With agile principles and values becoming more widely accepted at the team level, a natural conversation heard in the agile community today is how to move beyond that.  How do we grow agile organizations and agile enterprises?  What does an agile organization actually look like?  Not surprisingly, the answers remain elusive.  Agile teams vary greatly in makeup and practice, all the while respecting a common set of principles and values.  We should expect the same for agile organizations so rather than looking for a precise definition we should observe some common characteristics.

Ricardo Semler’s Seven Day Weekend paints a great example without ever using the word agile. He describes his company Semco as a democratic organization where employees at all levels are engaged in all aspects of the business. From deciding their own jobs and salaries, to deciding what work to do, to deciding to open or close plants, to actively participating in board meetings.  All information is made available to all employees and they are implicitly trusted to deal with it appropriately.

This sounds like an incredible fantasy compared to most of today’s corporate organizations where high structure and high ceremony rule the day and teams are engaged not so much to solve business problems but to complete predefined sets of work by prescribed dates.

Harvard Business Review describes another example (Building a Company Without Borders; April 2010 issue, reprint R1004K).  The Reckitt Benckiser (RB) name is not the household name that its competitors Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate are; but you likely buy their products and over the last decade they have handily outperformed their competitors even in the recent downturn.  What is their secret? CEO Bart Becht identifies four keys for us.

First is a ruthless focus on a small set of simple, very clearly understood goals.  RB focuses on 17 power brands (such as Air Wick, Calgon, Finish, Lysol, and Woolite) in fast growing categories, innovates and invests behind them, and strives to make them the leader in every market.  It is not hard to determine if the work you are doing is in line with those goals. In his recent book The Superperforming CEO, Dave Guerra refers to this disciplined focus as “Staying in the Sweet Spot” and cautions against the persistent allure to move away from it.  While this may produce “brief periods of euphoria… there is always the real danger of awakening to find yourself in real trouble”.

Second is leveling the playing field.  RB has 400 managers all around the world, yet has a single compensation and incentive program. How many organizations today explicitly or implicitly setup internal strife defining goal-based incentives for one division that can only be met if some other division fails to meet its goals?  At RB any manager may receive bonuses of up to 144% based on the performance of his group; not based on outperforming some other group.  Everyone is focused on contributing to the overall good of RB, not just their specific group.  Dave Guerra makes this point as well with his distinction of “Make Sure All Stakeholders Win”.  To superperforming companies the everybody wins scenario is simply the best way to maximize corporate profits.

Third, RB is a learning organization that recognizes failure as a huge incentive.  Have a new idea? Try it and if it going to fail, then fail small and fail quickly.  Decisions are made rapidly, often in the same meeting in which the question is first asked.  Consensus-driven decisions rule the day, striving for 80% alignment and 100% agreement to implement. Oh, and that other 20% might also move forward with a small experiment that will succeed, or fail small and fail quickly to fuel more lively debate. The reward is that organizational learning occurs and collectively the organization knows more about themselves and how to succeed together.  Guerra uses a Deming quote to express this need for “Open and Honest Communication”:

The economic loss from fear is appalling. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

People simply cannot perform at their best if they are afraid to try something new or fear reprisals for making mistakes or identifying problems.

Fourth, conflict is good.  Vigorous debate is good. Voicing a strong opposing opinion is good.  The best decisions are made after open constructive rigorous conversation about ideas.  At RB you have you have to stand for something; not having an opinion or not voicing one is a fatal blow. What takes over is an intensity to fight for better ideas; not personal or political gain.  Again superperforming Guerra shares this view with his “Believing in the Unlimited Potential of People”.   Unleashing the potential inside of all of us will lead to many divergent conflicting thoughts and beliefs that ultimately give organizations their best chance to excel.

One thing that should be clear by now is that agile organizations do things differently.  They organize work differently, they engage teams differently, they communicate differently, they create environments of trust. To do this they need a different kind of leadership; leadership that is focused, leadership that believes in people, leadership that inspires each of us to reach beyond our wildest dreams. Leaders of agile organizations are servant leaders.  Leading by example, they act in the best interests of the team, provide safe environments in which teams can learn, remove impediments that prevent teams from moving forward.

Still sound like a dream? How do we get started? What do we change first? How do we become a Semco or Reckitt Benckiser? We start small, we take small steps, we recognize agile organizations are not created by design, but by evolution.  Where to start is not as important as starting. Where to start is not as important as the vision we aspire to.  Agile organizations are evolving organizations that know no boundaries and are on a journey to greater heights that never ends.

