Safe enough to try?

Tuesday 13th of November 2018

Again, I woke up at 4 o’ clock in the morning and finished some open tasks in my role as “Crunching Master”, by that occasion. “Crunching Master” is a role we defined in our circle “Data Mavericks” and has the purpose “to make our customers happy” with accountabilities like “leading the Data Crunching Workshops with a customer” or “prioritizing and implementing the customer project specific backlog.

With holacracy the powershift, away from one manager to roles, crafted in the team by the members of the team, is the main goal but also the biggest challenge! Especially people who were in a manager role, have to rethink how they act and how they empower the people energizing roles in the circle. And you know what? The same happened to me! I had to totally restructure the way I discuss and bring myself in, how I communicate with my team-members. It is a huge shift from having ideas and believing to know how it should be and bringing those ideas into the system, versus to hold back and let the system act and change based on tensions of the members in their roles. And on the other hand it is a huge shift of the mindset for team-members, how to contribute and get the sense for their tensions!

And it is worth the time and patience to hold back to let people mention their tension and act self-driven according their roles and accountabilities. People will be able to act more autonomous and therefore self-managed!

And at this point the big question and challenge as a coach is, how can I support the people to mention their tension!? How can I make them feel, that it is safe enough, to do something, make steps forward and getting things done. And therefore continuously improve and change the system according to the current activities!

Today I had this conclusion, that we need to be very consequent in implementing holacracy in the system to gain the full power out of it. To start to ignite the new level and to achieve, that every member of the circles fully acts in their roles accountability, self-driven and at a maximum level of motivation to take part to improve and further develop the organization itself.

And even though it takes time to get reach a high maturity on processing tensions and collaborating according to holacracy principles, it is still much more valuable, agile and also fun and motivating for the people contributing, than a classical hierarchy system can be.

“Safe enough to try” is a very powerful and motivating attitude to coach people and give them the feeling that they are right and that a step into the right direction will bring them forward, even though it might be not 100%, but better than do nothing and wait for someone’s advice.

By the way –A “Circle” is a Role that may further break itself down by defining its own contained Roles to achieve its Purpose, control its Domains, and enact its Accountabilities. The Roles a Circle defines are its “Defined Roles”, and anyone filling one of its Defined Roles is a “Circle Member” of that Circle (holacracy constitution chapter 2.1).

I have discovered the following wall paintings by coincident on my walk to the training location, when I crossed a nice little street in the middle of the city and between all these large streets.