My name is Jacob. I've been working with implementing and introducing self-management and co-led leadership in organizations for the last 10 years. And next to me I have my good colleague. Yes, and I'm Matthias and I've also spent quite a few of my consultant hours working on exactly how we can unlock and empower shared leadership and distribute some of what might be classically hierarchical management tasks out into the organization. with good results. And today we're also so lucky to actually have our good friend and collaborators, our special guest Jens Bell from Navia who's going to be open for questions and answers and input on how you can actually do this with self-management and co-leadership in organizations. So, some of the themes we'll cover today and the topics we'll cover over is we'll talk a little bit about the challenges of the VUCA business environment. We'll talk about the foundation of this. What is it? What does it require? What does it call for in us? How could a co-led organization look like? And for those of you who have read Lallou's book about TEAL, there's many versions out there, but this is our take on this. How do you start? And then, of course, the Q&A session at the end. So, thank you all for joining us. It's going to be a fun hour where we'll share stories from our own experiences. So, just before we head out, let's just talk about, you know, what are some of the backgrounds for this and what are some of the challenges that many organizations are facing today. And there's many ways of describing this accelerated, complex, and also extremely uncertain or unpredictable environment. We have lots of stuff out there. But in the beginning of the 90s, an acronym came out that was called VUCA, about volatility. It's about uncertainty. It's about complexity. It's about complexity and also ambiguity. And those three words are actually words you can, you feel free to explore. We're not going to go too much in depth with those. But basically, the key message is, for many of these, is that we live in a world of limited predictability. And there's like three factors that are in play here. What can be predicted? So, what can we predict in front of us? What do we know happens? What will not happen? What significance does it have? How much impact does it do to us? How much we can? So, what extent, what is the magnitude of what we can actually predict is in front of us? And also, how far we can predict into the future? So, these are some of the challenges many companies are facing. And the challenge here is that many of these companies are actually, many of our old companies are actually built in a way that have really a hard time, really a hard time trying to face this type of reality. So, this is some of the background for some of these new organization forms. So, facing this challenge of volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, it might be a little bit interesting that if you did that little test or exam of looking at the different org charts in our world, you would not, or at least that's my bet, be able to determine when are they from. Because, to a very large degree, we're establishing organization the exact same way that we did 50 or 100 years ago. And then, of course, there's some difference. There's some difference looking into that our established organizations, of course, they have very large org charts. And facing exactly volatility and ambiguity and having these established organizations with very large org charts, there are a few different problems that arise and that you probably know of. And you could call them these gaps or divides that you see on the screen now. One of them being a social divide, that our management systems are ways of actually instrument, making instruments to guide our ways of interacting with each other. And that our KPIs being one of the premier ways that we are talking to each other actually creates kind of a social divide where we aren't interacting in the way that we ought to be. That it can feel alienizing. And you know this just as well as we do, that if you are part of a big conglomerate, you can get these kind of emails that don't really seem like they've been written by humans. So in an established organization, there can arise a divide of, we've made so many management instruments that it doesn't really seem like we're connected to each other anymore. And then there can be a gap where our HR functions and our finance functions, just as an example, are talking a lot about each other, but not very much with each other. That the learnings that we're having in some of our functions, they don't seep into our other functions and they don't actually seem to be collaborating as much as they seem to be fighting for budgets and success. And then also there can be a really big problem with just because we have so large organizations, things move really slow. There can be a very big time gap from our arms out in the market actually sensing and discovering that we need to do something different before it can reach all the way up our command chain for a decision to be made in order for something to actually be different at all. Which also means that if we learn something, if we learn that there's a really big opportunity or if we learn that the way that we are actually managing to do this one process doesn't work at all or we're spending all this time reporting into reports that nobody reads. Actually transforming the learning into something that materializes and is value creating in our organization can take a really long time because the same people who actually learns and decides and implements the learning, they are very far apart. So that's the problem on the one hand if we're looking into our established organizations trying to face a reality that might be classified as both volatile and ambiguous. And on the other hand, we also know that our startup organizations, they haven't solved this. If we look into a lot of the smaller organizations out of garages who try to not so much wrestle with these divides on my one hand of the screen, but more so maybe they end up making clicks. There can be an in-crowd syndrome where in a small organization there can be a little bit of a drama escalation where some people are alliancing themselves with others