S2 Ep.08 – Arnoud Douw - Create planets not hierarchies
Time to give up organizational charts, KPI’s, control and let go! Organize your company like a planetary system of circles. Let these circles self-organize and run the company. No hierarchy! Whilst your people play roles in these circles – your career doesn't go "up", it's about jumping through circles to constantly learn, contribute and grow.
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Introduction
Want to connect with Arnoud
EP. 032 Transcription
[00:00:00] Steve: Arnoud welcome to the experienced designers.
[00:00:03] Arnoud: Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here.
[00:00:07] Steve: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. And this one's an extra special one because I've also got my co-host with me today, Shani.
[00:00:13] Shani: Yes. I'm really excited to be
[00:00:15] Steve: here. Yeah. So when I shared with Shani that I met you in Belgrade b and some of the topic in which you covered we were both super curious to just delve in a bit deeper.
We decided to both jump in and grill you, the two of us to grill you instead on the . Just for the audience yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself, Anna, what's your background and what you do and your perhaps share a passion as well of.
[00:00:38] Arnoud: Oh, you have many passions and not enough time for it.
Work, workwise, my passion is all different kinds of growing and developing, let's call it things, which is people and organization and teams and ideas. I think this is definitely my passion and that's also my, one of my big hobbies is flying. It's a similar thing, I'm trying to, every time to develop a nice, relaxing flight , and it always goes different and at the same time, it gives me a huge feeling of freedom and relaxation, and I think that is, is quite close together.
So flying was a childhood dream. I always wanted to become a pilot since I was a little boy. My career went totally different. I ended up in, in corporates and spent a lot of time in, in reinsurance. I started a few of my own companies. and I spent a lot of time on head HR roles, and this is where I got into all these topics here.
I spent at the beginning a lot of time in the entire talent management field, leadership development field, which again has to do with developing and not necessarily teaching, but developing and helping and also observing how people and things grow. And I always thought greatest feeling in that field was when you know, you see some people and you think this is a rough diamond, and this person has something.
And then 10 years later you see someone in LinkedIn, you see that person popping up somewhere in a very high or cool role. And then you think, I knew it and this is the nice part. Not that I was right, but just that it is visible, that you. Feel it when you encounter such people.
So that, that is my passion and most of my roles in the past have been around that. Either the HR role. I always was very international active. I'm myself, I was born in Holland, but I grew up in Switzerland and I lived in South Africa four years. So also that is very international.
. And over the last few years, I tried to put that all in one bucket, which means that I'm trying as a consultant with three colleagues, we found that eye opener, which is a kind consultancy boutique, if you like, working exactly on these topics. I specialized a lot in organizational development and corporate culture because I think this is more or less the same, but we can talk about that later.
But I'm helping firms to think differently, work differently, do differently, behave differently. This is what is actually not only my, but also the passion of the four of us. Super. And as you can tell now, I'm 25 years old, for the second time now. And getting, and my most important passion besides is of course my daughter who is 13.
Beginning of puberty. And again, I see thousands aspects of development. , that's
[00:03:28] Steve: brilliant. I feel daily. And I, was reflecting on this the other day. The, I feel really privileged to be in amongst, I think an another moment in time where there we, I feel like we're at the beginning of this kind of a J curve again, in the world of work.
and how we see work and how organizations are developing and what that future could be if we were way more intentional around how we develop organizations for people. And yeah. I kind mirror what you're saying, like from a second winding career or a new, energy or focus. I think that's something which I totally connect to which bring us really nicely, I think, onto why we're here today and what we're gonna, what we're gonna cover and explore together.
Because of course we are in this, in the middle of this significant shift that's happening globally and the whole organizational structures of are being completely shaken some of which are being completely rebuilt or others are being evolved and others are trying, they're hardest to stay the same.
So I'm really curious to get a sense of Yeah, what's. Just from your perspective around, if we talk about organizational development, those two words, what's the landscape? Let's give the audience a bit of a sense of what's that past present piece, what the, what's the historical journey of organizational development?
What's the different forms that we've, that you've observed to give us a little bit of a bit of a holistic level to see where we've come from and where we are today.
[00:04:57] Arnoud: Yeah, interesting one. Because at the moment, most of us tend to only look back at the last two years now with Covid, and all of a sudden the people sitting in the home office now, then one of the traditional slides of all of us who are teaching this topics is that the biggest driver at the moment of organization development was Covid and not HR and not the CEO and another consultant,
So we had a lot of discussions around this over the last two years. But I think, when we look back, we can look back a hundred years now that I think the. The entire developments since the days where the, we decided to find ways to build cars quicker and have a organization along conveyor belts the entire time of tailorism.
I think we can see how this all build up and we had the change in how we tried to manufacture. We had then the change of the markets. We could see how we always us and the leaders and managers and companies were always trying to somehow tackle organization wise. The changes that, that were happening with the wars, with the technology being different almost every year.
So I think what we would be seeing now is not only because of Covid, but it's just that we have to much, much quicker than expected, adopt our way of organizing ourselves and our lives and our companies. . So how the markets have changed, how we can move around to market, how mobile we have gotten, how quick information is available.
It's not so long ago that we were sitting in hotel rooms and it was really difficult to just connect our huge heavy laptop to get a couple of emails. That's not so long ago. And only a few years before that, there were no emails. I remember my boss went on a business trip to South America and we just didn't see him for three weeks and didn't hear him.