Neils Bohr, father of Quantum Mechanics and the Particle-Wave Duality, understood Superperformance. Bohr’s famous family coat of arms includes the Latin inscription; Contraria sunt Complementa, which means “Opposites are Complements.” Well if opposites are complements, then complements must surely be opposites. Therefore it is not the complementarity principle-but the polar-complementarity principle that quantum mechanics relies on. This new language, which Bohr predicted would one day become “the common knowledge of schoolchildren,” is the water we swim in, the reality we inhabit, but cannot see from “Flatland.”

But no longer in organizations. We now have the night goggles of living and complex-adaptive systems, a new biophysics of Super, to light the way into our Super Future. Here are 10 polar-complements to try on for super-size. Surf between them with ever decreasing variation and your performance will skyrocket. Living in either pole exclusively is the province of fools and the source of much of the organizational, project, community, and even individual sub-optimization occurring today.

• Process & Culture
• Management & Leadership
• Control & Liberation
• Physical & Spiritual
• Being & Doing
• Empowerment & Responsibility
• Reality & Possibility
• Involvement & Commitment
• Reflection & Execution
• Desire & Action

So jump in and enjoy the waves. Cowabunga.

by Michele Munaretti, Corpus Optima Partner

When we begin to think of an organization as a living system, we notice that process and culture operate according to the same principles as our own brains.

The left-brain is related to thinking, the right brain to feeling. The left-brain is sequential, linear, logical and analytic; the right-brain is simultaneous, non-linear, intuitive and holistic. It is through the neural connections of the Corpus-Callosum that the two hemispheres work together for wholeness.

Superperforming process and culture interconnect in precisely the same way. It is only through the full expression of this core partnership that organizations become everything they can be. Organizations share this foundation of opposites with all of life in general. Wherever you look, life organizes as polar-complements.

The ancient Chinese philosophy of Tao holds that everything in nature consists of opposite forces, which must remain in balance for life to thrive. The Yin and Yang are opposing forces that constantly shift, operating in continual conflict, yet at the same time requiring each other for completion. Using a term coined by Chris Langton, we can say that the sweet spot of performance is at the “Edge of Chaos”, a point balanced precariously at the border between just enough Chaos and just enough Nomos (from the greek: Order, Law).

This polar complementarity principle is present in every company, in every industry.

Nevertheless this is particularly evident in the fashion companies since they produce and sell a creative product, conceived in a context that brings together art and craftsmanship, creative inspiration and management science. Change is the real essence of these firms, as they serve needs that are constantly changing. Constant innovation is the reason for their existence. In fact, the customers only willing to buy if the creativity meets their own tastes; tastes that in the modern markets are very difficult to predict.

While there are no proven methods that can help predict the success of a creative product, there are still some more or less established methods for managing and leading creative people to come up with new ideas that consumers will want, whether they are aware of it or not. I repeat, managing and leading at the same time.

In other terms, fashion companies will continue to depend on creative people, but also on management’s ability to optimise the creative process on which they are engaged, without consequently trapping their passion. Indeed, fashion companies and more generally all those in industries of symbolic intensity and a high rate of change, need special managers who can understand the culture and language of creative people. This aspect is crucial, since it requires a continual interaction between the “rational-managerial” attitude and the “emotional-creative” attitude of the organization.

This dynamic balancing between the Apollonian and the Dionysian is the presupposition of Superperformance in the fashion companies.

In this respect it may be profound to consider that the most successful fashion people have been partners where it was always possible to define one member of the couple as the pure creative and the other as the rationalizer.

Some of the most significant cases where a perfect mix between creative and managerial spirits was reached are these:

• • Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergè,
  • Giorgio Armani and Sergio Galeotti,
  • Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti,
  • Ottavio and Rosita Missoni,
  • Mariuccia Mandelli (Krizia) and Sergio Pinto,
  • Alberta and Massimo Ferretti,
  • Gianfranco Ferrè and Franco Dei Mattioli,
  • Gianni and Santo Versace,
  • Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole,
  • Calvin Klein and Barry Schwartz

The most interesting aspect is the specificity of the situations in which this harmony is achieved. The two roles are often played by a couple linked in a long-lasting relationship. This long-term factor is essential: it seems a necessary condition for overcoming the cultural barriers that obstruct the positive interaction of the two people. It often happens in the fashion companies that the management seems to consider the creative people as crazy, and the creative people in turn think of managers as boring and grey office workers oriented to the past.