because it might not be very clear where the different people, roles and functions, mandates end and start. So we can have functional confusion where it's really difficult to navigate these environments because it's so difficult to know who does what because it's entwined who did what a year ago when we were founded. And that also of course leads to a lot of time being spent on things we shouldn't do. And it also leads to a lot of the time a very low degree of knowledge sharing because we just end up in, even though we're so few people, in somewhat silos because we just have our one things to do. So we don't want any of these divides. We don't want any of these gaps or syndromes. And that also means that sometimes we might want to ask ourselves, is there a way that is actually trying to write some of our leadership and management practices, our org charts in a different way than what we've been doing for 100 years, both in established organizations and startup organizations? Is there a way where we can actually have our operations directed at our customers needs, have faster solutions for our customers and more influence over our own work as employees and actually just have more responsibility taken all over the organizations, not just with the people whose roles and title says that they are managers or leaders? And a lot of the time, if Jacob or I, we are engaging with collaborators who really want to and have been inspired by more holistic leadership and management practices and are looking into working with shared leadership, this is the guiding star for how you might want to start. Having an aim of actually having an aim of actually having a collaborative organization that can also ensure scalable growth and productivity where we have a culture of knowledge sharing, fast decisions, and where leaders, teams, employees are empowered and we've distributed the business and strategic mindset within our organization. And while this might seem like a dream and while we of course all want this to happen, I also, and what we want to in this webinar is post a question that maybe the reason why we don't have all these things, maybe the reason why we don't have faster solutions for the customers and more responsibility, maybe it's not our leaders, maybe it's not our people, maybe it's not even our strategy or our business model. Maybe it's the very core of how we've decided to collaborate and do business together. And that's really the core of what we're trying to argue here, that if we're aiming for shared leadership, if we're aiming for distributing knowledge, decisions, and action capability in a way that we've directed it to where it's needed, we need to look beyond just our employees and our leadership. We also need to look at that. But we need to look to our employees, our leadership, our processes, and our structures, and we need to embed it in the very foundation of how we decide, how we meet and collaborate in a way that we share and distribute knowledge, decisions, action capability. And one way to maybe think about this is to think about how we've solved the management and leadership dilemma of managing traffic when we're out in our cars. On the one hand, a lot of the places we've decided that the way we should manage this problem is with a centralized lighting system that says green for go and red for stop. And then some other places we've made roundabouts. And when we look at these different pretty fundamental ways of managing traffic, we can ask ourselves, who's in control? And in our centralized lighting system, that's pretty obvious. It's the road authorities who've decided for how long is it green, for how long is it red. They are in control. And they have decided on prior basis what's the right amount of time to drive one way and what's the right amount of time to drive another way. And then we can also ask ourselves, what's most efficient? And in this metaphorical case of lighting systems and roundabouts, we pretty much know there's a lot of studies showing that our roundabouts, at least on an efficiency basis of reducing injury, are vastly superior. And we're looking into 75% or so and also reduce delays to a very large degree and also the cheaper to maintain. So actually, a lot of the places where we have signaling systems are roundabouts would be both more efficient and cheaper. But of course, they rest on a very fundamental different principle of management that we don't need so much of a centralized control system, but we need the people driving in the cars to pay attention. So we can also ask ourselves, what's most difficult? And of course, we all know, and that's why this example is also a little bit difficult, that I also feel more at ease oftentimes when I'm resting up against the red light than when I'm in a roundabout. But that's because it actually requires something of me to drive in the roundabout. And this requirement of paying attention, it pays off. It pays off in reducing injury and actually moving traffic faster. But of course, it does really pose a big question. What am I to do when I'm in the roundabout? And if we take this system and metaphor even further and think, so what does this require of leaders if they want to look into working with shared leadership and holistic management? So leadership in a roundabout, just to use that metaphor, is something quite different than leadership in a traffic light situation, where somebody is regulating your behavior or the drive or stop behavior you'll see in front of you. So first and foremost, when leaders start on this journey, there is a personal narrative that you also have to it. So what is the story about my leadership? Why am I a leader? Why is it important? Why did I seek it out? Why did I have that kind of role? What is it with me? And normally we see the leader has to take a deep dive into some of those narratives. So why is this important to me? It's also about having a kind of a different approach to learning from a zero mistakes culture to much more learning by doing and trying. So much more lean forward or growth mindset learning approach and more agile learning approach would also, another word for the same, is much more about experimenting your way forward, not knowing exactly where the plan is. And typical in many