And if you wanted to reach him, he had to send effects to the hotel and hope that the reception will pass it on. And so cooperation was it's not so long ago. To me, , I'm 25, so as I told you, , it was within a few years, it has completely changed. And this is on both areas.
Knowing you one-to-one, working with your colleagues or your boss, but also how you then have to set up your, yourself as an organization on how you actually wanna do that in a cleverer way. And then on top of that. But we, what we see now is a big shift in the new generations coming into the workforce.
Now, we had in these days where that example happened with the traveling, now the people coming into the companies, they were expecting a normal career. You would tell them, look, this is your desk. And if you are doing really well, you got a bigger desk. And then you will get a promotion and you get more salary and another promotion and your office gets bigger and you have more people and you would say you have more people
And that was the career that was attractive and interesting. And the new generations are not interested in that. And we are still very often thinking with all tools and all career plans, telling these new people how our organization and how career path looks in that. And that has totally changed. I don't think you can hire anyone with a nice desk and a career plan of promotion every three years.
And that all comes together now. And I think this is probably the main reason why. We also have a lot of thinking around it. And what also has happened is that we have now some of the younger generation, if I can call them like that, are now coming to the, what we call sea level. And we have also new thinking on the on that level where these decisions are made.
Yeah. How organize and that is different. For a long time we had people in the lower ranks, if we, if I can call it like that, who were, who see and felt differently. But the deciding bodies were still old world, old generation. And that is what we are learning now very quickly. You cannot manage the new world with the old tools.
[00:08:43] Steve: No. There's just to share, just to what you talk about, how it wasn't that long ago. I do you know that December, 2022 is 30 years since it was the 30 year anniversary of the very first text message. Wow.
[00:09:01] Arnoud: Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. That makes me feel even older.
Yeah. Amazing. Then you draw charts about the last 150 years and then you realize that most of it was happening in the last centimeter of your chart. Exactly.
[00:09:19] Steve: So amazing. The thing that screams So so hearing you share that that, that piece I'm, what screams at me is complexity.
It's so complex to navigate to even get started. Just from your perspective, are there like ways to maybe try to simplify this in terms of how to look at organizational. Design or look at organizational structures to say, okay, here if we're to make sense of this crazy complex world that seems to be getting ever more complex, when you're thinking about organizational structures and designs to maybe, is there a way of just stepping back and seeing it in a maybe a more simpler approach to help people?
[00:10:03] Arnoud: I think a lot of, or actually most of us are trying consciously or unconsciously to somehow tackle that. I think I. Yes, we now we, especially us who are looking at many companies or are even need teaching, we then trying to find all the models that the different people are using to approach that complexity topic.
And then we talk about the WCA world. So at least we have then somehow structured the complexity in four letters. Now that helps already a little bit to, to explain to our counterparts. I've now seen a few times that they're VCA is already out, and now everybody calls it Barney. So I have to adjust my slides.
Now, Barney's standing for, if I remember correctly, I have to look quickly. It's not that the world is becoming brittle, anxious. Non-linear and in incre incomprehensible, some more difficult to, more difficult, even difficult to
And I think, and this is, I think that takes a lot of energy of all of us being in any shaping role that there's, you try with old-fashioned way, now you look at the complexity and then you take the old form of structure that you're using, you somehow try to hammer that into your new complex world.
, and this is what I mentioned earlier. Now, this is the hard way to, trying to tackle that complexity with old tools doesn't work at all. So what a lot of us are trying to do, and I think that is the right way, is okay, let's, instead of sitting there doing a workshop and think, how do I organize my firm to somehow reflect the complexity?
Let's see what the other end of the food chain, if you like. Now, the people that we are hiring or the people that are actually learning a new way of working life, how would they approach it and how would they, because they are used to that complexity, they would probably even wouldn't even describe it as complex because they're used to it.
So bridging that, our view, which might be old-fashioned on tools and ways of doing things compared with what's the next generation. And also our thinking brings up and on somehow to bring that together. And this is, I think the, at the moment, the most common way of trying to approach that.
The biggest example is now, we call it our agile world. As our agile is just we introduce something which is sounds like anarchy because that sounds attractive to the new generation, . . And then you have to explain to them, actually it's not anarchy. We probably have more rules than before, but it's a way of how can we somehow understand and live with that complexity.
Yeah. I think that's what I'm, what we're seeing a lot.
[00:12:31] Steve: Yeah. I'd support that as well. I think we're seeing, if we think of it from the employee experience world as it were yeah. We're seeing a need to move from this kind of top down. , decision making or identification of the potential problems in inside the organization from a very narrow view of the business.
So I think there's still, I don't know. My, my view is I still think there's so much work to be done in flipping that completely the other way. And working from, and I don't like top bottom at all system. Yes. I think you mentioned but working with employees to, yeah. To identify those problems and solve that problems with them, for them.
. And I think that's something which is still, we've still got some way to go and there are organizations doing some tremendous work in that area, of course. But I think generally there's still more work to be done. Shani, what's your what's your take? I can see you.
[00:13:18] Shani: Yeah, I'm thinking like taking notes and reflecting.
Yeah. No, I think I, I really like what you're saying. Arne. that what we're trying to move towards is harboring complexity and instead of trying to remove it, because the reality is, we are complex beings. The world is complex. We can't necessarily eliminate the complexity, but we can create frameworks for ourselves to deal with it.
