You probably know the adage: Self-organization needs leadership – surely you, as a specialist or manager, try to introduce this more and more into the company, but it really doesn’t want to spark. The employees keep asking for a boss and it doesn’t really work out. Situations like the one in the picture are unfortunately not uncommon.
But why does it fail? Basically, based on my research, I can say that in every company a certain number of employees simply do not feel like organizing themselves. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it between 9 am and 5 pm”. Most of the time, these employees are very hardworking and important to the company. In my experience, it even correlates with the Rogers theory in the picture.
If you want to increase self-organization in the company, 2.5% of employees usually do this on their own and often infect 13.5% with self-organization. This is often easy – now the first 34% follow, which you can often move with coaches or a little pressure. Now comes the peak: It is usually worthwhile to take the late majority in the company with you, because the coaching effort is too high measured for the benefit and it is often okay if half of the company goes along with it.There are always enough areas that can be handled without self-organization .
Conclusion: self-organization needs to be responsible!
Now to the conclusion and my tips on how a high level of self-organization can still be achieved. Take a look at the following picture: Nobody really takes responsibility. Whats going on here?
What is a project manager without a sense of responsibility, a support employee who ignores emails and a product owner who doesn’t really “own” his product? Definitely not self-organized! As a manager, make sure that your employees take their own work into their own hands and take responsibility. The attitude: “It’s not my company and the boss will fix it, deserves enough” to be transformed into a positive attitude, because we are all one company and together we have to make the world a little bit smaller!
Image-Source: Fotolia.de 2016 – buyed License [werbung] [fotolia]
