#E20S Management Hackathon

 

 We've been running a short hackathon process looking at innovating management within a social / enterprise 2.0 business.  We were takes to identify principles that would underpin action in the organisation.

Here are some of the outputs:

 

  Organisation #1

• Exponential organisation - able to grow quickly
• Network organisation
• Fractal organisation - hierarchies within hierarchies
• Based on diversity supported by flexible working
• A bit like a club, enabling everyone to follow their own needs
• Always thinking about the customer
• Based on social media and big data
• Transparent

 

 

  Organisation #2

• Traditional core of the organisation
• Fractal and pod ideas from Dave Gray
• Enabling both project based and continual operation type work
• Enabling people to move around or doing the same thing
• Managers acting as sponsors for a project
• Processes for rotation between projects
• Tenure limits to stay in the core (don't want people to stay as the boss)
• Fail forward - encourage people to fail - pay them for their failures
• Accountability in the core and the pods
• Self regulation

 

  Leadership #1

• Different to management (fossilised leadership and management is no longer necessary)
• Distributed - everyone is a leader
• Empowered to decide and act
• Listening
• Emerging, recognised as a leader for their charisma, not appointed
• A feeling, a way to do things
• Introverts as well as extroverts
• Able to handle fear, supporting failure
• Being inclusive, comfortable with difference, leveraging diversity
• Developing and using collective intelligence
• Alternative = authentic, honest and transparent
• Chasing their own passions
• Embracing change so fluid and transient
• Remaining open question on whether we still need leaders or even a CEO

 

  Leadership #2

• The why of the organisation (management is the how - empowering and developing people)
• Walking the talk in order to be credible
• Driving soft and social skills
• Supporting complexity
• Being able to be challenged against an environment of constant change
• Experimenting on the edge.

 

There were also two groups using lego.

 

  Lego 1:

• People with good networks
• Open flexible structure - based on creativity
• A clear vision of where we want to go
• Open, agile minds looking into the future
• Bringing the whole organisation together
• People on top

 

  Lego 2 with an image of an airport:

• Users in a plane trying to take off
• Empowered by ingredients, enablers and values of respect
• And some leaders
• The wind of serendipity
• Growing motivated people
• A bridge to bring people together
• An airport tower with complete view of the whole organisation

 

 

I wouldn't support all of these points but we did better than I thought we would.  But I thought we could have done with more structure, some pre-formed relationships, and clarity in what we were trying to develop (I still don't think we're all sure / agree what social / 2.0 is - see the above point on 'users'!).

I really liked the team presentations that demonstrated some of these points, e.g. the teams that gave themselves a name, supporting these relationships (the age experimenters, and the change eggperts as they had trouble deciding between the chicken and the egg).  And the teams that worked in the the style of the organisation e.g. demonstrating distributed leadership with full team presenting together.

 

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