Just what's coming up for me when I'm listening to both of you so far, is also that we talk about this paradigm shift and it's It's hard in a way because we don't know where we're going. And I think sometimes that also stops us from letting go of an old paradigm is that we don't have anything to replace it with.
. And quite often if we wanna have change, you can't just pull the carpet out and then hope for the best. That's a state where we really struggle to be. Yeah. And I think in a sense that's where we need to be right now is in the unknown, in the explorative. Yes. I think that's maybe a question that came up for me.
How do we stay in there a little bit more and help the process of letting go of the paradigm? .
[00:14:26] Arnoud: Interesting. I often try to then somehow bridge it, think, okay, if I can't explain it just in, in teaching or in workshops, maybe if I approach the people on the private sites, I can get there somehow.
And I very often ask them, if you are in a sports club, in a board of a whatever tennis club or whatever, and you have to organize yourself, how do you do that? You don't have your organizational regulations from the company. You don't have a difficult board and a CEO with a different view.
How would you do it in your private life knowing you don't have. Boring boundaries and then they answer very quickly say, oh no, I asked who is good in this and who's good at that? And then that this is how we work and we run a club. But the translation from that back into working life is somehow seems to be really difficult.
And this is what I'm always trying to somehow get to the individual and to their private thinking and explain to them it's actually nowadays allowed to actually just bring in your ideas, even if they come from the private world. Where I grew up or most of us grew up, is in a world where you have private life and business life and your behavior and private life was totally different than the one in in, in the big corporates.
And this is now moving. I think this is mixing and I think, but it is my, a little bit, my personal view is if we somehow get there, that we can get that private behavior into our organizational working environment, that is a big step to actually finding the right solutions on how to organize ourselves.
I love that.
[00:15:53] Steve: Yeah. Is that not also the bring your whole self to work, Colin?
[00:15:57] Arnoud: Bring your own device that is was, yeah. .
[00:16:00] Shani: Yeah. I like that. I, it gets true for me in a lot of places. I know I worked in learning for a long time, and there it's the same as you say. There's this distinction between the private and the corporate.
And in the corporate, if you ask people if they. , it's yes or no based on if they went to a course. Exactly. But privately, if you ask 'em, did you learn something? Yeah, I took a sailing course, I learned how to bake bread. I did this, I did that. And all of a sudden they're experimental and they're self-driven and they do a lot of different things.
But in the corporate space is just this. So it's, yeah. How do we make the squares a little bigger? Yeah.
[00:16:37] Arnoud: And I think this is what, this is the shift we, we talked about earlier. Now that we are now forced to allow. Privates out of the box thinking and out of the box behavior into our business environment to actually find a way of working together in still along the another traditional.
We have ebs, we we have goals, we have targets, et cetera. Cuz that is probably as long as, especially in listed in public companies, this is not gonna change too quickly. So we still have some, external influences that will not, allow us to do it super quick. But I think this is the approach somehow, and this is the behavior side, how we can get into that, comfortable, private, relaxed maybe relaxed is the wrong word, but comfortable in private behavior and bring it into our working, working.
[00:17:26] Steve: Yeah, I think that's, yeah, I was gonna ask that. The mindset aspect, cuz there's such, everybody's having a mindset shift of some form. . And I also think, everybody has a responsibility, not just, leaders. It, everybody is part of this movement and has a responsibility.
What do you see as some of the blockers right now and some of the areas that you think need to shift from a mindset point of view? Particularly like in a board level or, . Yeah. C-suite level. What are
[00:17:52] Arnoud: you seeing? It's definitely not the understanding or the intellectual capability, the.
all of them have totally understood, say, and I would probably all also agree with what we discussed the last few minutes. I think that is not the problem. The problem is, or the challenge, eh, is it takes a lot of courage because you literally have to let go of your old way of thinking, of your behavior and mechanisms and leadership mechanism that you used to and that you trusted.
And I think this is the biggest challenge, and this is what I always think when I say now, the challenge is letting go of old behaviors, letting go of the part you use to manage people and letting go of actually management thinking and getting more to now, let's call it leadership thinking or leaders.
Leaders thinking. So that letting go, that is the biggest challenge. And I think the reason, or one of the reasons is it's. And that's why I said they know how it works, but it's like risky to them because it's, that part is unknown, huh? Letting go and building new forms of organizations, and we'll get back to that later.
I'm sure. It's just that it's like risky And all these leaders, they are all ambitious and then they see that new way of leading and working, and then the brainstem goes okay, this is a risk. This is new, this is different. And then the main reaction is usually either you fight it or you fight and Yeah.
And then you see if you try to avoid this, then you see all these load solutions of I just do more delegation. I do remote leadership where I've seen lots of slides and I, or pictures hanging in offices. Leadership is letting go. And what they do is they just reduce the numbers of meetings and they just increase the distance mentally, but not the leading distance or they just fight it with saying, okay, but can't we just change the way we do objectives now come, maybe we do MBO differently.
And then they try to avoid, do not go extreme and really let go into new organizations form, but they try to somehow save or rescue their old tools into the new work environment. . Yeah.
[00:19:59] Steve: Is there so yeah, I think this is bringing all this together. We've got this kind of new paradigm shift.
We have organizations who are keen to protect revenue, performance, profit. We have leadership who are smart, but actually. Are struggling to take the leap of faith because there is the unknown. in between, during that leap into the unknown there is that I kind I'm envisioning this kind of moment or this environment where people are, where maybe there is a, an opportunity to create a space or an environment for experimentation, for learning, for evolution, for co-creation with Yes, there are risks in it, of course, but there are, in my mind, unprecedented or untapped potential and opportunities in that space equally.