traditional organizations, command and control is the value to you'll be rated by. Do you perform according to your KPIs? Do you deliver on what you've promised? It's also, and I think the third one is actually one of the most biggest challenges that you'll face, is about looking at your relationship with influence and also in the end power. How do I, you know, what is my feeling about this? And am I used to tell people what to do and then just live it at them? And also accepting the fact that I might be diminishing my influence and my power, but also knowing how I exert it and how do I use it or apply it in different situations. So that kind of whole movement that either being formal behavior or informal behavior in different situations. As a leader, you need to facilitate much more, give less answers and ask more questions. And one of the typical things that we also see over and over again is when we start this journey is that many leaders are also those who has a lot of knowledge inside their heads, have like lots of, you know, knowledge about how we do stuff, how, what needs to be done, how it looks like and that. And they need to share that knowledge in a completely different new way without over exerting their influence through that sharing of knowledge. And last but not least, a much more collaborative approach, which exerts itself and shows itself in new communication skills, much more stating from an eye point of view, much more listening and much more questioning, but also saying, I need or I would like to. So you have that kind of individual responsibility and accountability assigned to you, but beginning from a non-hierarchical position in the organization. And of course, on the other hand, if you are not a former leader or the leader of an organization and you're doing leadership shared in a roundabout on the employee side, you also need to wrestle a little bit with maybe having a narrative of problem solving, equaling escalation. We need for the roundabout to actually work, everyone to look into, I've seen and sensed the problem, what are we going to do about it? And then we need to, just as the leaders, we need to accept that we're going to learn by doing and trying, and doing and trying means failing. It also means that sometimes we need to not just ask for permission, we need to trust that we can be given a mandate and if we see something and we've decided this is a good way to do it, we can just do it and maybe check with our team afterwards, did you agree that I did this decision in this explicit context? We also need to manage some of our own time and you also probably know if you're a leader or if you are not, that if employees are coming to you and say, how should I prioritize? A lot of the time you actually don't really have a very good idea of that. How are you going to manage your time? How much time does this specific task take? How on earth would you know? So it also rests a little bit of the responsibility and oftentimes you might expect that it's more so making sure that they get enough done, but a lot of the places where you actually do shared leadership, it's much more so being aware that you should manage your own breaks as well. Most people really are not that scared of working but more so should actually maybe get a bit of help from their surroundings and their collaborators and colleagues to also remember to take the breaks. And then, of course, they need to share information. We need transparent information sharing, knowledge sharing, and especially if we're going to distribute some mandate to a larger degree out throughout our teams and organizations, people need to know what's going on. That also, of course, calls for new communication skills. And I think one of the most important things that I at least experience, and I think both with leaders and employees, if we are working with how can we really do leadership in the roundabout, how can we distribute knowledge and action capability, it actually, for a lot of us, leaders and employees alike, is really difficult to say, if I decided everything in the world, I think we should do this. To propose, I've seen a direction, I think we should go this way. And then, of course, check with the other people, can you accept that we are going this way? It can actually be pretty difficult, and we need to learn that that's a fair enough point of view to say, I think we should go this way, that's my proposal, and then check with the other people, is it acceptable? So that's also a very big, important thing that it calls for if you want to do leadership and management in this way. But, of course, we also want to, in this hour we have with you, talk a little bit about, so what does it look like, a little bit more concretely? Yes. So one of the things that we've learned over and over again is, it's just too, it's too dangerous, you could say, or it gets, we get too much off the rail, if we just leave it up to capability building and behavioral modifications. So training individuals to do much more disalignment. It's not an either-or situation, but we also have to put structures and processes in place to support the behavior they would like to achieve. So the self-managed or co-led organization has many different forms, as I said at the beginning, and some of those forms you can read about in Leloup's book, Rethinking Organizations. What we'd like to share is one of the ways that we approach this challenge and making that kind of a teal organization structure, where you move from a one operating system in your company to another operating system in your company. So first and foremost, it's about creating an organization that is balancing organizational alignment and autonomy based on trust. So you have this kind of, I hired you because you're the best to do this job, so I trust you to do whatever it is you need to do to resolve this task. But it's also about making sure that people know the clear distributed accountabilities that are assigned to them either in a group of people or as individuals. So knowing that this is an accountability that I own, that is a part of who I am, and it's a part of my deliverables either as a team or an individual. The third idea is basically that we also create leadership in a team and create that leadership as a