This situation of apparent conflict conceals enormous potential and it is tied to management’s capacity to develop attitudes, methods and behaviours that fully appreciate the indispensable creative potential of the firm’s artistic part.

If maybe one cannot ask creative people to be more managerial because this would immediately be translated into a limit on their innovative potential, it is legitimate to expect managers to adapt their professionalism to this context, and to enter into harmony with the creative dimension of the business.

Thus the fashion manager has to have innate creative attitude, or at least to agree to take on some of the creative people’s culture. This does not mean that the manager has to abdicate the managerial role, which is to support, coordinate, rationalise and give objectives. Obviously, the creative impulse has to be wisely ruled and canalized in efficient and effective process flows.

The recommendation is to avoid this duality becoming a struggle for dominance between the two parts, as this would reduce the complementarity that is needed.

If your organization is typical, much time and money has been invested in modern process management methods such as TQM, TOC, Six Sigma, Lean, Balanced Scorecards, Quality/ISO Certification, and the like, as well as traditional performance management methods like pay-for-performance, workforce development, or performance appraisal to improve organizational effectiveness, yet results have not been substantial, much less sustainable.

There continues to be disparity between the outcomes that are intended by these methods, models, and theories-in-use and what actually occurs. How can this be? The answer is this: applying these methods without a correlative cultural initiative is ignoring a fundamental truth. Without engaging and unleashing the intrinsic motivation of process owners any performance initiative will prove hollow. The disparity exists because of the two programs all companies have—the written one, which exists in the dusty procedure manual; and the unwritten one, which lives day-to-day in the minds and interactions of people…by far the most powerful and influential.

Optimization (Superperformance) requires that we leverage what’s in the conversations, not just the manuals. We must go beyond the process and focus on the drivers of the process—we must impact the culture; the unwritten rules that determine what’s really important in an organization.

In summation, a revolutionary culture is a miracle cure, both entirely possible and eminently practical. It requires an understanding of the underlying assumptions, beliefs and values that determine what is important in an organization and what behaviors are desired in the way members interact with each other and their daily work. It also requires a commitment by senior executives to increase their awareness and acceptance of the current operating culture and its past history (causes), and then the courage to take action on the levers for revolutionary change that will drive a bona-fide transformation to Superperformance.

by Carmen Carter, Diversity Optimization, Corpus Optima

Out With the Old

In the recent past diversity has been targeted at increasing the representation of “different”  people in organizations.  Organizations have responded to the business case for diversity by independently modifying systems, processes, hiring practices, outreach efforts, and talent acquisition strategies. Training interventions focusing on the pervading cultural characteristics are continuously offered to help individuals work together more effectively.  Yet, many training programs have generally been met with modestly sustained results, and have derailed many well-intended workforce diversity initiatives.

The compelling case for diversity is not entirely based on “best practices” as defined by anecdotal information or statistics as the research tends to suggest; but one predicated on a value proposition which encompasses strategic business objectives, human resources infrastructure, the holistic needs of the individual, and the nature of the environment where the work is performed.

In with the New – Learning from Nature

Advances in diversity thinking and thought leadership warrant a view where the focus is on systemic wholeness and interdependence of parts, rather than independent analysis and separation of components. This is integral to inclusion, and necessary to achieve optimization and Superperformance.

In the throes of environmental turbulence, diversity allows us to change and morph into new entities, ones better suited for the new environment. This is the natural process of diversity.  Nature uses differences in a variety of ingenious ways, most obviously in producing creative responses to environmental change.  Differences, not similarities, produce resilience—both in nature and in organizations.

A broader, more robust definition of diversity is congruent with new discoveries and learning in the natural sciences.  Based on lessons from biology and new science, it suggests there are important implications and actions for individuals and organizations to take in order to appreciate and effectively use diversity as a key strength.

How does nature respond to change?  The answer is “it diversifies.”  It tries something different.  The role of evolution, the need for openness to change and the power of resilience are important dimensions.