What's stopping people, what's stopping organizations? Actually, let's put people, but what are stopping organizations from adapting or adopting that kind of mindset or approach around just experimenting and trying?
[00:20:59] Arnoud: I think often it's just the courage or lack of courage. I think to just try it.
And the other one is the, they don't the time pressure or the pressure from the old external mechanisms. We see that a lot now that we have great leaders sitting on sea level and they allow also experimental forms of organization. And then they give you exactly two months and three weeks, and then the quarter ends, and then they have the board in their neck and they want numbers, results, progress, KPIs.
And that's is, and that conflict ends on the desk of the now. Let's call them sea level leaders who are literally in between these two worlds, literally. They are trying to implement new ways of leading and working together, and they have to translate this thing into the boardroom language, which is still old world.
And I think that's the biggest problem. They let you do a lot of things with their staff and go there, and then they lose patience or their patience is taken away by regulations and old worlds working tools, which just, and the control mechanism that kicks in
[00:22:06] Steve: is this, I dunno, correct me if I'm wrong, so let's debate this.
Is this not the great, one of the greatest moments in time to be in a startup or a challenger business? because if these organizations are struggling to adapt to this new paradigm, and you're coming in with a much clean, fresher cl white sheet of paper without that legacy, and I know that's true, that can be true for many years in the past, but we're seeing this acceleration definitely in the last couple of years, is are we now on this, in this greatest time for new organizational structures and new ways of working without that legacy to really start to take market share from these, or from these organizations?
Potentially?
[00:22:49] Arnoud: Yes. I think it is. Also because the driver is a little bit different. We had a, in many years you would do a startup because you have to dream of becoming a unicorn. And so when most startups were they were perceived as sexy because they most probably, if they have a great idea and they're successful, they got super rich.
And I think what we see now is we get, we see a lot of startups, but their aim is not to start small and be the next it unicorn company. Of course everybody needs to make money for their living, but very often the driver is not, or the dream is not to become a billion heavy company, but a functioning, hopefully purpose driven company.
. And I think that's the biggest difference that a lot of startups try their ideas because they believe in the idea and not because they hope to be, get super rich. Yeah. And I, but that's my view. I'm not sure if this's the same in all the countries. I'm living in a country which is very heavily driven by the financial world, with all insurances and banks that it's different because now they, the, these startups are looking for investors and these investors are sitting usually in the old worlds investment traditional world, if you like.
. So they have to give a different story, otherwise they don't get the funding, et cetera. So it's maybe a bit different in certain countries, I could imagine. But in general, I see more and more. Startups that get a lot of echo because they're trying to do something purposeful and not doing something crazy that could become super rich.
[00:24:21] Steve: Yeah, I can't remember the Charlie, what was the thing? Was it hu humanity or human? I can't remember the, there's this.
[00:24:30] Shani: Just around designing for humans. Or designing for humanity. Humanity,
[00:24:34] Steve: yes. Yeah. And I, and it just elevated this piece around designing for humans which is great. Of course I'm not, I'm an advocate of course.
But the humanity thing just elevates it up to planet level kind of thinking and that ecosystem and how that all kind of fits in. So I think there's, we're seeing more of that. I love the Patagonia example, of course. , I've actually want my Patagonia jump on today. Oh. But they yeah.
So that's a really great example, I think of a very brave decision. And one that is very much against the traditional in many ways. You said
[00:25:04] Arnoud: it is working, and I think that and it's visible. And we see that a lot. That's, and it's one of the drivers when we sometimes have like certain departments or divisions that get the freedom to organize themselves in a different way.
that they are the experimental division know, and a big corporate allows some part of the organization to go there. Usually it's the one that doesn't have a heavy impact on their balance sheet and and the financial, yes. But at least, it's better than nothing. Yeah. Yes. And then they very often do it because they see it has worked in other, bigger organizations.
[00:25:34] Shani: .
I think it's interesting though also that now we're bringing up examples of companies that have gone against the grain, whether it's been now or previously. And I was also thinking about Unilever, for example. I don't know if they still do it, but I know that a few years back they decided not to do quarterly reporting even though they're on the nasdaq and they just decided they're not doing it.
They're doing yearly reporting and it. , huge thing. And it was exactly with this in mind that you were talking about this two months and three weeks timelines that, don't enable us to actually stick things out. Try have the possibility to iterate. It puts so much press pressure on the organization to really produce something.
And I just then thinking back to the leaders, I think we put a lot of pressure on leaders to drive the change. And then we don't make any bold decisions to change the structures that make it actually possible for them to be different types of leaders. So we're saying, yeah, be modern, but we're still expecting you to do this and that according to this old idea, old paradigm that exists.
Yeah. I think for me that's an interesting paradox that I also see going on. That we, yeah, we push the change over to the individuals, but we don't make them necessarily on the big structural level all the time.
[00:26:55] Arnoud: And at the same time, there is the biggest opportunity, I think because it has become now interesting or, yeah, let's call it interesting enough to including you reporting at only financials in your quarterly reporting, but that you can also show that you're working on the culture of the firm, or at least on the organizational setups.
If you can show in your quarterly re or yearly reporting, not only great financials, but that you, and if you can also say we are actually rebuilding our firm to, to follow the latest forms of organization and then including your reports that you are introducing the new forms of organization. I think this is new and this is now becoming also an interesting to the investing world.