responsibility that is done either by a process or a role within that team. And one of the reasons why we say that leadership is something that you should put in a team or in a process or in a role is basically to make sure that everybody knows that they have a clear way of approaching any kind of leadership challenges they might face. So that's some of the things that we think is really important to do so. We also have to have clearly defined teams and roles, meaning that basically that it's transparent, everybody can see who does what, when, and have access to that information. But we'll, and last but not least, we also have to have a clear process for decision making through inclusive meetings, and we'll just give you a just brief on that, but we have an online webinar about inclusive meetings on a later date. So basically you say the organization has at the bottom of the organization or at the front end of the organization where things are getting done, you have the operational teams. The operational team is the team that is assigned to a certain task that we want them to do. It's accountable for something and also has deliverables in different ways. And the people who are part of that team is basically people who are not just there for their opinions about the task, but actually contribute in a productive and constructive way to delivering on the task. If you do not contribute to the task, then you're not a part of the team. Each team you see in this way of doing is semi-autonomous. That means that we give the individual team a maximal authority over its own purpose and task, but also it has to be responsive to the needs of the other teams. So we have these kind of, we build these interfaces which we call organizational support roles or team support roles that harvest or manages those interfaces with other teams. So the operational team is basically connected to a coordination team that ensures coordination, but you only have a coordination team if you need it. A coordination team is normally something that we install and create where we have value chains that are closely connected and need some kind of connection between those and migrate and have those kind of overlaps in different areas. This is also, a coordination team is also have the task to coordinate and plan and develop, but also mitigates emerging silos that might happen in the individual operational team. So we have to avoid that that whole journey moves into that direction. At the coordination team level, it is connected to the purpose team, and the purpose team has many different forms. It can also be called the anchor team and different other names, but basically it's the one that is put together to guard the overall purpose of the organization. So what kind of organization are we? What kind of deliverables are we? What are we doing here? So when we start this journey, what we do is actually in the organization start to make sure, do we know what we're doing and why we're doing it and how we're doing it? And if we don't know that, let's create that clarity for everybody because there's a lot of people who go working every day who knows what they're doing, but they don't know why they're doing it. So it is basically that way of working. And the TEAL organization in this way of working becomes a coordinated system of teams and roles that makes sure that there is a transparent accountability assigned to the different areas and deliverables working towards a shared purpose, which is really the overarching idea behind this. So these are some of the basic structures that we put in place. Cool. And alongside those basic processes, of course, we also need the way that we collaborate inside these teams and circles to be guided by shared leadership and holistic co-leadership. And one of those points I'd really like to stress in that regard is that there are a lot of really good experiences already made all over the world of if you want to do something along these lines, what's the good way to have meetings, have decisions, maybe even do performance reviews. And just to say here, one of the things there, of course, is how should we meet and decide? And for us, there are for sure three very major virtues we need our meetings to be guided by the invitation so that everyone's invited continually into the conversation we're having. We also really want to separate questions from input on a very concrete level that we make sure that whenever someone actually says this is the direction I think we should go, I have this proposal, I think we should do this, that instead of the way we react as a collective to be by evaluation and as our first instinct say, very bad idea, great idea, I love it, we want to first entertain what is it that our colleague is seeing so we need to understand it first, we need to do our questions first and then give our input and then we also need to, in order to actually be able to do shared leaderships in these teams and circles to be able to decide without agreement if we wanted everyone's exact personal preference to be met at all times we would do nothing but sit in meetings so we need to invite everyone into the conversation when we have meetings maybe being done by talking in rounds we also need to make sure that we don't initially meet proposals with just evaluation, good idea, bad idea, we need to separate our questions and our understanding from when we give input and then we need to be able to decide even when we don't agree. So how do we start? How do we start? Basically we start with some principles and our transformation approach to doing this is based on a set of assumptions and the principles that we work by. First and foremost we have a holistic approach knowing that when we do a transformation we both address the individual and the collective we both do mindsetting we both do what goes on on the inside of the organization and the individual but we also look at the outside. So we have this kind of holistic approach used by this square model. So what we do is we describe and we design where are we where are we going what could we do first things. So we do a lot of prototyping because we do believe that small actions are much better than big plans. so it's also iterative and learning integration so we mean that every time