Clarifying roles and responsibilities
Requesting a technology project ( enhancement or new)
Harder - endless follow ups and too many stakeholders to engage
Apparently, holacracy seems not to be customer focused and is still a top-down hierarchy. Instead, you may like to consider Integrative Governance which is customer focused and bottom-up. It is explained at www.integrative-thinking.com which also offers templates for governance policies so that Integrative Governance may be quickly introduced in start-ups or existing organisations.
2 references emerge from the subjects you are talking about:
- the first one concerns the decision of giving up "control/command" management. You can some examples in this book -> http://freedomincbook.com/
- the second one concers a new kind of management integrated in the concept of holacracy.
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy - http://holacracy.org/sites/default/files/resources/holacracy_constitutio...
That will give you some inspiring ideas concerning the misunderstanding of "roles" in some case.
Regards
Edouard
Change is a continuum across all business; no one is secure anymore, stock markets drive many times wrong, decisions affecting people first and the business next. Today's leaders are " on stage"all day and every day, under observation and comment from many. So often it is easier to tighten the bureaucracy handle to remove discomfort. Until organisation can back of the gas and give some lea way it will continue. Training, empowering, applying open leadership looks good on paper but will the leader be given the time and space to effect needed change on the bureaucracy lever? Releasing the true power within.
I wonder if clarifying roles and responsibilities is also part of the problem. Non-bureaucratic enterprises (projects, programs, games, etc.) seem to demonstrate emergent roles and responsibilities rather than defined ones. When something needs to be done or decided, the person(s) qualified and capable step up, then retire until needed again. Certainly not a pattern for highly repetitive and consistent efforts (or am I making an assumption?). If people "own" a role or accountability - they seem to require all this additional administrivia that doesn't create value.
Really interesting point, Jim. I do see organizations spend an enormous amount of time defining roles (and more to the point, arguing over the boundaries between roles, i.e. "this is mine, this is yours"). Wouldn't it be great to have a management structure where these sort of clear definitions weren't necessary, where people could spend less time clarifying what they own and don't own and more time doing the stuff that needs to be done? I bet a lot of us would like to work in an organization like that!
To your good point about putting more focus on "stuff that needs to be done", I come to think of purpose driven organizations. Some inputs: http://www.slideshare.net/frankcalberg/what-is-the-company-purpose
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