What reading all these. and that has was not the case a few years ago. Nobody would ever write in this quarterly report that we are now introducing a self-organized team structure , and this is now possible.
[00:27:51] Steve: Very cool. Yeah, there's no r there's not much room for innovation Is there in a quarterly reporting cycle, typically.
[00:28:01] Arnoud: Not in one, but over time. Yes. . Yes, .
[00:28:06] Steve: So can I so let's just delve in cuz I I'd love to understand or maybe if you've got some examples of organizations and how they've experimented with different structures and ways of working outside of a typical kind of, functional, hierarchical approach that we're also accustomed to.
Yeah. Do you have anything to share, Annie, or any thought in
[00:28:24] Arnoud: inputs? Yes. What we are trying to do, and this is very similar to what we discussed earlier, is how is it possible to somehow link that, let's call it private energy or that's, the new thinking of the new way of preferences, how our people want to work.
How can we combine that with the way we wanna organize our. Our ecosystem or possibly the entire organization. And I still come back to one of these old quotes, and this is very often my or our design principle. You know that quote of stip where he says that if you wanna build a ship, like you should not instruct your people how to collect wood and how to cut it and how to make the sale.
But that if you give them the desire or the yearning for the horizon and then lean back, they will actually do that in a better, quicker, and clever and more fun way. And this is, although almost every manager has once in his lifetime printed out this quote, we still use it as one of our design principles because it entails all the things that we discussed earlier.
Yeah. And if you try to translate it into an organizational form, you end up in, ideally a hierarchy free, which is probably then the, one of the holocratic versions. , which is a very long step for organizations, even if they would like to, and they have understood this shift is change management wise and emotionally is really big and also really hard to explain.
So we see a lot of companies going like a first step, and that is very often some different forms of circular organizations. So let's call it self-organized. Yeah. So what we can explain is, and they understand that, is that if you just take yourself, your company as a bubble and everything around the bubble is the market that you take all the teams that somehow have to do with the market because they create value.
And at the end of the day, you're still making money. And that will remain the same for the next few years. But if you can arrange your teams or bubbles close to the market, you automatically. building another circle or a planetary system if you like. We very often call it planets. So we think if you get to a form where you have all the teams close to the market delivering the value and have these teams organize themselves in a clever way because they know best and they know much better how to organize themselves than some guys on the sea level sitting somewhere at the top of the organization and hence the example from earlier with the private clubs now, and how would you organize yourself in a private world if you take that intelligence and that energy and let the teams organize themselves in a way that they can deliver what actually the team was originally founded for?
Then you have already a big step of new form of organization and a lot of not that anarchy I mentioned I mentioned earlier, but that self destiny in itself organized way and. That is also what we think the people are looking for. They don't wanna come in a world where they can build and organize themselves.
Most of them do not wanna become the CEO of the firm. They want to have an environment where they can learn and be with people they like and not in a box of org chart. So we trying to explain that shift from a org chart with boxes to a thinking model and very often, yeah. Yeah. Let's
[00:31:40] Steve: delve into this planetary system of planetary approach.
So what I'm visualizing is a circle outside of that circle is the market. And then inside there are different planets inside that ecosystem, and they are, how are they organized around in, in each of those planets? And what do we, if we then jumped onto that planet what do we then see
[00:32:02] Arnoud: as well? If you jump to a planet that is on the outer orbit, if you like then you see them. doing what they actually did before. They are creating value or they're doing what the company was actually built for originally. Yeah. So they're literally usually with the clients and they have organized them in a way that they know who is good with money.
So he takes part of, it takes care of the money part. If that is. The case in that team, or if it's just programming, then the majority of the team will be programming. But you have daily site themselves. Who is gonna do the weekly meetings or who is gonna talk to the client for difficult topics or who is going to look after the atmosphere in the teams.
All these topics that you so far had to request from some support functions somewhere in the org chart, be it HR or finance or legal, that do you organizing your team. Yeah. And when you have to, then you also see, okay, do we have that so much that we actually need a person sitting on that role with us in the team or not?
Because if it's only once every two months, we actually don't need it. And then we can still take it from somewhere organization. But we go to one of the circles that are circl. Inside our orbit because they don't have to do with the markets. And then we send someone from our team to find out who can help us with that topic.
Yeah, so you literally see self-organized mini firms. So mini startups, again, similar to what we discussed earlier, new form of startups. You have lots and lots of client teams, or you can call 'em client planets, and your naming is free. Usually they even call their own names. And they are flying around that orbit looking after their clients.
And only thing is what is left is you still have in the middle what used to be the CEO or the top of the company is most probably in the middle of the organization. Not because the middle is the most important, but it's because they don't have contact with the market. And the only role is to figure out do we need new planets?
Do we need different planets? So we make a planet for half a year that is just working on a idea. And then you have a innovation planning flying around for half a year when they're finished and that disappears again. Yeah. So what you're trying to do is to have something that is constantly moving and changing.
So you don't have to reorganize your firm every three months. No. Either because you have lost the client or you have bought the competitor or the market has changed, but you are per, you are so like bubbles that you can always adjust to whatever is happening. And that is the thing behind it. Yeah.
[00:34:33] Steve: So what I'm hearing there is like the, from a client perspective, a market perspective, they're getting the very best people based on their needs.