we do something we actually learn from it and we take it on to the next iteration of what we're doing. And what we also prefer is that when we do a transformation it's close to home. So moving away from the whole workshopping approach it's not like an either or situation but it's more like let's get it down into the everyday grind and everyday work to make sure that it's appropriate and as justice. So it is very agile it's incremental it's fast prototyping experiment feedback we do retrospective learnings and it helps creating this kind of adjusted approach to what's on the need of the organization. So even though that we know that we have the guiding star of creating a co-led and self-managed organization what we do here is that we try to use it from a pragmatic point of view where we actually push the organization one step from where they're from from where their starting point basically is. Also we prefer to start with smaller units rather than having a whole organization in one go because it makes it much more easier to come up with the first learning and the first iterations. So normally we would go to a company or when they ask for our help is say let's start in a corner let's start with a department let's start with a unit let's start with a team let's start see how it does. What happens over time and this is like for 80% of the cases we've done this is actually that people say well when we've done this and people see how it works like people are knocking on the doors saying we want to do this also here. We don't believe in building your own design from scratch take what's out there already there's a lot of people who've done this learning journey build on their approach build and integrate that in your way of doing that when you want to do organizational redesign so rather than just starting from scratch because it's basically just too much work. So transformation with a holistic approach requires both new mindset moving assumptions and perceptions new behavior learning and unlearning and doing things differently especially unlearning part can actually take a long time new culture how do you make a much more inclusive and collaborative culture and also last but not least what kind of structures and processes do we need to put in place to make sure that this actually works. So these are some of the starting point. So how does it look like when we do this from the beginning? So first and foremost we start with creating a foundation and what we do is mindset the organization or the team or the leaders in the organization and this is very much about creating an understanding of what it is and normally what we do is have like a dialogue based kickoff session either in a big group or in a smaller team where people can actually share their concerns listen to what it is and how does it look like and one of the funny learnings that we've done in this beginning and I know there's different approaches to this is that you have to use the hierarchy to dissolve the hierarchy I know of a Spanish consultancy firm who doesn't apply to this they make a voting amongst their employees and if not unless 80% says yes to doing so that's the challenge they have in front of them because that's their approach and then if you don't have an 80% vote for it then they say they won't support you we are more pragmatic when it comes to that so based on that feedback learning and adjustment what we do is we create the first initiation and this is a startup workshop with a team or a department and coaching and training a team and a department but also beginning to train local facilitators in new ways of working so it could look like that we have like small areas that we start up support them in their everyday decision making helping also building the structure they need to succeed as a team or individual but also we use a kind of training in the facilitators or super users that can support the transformation because this is something that very easily goes into the everyday work and then we start based on the learning of that so when we start there we start by scaling and working up and doing a full integration so supervisors and supporters and supervision and support of facilitators continue throughout the organization new teams and departments start working in new ways and retrospectives are done so we pick up learning and next steps are continuously formed when we start this area what normally happen is that we slowly fade to grey so to speak out of the organization because it's the organization that has to live this way of working and this way of installing a new way of collaborating and making sure that they continuously grow and change the overarching purpose of such a transformation is to create a self a self or co-led or a self-managed organization who can continuously and iteratively improve their way of working by building new structures and new processes depending on the task that is in front of them and here on screen you have two pictures that I expect you can see what's going on but you've probably not seen it done like this before this are some of our prior preferred techniques for doing Olympic high jumping and I think especially the scissor technique it doesn't look like we're used to seeing the straddle technique neither you've probably only seen Olympic high jumping being done like this what is called the Fosbury flop and the Fosbury flop is as you might imagine named after a specific athlete named Fosbury and standing here in our year of date we know that the Fosbury flop was incredibly successful and it's basically the only way you would do Olympic high jumping if you want to be taken seriously but the important point here is that of course Fosbury was very much ridiculed for trying this out and even more importantly even when he won Olympic gold the general sentiment at the time was it's probably just a technique for Fosbury so I expect that if you signed up for this webinar you've probably heard about some of the good examples already you've probably heard about Burtsok or the Morning Star Tomato Company or maybe if you're based in Denmark you've heard about Clever or the Job and Activity Center out in Gentofte so maybe what the Fosbury flop can also teach us is that if we're standing right here and we're thinking