Auto -organizing teams are also the standard for the gold standard of the Sketch Comedy: “Saturday Night Live”. Each sketch is completely owned by the performance of the cast and the crew that organizes it. Lorne Michaels, a pulmonary time producer and one of the most successful leaders on television, does not see himself as the “great boss.”
Instead, this has described this: “Really everything I am is the Tiebraker. It is only me who says:” It is fine, it will be this. “
So where does that leave you? After working so hard to become an executive, are you supposed to put aside all your power and become a tiebreaker?
Not quite. Despite Lorne’s humility, that’s not all, he is snl. He has some key strengths that make him a great leader.
On the one hand, Lorne has an excellent eye for talent. It is the team of bones as the first SNL season, when he gathered a cast that includes Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, all of which to achieve stardom. When you are so good to hire people, you give them what you need and stay out of their way.
That leads us to service leadership. We all talk about that, but walking along the walk is something else. Lorne gives your team the necessary resources to create sketches that maintain a show in operation for half a century. Instead of imposing restrictions, it focuses on eliminating obstacles.
Finally, and it may sound strange to say in an article written for high winners, SNL shows that a good creative leader is one that gives its people the opportunity not to shine. Because the staggered steps, these error but freely experimental raids are the crucial framework that improves arises.
Obviously, nobody wants to fail in the final stage. But you can’t “move fast and break things” if people are terrified of making mistakes. If you are going to hide someone, or something, on the back until perfection is achieved, you are malpasting the opportunity. You need a general essay of dress to produce a good show.
Whether I consider it Scrum, the SNL method or something else, self -organized equipment is part of product management 101. Contracts appropriate people. Give them what they need to success and get out of their way. Establish a comment walk where they go to air every two weeks, at which time it acts as a proxy for the end user. This is the way to responsible autonomy.
Written by John Krewson. (Parts of this piece have bones adapted from pitch, sketch, lunch: What Sketch Comedy can teach us about the development of products).
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