Yes. And that's aligning the right competence, that's fluid and flexible. Yes. I think from an employee perspective, they're involved and surrounded by mutual competence. They're doing, they're probably self like choosing what they want to contribute as part of that. They're using potentially their not potentially, they are using their best skills and competence in, in, in the real life scenario.
And they also get stretched by exploring and learning from others as part of that planet. Can employees then jump from one planet to another and to another as part of what does that development roadmap look like? Does that, is that something. Built into that as well.
[00:35:20] Arnoud: That is a big difference.
What is actually quite similar, you will recognize it sounds a little bit like profit centers and the old days we profit centers and it's not so much reference. You still have client teams now you have someone looking after whatever, client A, and you have client teams looking after client B and C.
So this is not so different. What is different is we don't have hierarchies in that sense orchard anymore. So your career is also not about getting from one box to the next higher box to another higher box and someone reached top. Your career is now jumping from planets to planet. So if you think that either now you're getting boards looking after the same client for two years, or you wanna do something different for whatever reason, you discussed it in the team, said, guys, no I think I have to move on.
I would like to, maybe not tomorrow, but no, it would be great to, to find another planet. And then someone in the plant says, okay, either you go and. Ask other planets or you ask help at the HR planet, or we look around for you and see if we can make it possible. So you organize your own career, but not by asking context on a higher level, but finding just a planet that suits you for the next period of time.
You can even think because you're self-organized and there's no rule that you have to leave one team and go to another one, you can just say, look, do you I would like to spend 20% of my time in planets Z for whatever reason. And then you, the planets the can discuss that and you don't have to go to HR and they go to the education board and the education board ask the three teams, and this is way to.
it's too long, first of all. But also then you lose entire, in the spirit of freedom and the choice of where you wanna go, that disappears. So also that's actually sort out the planets or the people on the planets themselves. So Korea does not up the ladder. The clearest jumping planets.
[00:37:10] Shani: I love that.
I love how that's centers evolution in terms of both competence and contribution. Instead of this like climbing and chasing something. What's worth is what we're creating together and what I can do. And rather than reaching a certain position or having a certain title, that's super interesting.
[00:37:33] Arnoud: And that you still have all these effects that we in the old days now, that you then think, okay, but we are Europe now.
And instead of then making a org chart where one part is blue and that is Europe, you just say, okay, these and these and these planets. Some have to do with Europe. If they want to have a quarterly party, they organize themselves. Now you don't need organizational change. You let the planets organize themselves.
Along, along topics. If they wanna, if they want to do a certain project or a party or whatever it is, because they have to also then in the team, If they have the resources for that? No, because if the same guy has asked, has been asking 14 times in a year in team to do this and this, the team itself will then regulate that because they say, okay, and it's nice that you're doing that, but we still, have work to do.
And we were very happy that you as a representative of our planet have been traveling around, but we somehow still have to deliver to the client. So how do we do that? Instead of them know someone tells to the boss, then the boss has to ask HR how that works. And then you have to set up a task force.
We can say, okay, how can we move Steve from this plan to that planet? So it's not, so it's, it sounds a little bit like management can lean back, because they're, it's effortless and they can actually become lazy. , that's not the case, is the only thing. What you're trying to do is all these lines between the boxes in the old org chart, you try to actually have these lines organizing themselves, so you're not looking at the boxes anymore.
So when we look at org charts, before we start a project, we usually take the old org chart and we take away the boxes, and then we just look at the lines. and that gives us an indication on how teams could look like. So you don't think in boxes. You have actually have to look at the lines. In the lines.
Ah, that's interesting. In the lines is the spirit in the lines is all the things that go wrong. That's all in the lines. It's all in the relationships, yeah. . And that's the difficult part because that's the big change is it's the behavior that has to change it's behavior that you have to develop.
It's the probably also behavior you have to assess for talent, pools, et cetera. Of course, you still have competencies. No. It helps if you can program if you go into it. But at the end of the day it's all about that change of behavior
[00:39:44] Shani: and what's, what are the core behaviors that have to change for this to, to.
[00:39:49] Arnoud: you will probably get a different answer for every person you ask . For me, it's this is maybe a bit a romantic view, is empathy. , it's just empathy. Empathy because then you understand who is willing to do something, who is capable to do something, and if not, why. So I think that's probably the biggest or most trendy, let's put it this way, and trait that that a good leader has is empathy.
I
[00:40:17] Steve: also what's jumping for me as well, is it. Going back to the ex the quote that you gave is, it means that leadership also put, can put a, a lot of effort into that horizon. The why. So that took, because I think for me, if there all, in the self-organized planet's, all the different planets, it's that override why?
And that horizon is even more important to keep that con, to keep that horizon in front of mind while we're doing this. What, where are we going to, what's our direction? I think that was jumping at me as well of just bringing it back to how you started this sec, this section.
It was, it just really heightened it for me, the need to ensure that is maintained. That's a really critical piece. Cause otherwise the planets might just start. , just, float off somewhere else, and start. Exactly. Yeah. So it's a really big piece. And then don't stay
[00:41:06] Arnoud: with you because you forced them to stay with you.
That's not working anymore. If they only stay with you, if they understand and believe in the same why. And that used to be a traditional consultancy question, you kick off workshop, he would ask the people, so why the hell do you come to work on Monday? Now, that used to be one of our intro questions when we started these workshops.