it seems like they're really successful but it's probably just a technique for them it might not work in the environment I'm part of where we're really focused on profit or in our environment with this regulation that we're facing it's probably just for them maybe we can learn that it wasn't a very good idea to be on the other side of the Fosbury flop it wasn't just a Fosbury thing it was a high jumping thing it just took a little bit of time for us to realize we can do it all of us if we train a little bit but of course we don't just want to stand here to consultants and tell you there's a great way to do it and it will solve a lot of your problems or at least mitigate some of the worst ones you see we also want to look into exactly the experience of someone who's been doing it living it and for that we have Jens Belt from Navia with us so if you have questions for what does this look like in your reality please write your questions in the chat and we will make sure to ask them and we will transition to Jens welcome so welcome back and here we have Jens Belt who I've been collaborating with in Navia so please introduce yourself shortly yes I'm Jens Belt I'm the CIO in Navia air traffic supplier we control all the airplanes in Danish Greenandic and Faroei airspace and I'm the CIO of the administrative IT systems out there cool thank you very much and thank you so much for your time and joining us here so just looking back on the journey you've been going through what inspired you and what was your first initial thought about starting this kind of journey moving into self-management and co-leadership well I think one of the most important things is that I'm the CIO but we have the responsibility for about 100 different IT systems and services and a traditional approach would be that the CIO or this guy standing on the bridge of the ship pointing out the direction where we're going and from the start and I know that IT is moving in I mean it's moving at such a rapid space there's so many subjects that there's no one person that'll know where to go and how to get there so for me it was like I don't know what's the right and wrong decisions I need to like distribute power so make sure that the experts are actually taking decisions and are empowered to take the right decisions instead of me standing there trying to be the wise guy so cool and what the whole this way of working the whole teal you know approach to organization when did you encounter that first and when did you hear about that and what made you gravitate to exactly that way well you see my problem is that I've always had a really great I'm very anti-authoritarian so I have a very I don't trust in people that want to have power you should give power to the ones that don't want to have it I'm from a folk high school background myself so for me working in IT was great because in a lot of ways it's very informal but I was also looking into that I was inspired by Gary Hamill and he's extremely inspiring by different companies but he was not giving that method and I actually fell into the ditch where I was making informal teams but with no new structure and without my leadership there you know you get the strongest guys or people from the teams that you should get strong local unappointed leaders which is a real big problem and that was the thing when we started talking about it that this whole thing about put it's not about removing structures but making sure that the structures you work with are very explicit and everybody knows the rules and you distribute power also so so if you if you dissolve so what you're saying also is if you dissolve a system and but not put another system in place it will be the top dog who gets the bigger in that yeah so when you when you encountered this system and you got a taste for it the first time what was your initial thoughts and also what how did your your employees react to the some of these ideas and thoughts I think but it's it's the interesting thing is that the first time that we introduced this to the team I have 15 employees in my in my in my department I think the whole thing about that they should get become responsible to be able to take decisions on their own was well yeah that's who don't want that but getting new habits is always a journey I mean it takes time and it feels really awkward in the time this whole thing about the meeting structure this whole thing about what's a role description what's a domain actually like I think one of the easiest thing was actually when we get when I gave people domain from the financial perspective that I linked it to the money so that right now I've distributed my whole budget so that I don't have any budget personally actually anymore the whole budget in my department is distributed to either teams or individuals and I think for most employees that was the sign that okay this is not just talk it's actually also the walk yeah so so having that change yeah cool and I'll just erupt here onto the scene and place myself here yeah and that's of course because we have a few questions for you and I think the first one is one from Luise who is asking us and you how do you cut the right operational circles and especially how do you think in sort of supporting functions such as HR economy analysis teams do you have good advice for how to do this distinction of supporting work and operational circles how do you cut that cut the pie is it good enough for now is it can we change it later on I mean there's a whole thing about nothing is definite I mean you should just try if it doesn't work change it and you need to give yourself time I mean don't just do it for two months you need to give yourself time working with it it's like a new suit you need to find out if it's actually for you or not sometimes you have to break in a pair of new shoes it's the same I think if it doesn't work in your organisation well change it it's also depending on the people in your teams like we've got these circles and we had to try some different formats with some of the circles to find out what's actually best what's the best representation and it's very much also depending on the people and what they bring to the table and what their engagement is so I'm sorry there's not one formula you have to invent