Diversity Optimization

By understanding that an organization is also a living organism, we can see diversity as a natural strength.  In order to do this, we must understand human behavior from a natural perspective.  Our biological blind spot for working with differences necessitates methods and tools for individuals and organizations to uncover unconscious biases and challenge assumptions. This breakthrough, based on the biodiversity found in natural ecosystems, presents a new vision and hope for the optimization of all people in all organizations.  Along with a solid commitment to the traditional business fundamentals of diversity, it also includes an understanding of diversity as a natural process by which organizations thrive, drawing on the lessons of biology and complexity science.

Diversity + Unity = Optimization

Furthering the use of the Corpus Optima polar-complementarity framework as the basis for by understanding and resolving diversity issues means understanding that both diversity and unity create diversity optimization. This requires new education around a new paradigm – uncovering stereotypes, unconscious bias, increasing self-awareness, building shared values, and understanding attribution are all critical dimensions.

Philosophical Principles of Diversity Optimization

1. Servant Leadership, vision, clearly defined processes, organizational alignment, and tools for front-line management are essential to achieve diversity optimization.
2. Creating the value proposition for diversity will deliver real business results that can be measured in addition to enhancing the company employment brand.
3. Setting aspirations for the company and measuring performance against those aspirations will be essential to ensure accountability.
4. Synchronizing talent and building a diverse leadership pipeline will be the first place to focus to improve the recruitment and retention of high performing, diverse talent.
5. Phasing implementation will be more effective given the need to educate, modify HR infrastructure, and ensure the first initiatives create positive momentum.
6. Diversity & inclusion is a mainstream business plan agenda item; most companies already have some type of diversity initiatives in place.  Integrating diversity and into the daily operations of the business will be essential for performance improvement and success.
7. Diversity is not all about race and gender.  If optimized, it stimulates creativity and helps people from all backgrounds leverage talents to become better managers of process, and leaders of people.
8. Diversity increases employee comfort:  if we can share our thoughts, feelings, and rationales openly and honestly, we will foster an environment of inclusion, and value working with colleagues who are different from us.  We will also learn that most people have more in common than they realize.
9. Optimizing diversity will be a multi-year process requiring consistent focus and attention.
10. Taking diversity to the next level requires a paradigm shift in our attitudes and fundamental ways of thinking. Simply, we must engage intellectually, and replicate less from best practices, and more from biodiversity and nature!

Biodiversity is Diversity Optimization

The goal of diversity is to bridge the gap among all stakeholders and optimize the knowledge, skills, and abilities of everyone to achieve business results.  It’s clear that diversity is good for business.  Organizations cannot afford to leave anyone out—and if the ultimate goal of diversity is inclusion, why would they?   Optimization occurs in organizations that create inclusive cultures where all talent can be maximized.  Nature and the biodiversity of optimization is the diversity of Superperformance. The power of diversity is enormous! This is breakthrough thinking, and an important new lesson to learn.

Servant leadership works because it liberates intrinsic motivation. Because even though the people are the same . ..they have taken on a new state . . .before they were water, now they are ice.

True practitioners of continuous improvement do not see the green/sustainability movement as anything different from what they have been practicing and preaching for years. What has changed is public awareness and government intervention, in part due to climate change and the politics of global warming. This has made it increasingly important for organizations to embrace sustainability in their products, services, branding and marketing. The integrity with which a company’s internal sustainability practices are aligned with external sustainability practices will determine which organizations ultimately succeed in going green.

Lean manufacturing has been embraced by many organizations as a key enabler of continuous improvement. Lean manufacturing principles are a tried and true means of eliminating waste, and have been most robustly applied to the production environment. Although lean principles have historically been embraced by manufacturing organizations many service organizations have recently embraced lean principles and are achieving significant improvements. Two of these service industries are health care and insurance. For example, hospitals have used lean principles to reduce the time a patient is in intensive care (extremely expensive), or the time required to admit a patient. Insurance companies have used lean principles to reduce the time to process both new policies and claims, freeing up significant amounts of cash.

Lean principles applied to every type of organization will ensure waste is driven out continually. Without an organization’s commitment to be green from the inside-out, its products and services will not remain green. If lean principles can be applied to both service and manufacturing processes, they can be applied to other areas in organizations. A principle, if applied properly, should provide benefit wherever it is applied. For example, the Golden Rule can be successfully applied to personal, organizational, social, economic, and spiritual situations. It enjoys ‘universality.’ In the same way, the application of lean principles to the whole organization will enable it to be green as an organization now and into the future.