Yeah. And that hasn't changed. At the end of the day, , every human being needs some kind of wine, especially in the working world. And that why it's so difficult and so important for the former sea level guys or former managers who now become leaders to let go cuz let go of these planets and then trust the process.
[00:41:47] Shani: Trust that people want to contribute.
[00:41:50] Arnoud: Yes. And then resist that urge of control. , that's so often we roll out all these organizations and everybody's totally ecstatic and great and they have written it in all social media. And then the evening before the first big day you get that phone call from a board member and asks like, this is all great, congratulations, but how do I control and check
And then so we just cord off. And so that still happens. No, and then that is where it exactly enhance today though. They really have to want. and then, okay, I can control by having feedback sessions now I can control by listening and observing, but not by asking for KPIs.
And that's the big challenge in letting go of your old ways of managing and going into leading.
[00:42:41] Shani: Will you like to talk about it as the difference between steering and enabling? , it's like you say, it's a mindset shift. You're either pushing somebody or you're making it possible for them to walk down a certain path.
And you have to choose really different tools to do either of those.
[00:42:56] Arnoud: Exactly, and this is why, this is one of the sayings we use a lot, and I actually like a lot, is that, when you are becoming a leader or even a great leader, that doesn't mean that you're building more and more followers around you.
You're a great leader and you're building more and more leaders around you. And that is also reflecting in the new ways of working. And that is also one of the difficult parts of letting go
Wow. And I don't envy them. Huh? Just to make you . It's not easy. It's not easy. I just know that it works and I try to inspire them and really help them to have that experimental courage to do it. It's not easy.
[00:43:38] Steve: is, it is just out of interest to move from a hierarchy or into a planet system as the example you shared, is there that, that journey to that is it?
is it literally a jump or is there a, you can do it in sections to test it and move into it? I'm just curious to see what level of bravery do they need or is there a way to take them from point A to B?
[00:44:05] Arnoud: Because that bravery is really hard to find. You have to go in steps. It would be fantastic to do it in a big bang overnight, but that is just not realistic nowadays.
It's, and also the people are not able to change so quickly would be nice, especially for us now as a, as an observer and thinking we would like to just, turn over the switch. But you have to show examples. They have to see that it works. You need. Some pockets where it's working quicker. Cause at the end of the day, the people, they copy behavior.
So we have to see that behavior. We have to see how they, everybody can live, live by example. So you need that virus to spread. So I think if you can do it, you could do it overnight is very difficult. But to have a sustainable, and also to have a proper the slow, the slower one is much, much better.
, which is again, is a bit a dilemma because the challenge we have is directly discussed at the beginning. We don't have the patience from the board at the top . So that's exactly the dilemma.
[00:45:08] Steve: Yes. It's like lockout. Whichever way you go. Wow. There are tricks
[00:45:12] Arnoud: nowadays, like if you can convince the company to, to change from that old MBO behavior, no way.
You have objectives and then in the week before the Christmas dinner, you do 17 year end discussions and then you either hammer them or give 'em a bonus, which is still happening a lot. Now, if you can get away from that and go into some form of, there's the famous one is okr, the objectives and key results.
But if you manage to turn that system around and tell 'em, okay, I'm not gonna tell you have to produce 117 pieces of this, but now if you tell me how much you and your team will be able to do over the next period, then all I have to do as former manager add up all these contributions that I hear from the other teams.
And if the sum is more or less the strategy that I have explained to the board. Run and do it and then we can check, we do feedback and we check how you're progressing, et cetera. So if you can get to that thinking, you have already done more than half of the step to a self-organized team.
So this is very often the catalyst we use. So the tool not to get there. If we can get away from that hammering down objectives into the organization, to asking them what they're gonna deliver and then help them to get there, this is the biggest part to that shift to the Big bang shift.
[00:46:30] Steve: How does just out of interest, how does the culture, what's the culture impact of this as well?
No, obviously must. Yeah, I'm just curious to hear what's what's what observations you you've seen in
[00:46:42] Arnoud: in, yes. At the beginning, the your need or you hope more hoping to have a culture where they're open for that know where you already had the tradition of trying things.
Know where it was okay to fail somewhere. Know very often you, you have that basis know you have already a culture that allows to think in a direction or even try it now. And this is the biggest culture effect because if you are coming into an organization that hasn't even started thinking out of the box, then you just need two more years to actually get there.
Yeah. So that is the culture is the biggest enabler, but then also the biggest how do you say, benefiter, no benefits or that culture is benefiting the most of that journey. Yeah. But you need a, at least slightly open or curious culture, let's put it that way. Yeah.
Yeah. ,
[00:47:35] Steve: we could go probably another hour. I think just delving into this, it's it is really interesting. I'm also Shani, I'm also thinking like, how do we create wonder using a planetary approach. . It's just, yeah. I mean it's, I'm really curious on to Yeah. I'm much rather build a business like that than a typical hierarchy project D type thing.
It's
[00:47:54] Shani: yeah. Yeah. I was just, I was drawing here a very analog listener tactile. So I was drawing vision in the middle versus vision at the top. Yes. Kind of sentiment. Yeah. That I was getting from this discussion is, either you create something that everyone else is magnetized towards and aligned towards or you create something that trickles down as we like to talk about things in the corporate world, but it's much nicer to create something that engages people and groups. and unites them on their own.