that but you need to hang on to the rules about the meeting structure the role description and the domain description there's some really some of these things are really hard cut because otherwise you get these anarchists or really negatively strong employees they'll just grab the power themselves and would you have a good advice as well for if you want to do this and say we're going to try something out and see if it's good enough for now maybe we can change it later how would you say that how would you communicate with doing that to try to avoid as much negative response as possible first of all you have to believe in yourself and you I mean I've seen so many management theories and and you know advices that are basically just a question about me and managers trying to squeeze a little bit more out of the employees because then you look good on my KPI or my individual bonus and if it's because of that you're trying to do it go and do something else because this is I mean you need to be a person that lives this that I mean for me I'm from a folk high school background also so for me this whole thing of having a boss telling me what to do all the time I'm very anti-authoritarian with that so you need to live it yourself and want to do it not to just squeeze out more from people I know it's but it's like would you like in a family except that the granddad was the one that was in charge of the whole family and telling everybody what to do no so why is it that we walk in the door of a company we will give the authority to someone that we actually maybe not believe in so and the money was I think a very good thing for people to make believe in what was doing because I usually I have one thing that I'm saying that I was like all my employees are grown ups they have budget accounts they have mortgages that they pay every month on time on schedule why don't we believe that they could be responsible for like a million dollars or a million euros in the workplace why do I have to control them all the time and when I gave up when I gave back the budget to all the employees first thing that happened was strangely enough they came to me looking through the accounts going like okay what is this we're buying and paying for this license do we I was like if we don't you don't think we need it I mean this is your budget so and that made a huge savings in that because people get really responsible if they know this is my money I'm responsible for how we spend this money so we also have a question and I think maybe that's for both you Jakob and for you Jens and that's how do you start the journey of organizing differently do you start in a few teams departments and how does these new organized teams work together with teams in brackets old system and maybe if you start you know I think this whole thing about it's very you need to make that mountain speech you need to make that vision of where are we going and it's this whole you're standing on this mountaintop you want to go over here and you need to be really strong and hang on to that I think what it takes first of all is trust your employees need to trust my employees trust me a lot because we've done a lot of other things and I've taken I think one of the reasons why he trusted me was I'm not scared of taking a decision and later on admit stop this was a really really bad idea let's go back so in that respect they trusted me so when I came to them and said this is what I think we should do with Jakob and we need to do it for at least six months to see if the new shoe fits people trusted me to do it and actually go wholehearted into it also when it was difficult because they were still in the valley and they were not on the new mountaintop so trust is everything in leadership I think because leadership is relations yeah and I totally agree with that and also in connection to that is that also we talked about that as a part of your journey and we talked that with also other collaborators we've been working with is that as a leader even though you can't resign from your formal leadership role because there is a leadership outside in the classical organization or the established organization then you also have to safeguard your area and you have to use a kind of interaction point but it's it's a very much practical problem so if you have a team that functions as a co-led team where they do things together then appoint you know very practical appoint an interface role that interface with the rest of the organization so this is the go-to person if you need to contact us or talk to us about this and that then this is the person that you need to or this is the role that you actually need to talk to because that will be the practical approach also like what I said I really much appreciated really what you said before was about that when about you know how do you build a structure it's very much also about inviting people into this continuous improvement conversation so how do you continuously improve the structures and process and accountabilities of your local organization because they do know what works they do know what works and what doesn't work and we just need to gain access to that knowledge and information because they do know it they're not just used to sharing it because nobody used to listen then we have a wish for talking a little bit more about co-leadership and empowerment and maybe with the question as leaders what could be some super practical but still key steps to build empowerment amongst your teams so practical but key steps to build empowerment amongst teams the whole thing about me you know creating a job role is actually something you can do even though you don't have a distributed power or not working as we do with sociocracy because that's what's actually work task and things like that but if you create a job role and there's some really nice templates you've got for it in that job role you can actually put this whole thing about domain because domain rights is actually something you already to a certain degree have with employees that they know this is they have a professional profile so this is where they usually will do things but start thinking about how often do they actually have to get in touch with you as their leader and if you can cut that and tell