The Body without the Spirit is a corpse. James 2:26

Today’s sophisticated knowledge economy is stuck with the equivalent of an abacus for measuring the actual financial value of corporate assets and liabilities. Denise Caruso, When Balance Sheets Collide With the New Economy, New York Times, Sept 9, 2007

Body and Spirit. These are the two necessary conditions for life in any living, complex adaptive system, whether organization, community, or human being.

Body and Spirit together is the sweet spot of Superperformance. And the ”Spirit” of Super is the Spirit of Servant Leadership. The major discovery of The Superperforming CEO is that Servant Leadership is the Leadership of Superperformance.

This is stunning and extraordinary news. This astonishing discovery is ironic, when examined against the backdrop of the worst employee satisfaction levels in 22 years, according to the widely respected Conference Board. It has been almost a decade since similarly highly regarded Gallup published their famous Q-12 data, showing that over 70% of people at work “are not engaged.”

Last month’s news from the Conference Board means that it’s only gotten worse.  Not 70% but probably 80% or more of people at work are not engaged. Eight out of 10 people, is a very conservative estimate of the people who come to work in this country and do not show up.  In Superperformance language this means the vast majority of companies are operating with only 20% of their right brains turned on.

Only 20%. This is a horrendous discovery. Who would be so knowingly foolish, to leave all this performance, all this earnings potential, on the table?

What is the cost of operating without a culture, without a distributed leadership paradigm, without intrinsically motivated and passionate people?

The Superperforming CEO is a collection of distinctions for operating with “mind wide open” with organizational right brain, organizational leadership hemisphere, fully expressed.

Sam Walton, Herb Kelleher, Richard Teerlink, Warren Buffett, Jack Lowe, Robert Dedman, John Baugh, Ted Bauer, Eric Schmidt, Bill George, George Martinez, and other Superperforming CEOs.

The best kept secret of our business generation is that servant leadership is the leadership of Superperformance.

Which means, if there is a mechanics of Superperformance then it must be a quantum mechanics.

And if there is a science it has to be a life science.

Seeing what’s not there is the key to the future.

Excerpt from The Superpeforming CEO
From Chapter 14:  Distributed Being

If you look into nature, into these places of community, you will find an amazing degree of alignment; there is a beautiful, symmetrical pattern. No friction, no member out of alignment—the flow is seamless. These organisms all behave intelligently, even though their members are unaware of the big picture and there is no “central controller” to guide them. According to futurist and complexity author Kevin Kelly, they are out of control—a state he describes as “distributed being.” Since this is the preferred operating mode of complex biological forms that have thrived for millions of years, Kelly suggests that our own increasingly complex organizations will inevitably follow the same pattern. In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively simple and locally autonomous agents, rather than a single, super-intelligent executive branch. They are bottom-up, self-organizing systems. In the language of complexity science, they are complex adaptive systems (CAS) displaying emergent features.

For organizations, reaching anywhere close to this level of performance is only possible in a decentralized environment. But decentralization of decision rights requires corresponding levels of personal responsibility.

Agile project teams are an excellent example.

George: “Birds flocking, fish schooling, bees swarming, all move effortlessly in the same direction, it is a more efficient way to forage and travel, the whole uses less energy to operate in this way. Somehow great teams and great organizations are able to operate as something approaching this ‘frictionless’ state. There is something extra–something invisible at work.

“Some companies become fossilized by centralizing all authority. This is suboptimal. Decisions have to be made as close to the customer as possible, at the lowest level of knowledge and skill. Organizations are patterns of relationships. Conversations are the heart and soul of organizational life. Conversations shape commitment to the organization and create a sense of what is possible. Like Buckminster Fuller’s trimtab on the rudder of a ship, conversations seem insignificant, but have tremendous hidden power. Conversations characterize everyday work life and negotiations between people in the organization and their customers. They determine the quality of service and the overall effectiveness of the company. In many organizations, conversations are negative and blocked or fall into otherwise destructive loops.

“Change cannot be imposed or controlled from the top or from the outside. It is better to work with people at all company levels to help them discover for themselves what is possible and what can be done better. This helps to facilitate new conversations, which often cross boundaries within organizations. By focusing on those conversations at the core of the organization, the greatest leverage can be created, for executives working on strategy, teams working on projects, the whole organization working on its next transformation, or any other critical business function. Systems, structures and processes all help the effective organization, but they count for little if the conversations and relationships are not real. Imposing command-and-control solutions to business problems, especially around knowledge work, has proven to be almost completely ineffective.”