[00:48:29] Arnoud: Yeah. And the beauty is that a lot of people really appreciate their, it feels like freedom, it feels like you can do what you want. No, to be honest, not totally the case, but that freedom to organize your own world and then to feel that, you're not paying into the purpose of a 10,000 people organization, you are actually paying into the purpose of your team. . And that beauty you to see that joy and that satisfaction is great.
It's, it also means that you have to do a bit of more convincing work for the former team leaders because they think they will lose title, status, influence. So you have to work on that. But when they realize that they actually become from a team leader, like in the Army to a coach with the same well, they still look at the same respect from the staff and they still have to make the same decisions just in a different form, then you get there.
So the, that is the beauty of it. You see a lot of happy faces and a lot of. Joy coming back into the daily work, which you were trying.
A
[00:49:26] Shani: last thought though is this, that we get stuck thinking that freedom has to be total like, but actually freedom is about having choice and in most settings, and even for creativity, and there's a lot of research to show this, we need a little bit of framework because having complete amount of choice is also massively disengaging and confusing.
Yes. So it's not necessarily about just unleashing everything and giving total freedom. It is actually engaging to have the framework of a vision. It's actually engaging to have. Somehow a framed amount of choices that you can relate to without making it compulsory to go on very narrow paths. Yeah. Yeah, so just
[00:50:09] Arnoud: a good point.
And it's interesting as the observation we made, you have, it's about the same amount of people who think like you just described as the people who say, look, I don't need any flexible, sexy, fancy org chart. I just want someone to tell me what to do. Yeah. And I'm happy. And then you can tell 'em this will still happen.
No, you still, you. You can, you will still find a person in your team who tells you what to do, and you don't have to then talk in every daily standup weekly meetings, whatever you agree on, you don't have to talk. You just do your thing. And as long as you're happy, that's what we're trying to achieve.
That's about the same amount of people now. They're the ones that are yawning for that freedom part. And the ones that actually want to just hear on Monday morning what they have to do and then they do that. Yeah. And so it's about the same proportions. It's interesting observations. That they have a lot of in the middle who are first checking it out and okay, in principle they're okay with it, but they just lean back and see what happens.
Yeah.
[00:51:08] Steve: Inexperienced design when you're particularly, it just reminds me a little bit of if you go to, I think in Denmark there is a hamlet where you can go and watch action. It's like an immersive hamlet experience. So you are, you can actually follow the characters even when they're not scripted.
It's really interesting. Even when they're off script, you still follow them and they have a story that you follow, but they design it in a way that allows the audience. To be comfortable or contribute where they want to. So it just reminds me a little bit of this from this example you shared like people, some people just wanna step back and maybe join the Monday and then get on with things.
And that's similar to that. There's some people don't want to get, involved in a Hamlet experience, but they like Hamlet, but they just wanna take a step back and have that experience from that perspective. And there's others that are all in dressing up as part of the the narrative in the storyline and want to be, want to contribute or want to be, more visible.
And I think, yeah, I think these, this environment I think encourages people to, to contribute where they want to and to, yeah. And to be lean in where they want to or lean out where they want to. And that allows them also, , know, in the flow of our own personal life and our life generally, that also allows that flexibility to lean in when we want to and also lean out if we've got some other things going on in life, which invariably happens on a regular basis. I dunno, I think as an employee experience of that, I think just having this kind of freedom as we want to call it allows that fluidity and that flow of how that fits into our lives as well.
And I think that's a really, that could be in a really amazing thing as well yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Can I just ask just to fi just to finish off because this is a complex subject of course. And where could you, or where would you recommend listeners, anyone who's really curious to learn more, either there any resources or books or people to follow, obviously you but are there any, anyone that you've come across that you think would be really good for people to engage with or follow?
[00:53:02] Arnoud: It's in different languages. That's okay. I have piece of literature which I also use for my students. I must, I myself have just huge antennas and look and read everything I see. I don't have a specific platform, person, channel. Most of it I get from discussions, like with you guys and with my colleagues and just cool talking and listening.
So I don't have a very great answer to this, I'm afraid. That's
[00:53:30] Steve: okay. I think talking
[00:53:32] Shani: more is a great answer actually. It
[00:53:34] Steve: is really good. .
[00:53:35] Arnoud: Yeah. And I have the problem every time I'm designing a new lecture, know, and then the university expects a list of to 10 best books. And then I must, I usually Google and then I see, ah, that book I've read at the school.
But the problem is that usually they don't come to mind. And the books I really like, I usually like four certain sections because they were really catchy. So the the most of the books I know or I use on circular organization and planets are German. Yeah. But I can chat it with you anytime.
[00:54:07] Steve: Annie, I love that response because I think it's a representation of yeah, exploration, learn by doing, listen, absorb, use, different context. Take what you take the learning from those different areas to help evolve what you are doing and what we do on an everyday basis. And I think that's that's equally as powerful.
So the message is there is no books for you. It's just be curious and explore and listen and talk. There's the lesson. Very much that's good. Thanks sir. Annie, it's been an absolute honor to have you on the show. I'm so happy you you agreed to join. It was really great to yeah, over a beer.
Just have a random conversation. Hey, come and join the podcast. It was like, yeah, I'll come and join. Thanks for following through and of course absolute pleasure to connect with you. I hope to continue conversations after the pod and into next year as well. And I'm really curious to follow your journey and what you guys are up to.
Definitely
[00:54:56] Arnoud: with the greatest pleasure. I really enjoyed it as well. So thank you guys for everything.
[00:55:01] Steve: Good stuff. Thank you. Thank you.