them you don't need to we should talk about what's the overall strategy for your area and then as long as we've got that in place you can just take the decision yourself so give out that domain right to people and then they do things where you go like I'm looking the other way but it's like actually you have to also remember how many bad decisions do you make yourself as a leader I don't think I'm better at taking decisions than my employees I think actually quite often they're better at it because they have more time in their specific area and you know there's very few areas that you make that is irreversible so it's a learning process for everybody to learn to take decisions I think that the main thing is really good to start with yeah making sure that everybody has a sure accountability have a you know exactly where where your the fences of your mandate is and if you don't have that fence it's it's like I think someone used a metaphor saying imagine yourself playing basketball on a five-story high rise and there's no fence around it what you do is you you play the you play basketball five meter in from the you know the edge of the roof but if you put up you know a fence around it then you actually play on the whole roof because now you feel safe so that kind of transparency and clarity in those kind of roles and accountabilities and and the mandates and domains that you give people and say this is yours you go do with it you think is best I trust you to actually do do the best you can that gives people such a safety so you have to create actually a clear set of rules to make people be free yeah then we have a question I think mostly for you Jens so coming back to how do you interact with the old system if you're trying to work in this new way and how does that change what and how you operate with KPIs I think I think it's the rest of the organization is finding it difficult because sometimes they invite me to meetings where actually I sent my employees instead and now they've started to learn it that it's it's no use calling me in for the medium because I'm just sending the one from the circle that's responsible for this thing and they accept it because it's like I think one of the most important thing is that I realized a couple of years ago I think we talked about it that when I got my first leadership job I didn't sign any formal documents about how I should be a leader I mean it's actually think about it none of us ever actually say okay this is the hierarchy and this is your place and you have to do like this and it's just something it's an assumption we have in our heads because it's from a military organization back in the Roman times and because this is what everybody does yeah but there's no rules so if you break those rules nobody's coming after me as long as I deliver results I mean I of course I had my my my leader at the time at that time when I started introducing this was you know he was like as long as you deliver what you do in your department you're it's your so I'm just you know anxious to spread it out to the rest of the organization and that's I think it's a it's a different story yeah and are you measuring that you deliver in the same way that you used to no I don't believe in KPIs and then we have a question what would you say and I think maybe that's a question for both of you what would you say is the role of psychological safety in all of this well if we take psychological safety and also look at that then the hierarchy the traditional hierarchical organization actually reduces psychological safety because you put the the power relationship into play and and everybody who's been in a hierarchical organization who recognized the fact that it's it takes a lot of courage to speak up against your leader or you have leaders who act in ways where you say hmm that's a very powerful leader in that way so that's that's the first from the structural point of view that that you have this kind of of it enhances psychological safety because it reduces the hierarchical both mindset structure and also processes secondly if we look at the inclusive meeting process where everybody's including because we we take rounds and we take rounds on table then it creates that kind of everybody has a safe space especially when you do that more thoroughly where you also have a facilitator who secures that everybody has a safe space to share their voice in an in a truthful and honest way and respectful way of course so so that kind of process also mitigate you know being scolded being disqualified stuff like that some of the companies who've actually done this kind of teal organization forms but without putting a system in place have actually suffered from a lot of bad psychological safety because they have they end up having this kind of schoolyard organization where there's the cool there's the cool boys and the tough girls and they are in different corners and either you're a part of the in crowd or you're out of the out in crowd you're not a part of those who's rubbing up with the local heroes and heroines so so for me it it really it really cultivates psychological safety but also inclusion actually in organization and what would you say what's the role of psychological safety in all of this but it's this is one of the reasons why i don't believe in leadership and i'm really i'm really um leadership roles is employed by 40 of them are psychopaths that's why we're talking about insecurity because there's a hierarchy there so but that's putting up new rules is actually i think this whole meeting process that you're talking about is extremely important because it makes it makes it explicit about that everybody's being heard it's being more about what are we talking is this a question or comment or solution and i think these formal things um is important but psychological safety in that respect is it that's the things you can't that's why i started out saying you can't do this if it's just because you expect to squeeze out more for your employees because then you've got then you're then you're one of these leadership types i i disrespect you need to have a a genuine wish to do this because then you know what it means to create a safe space for people that is actually where you respect people for their opinions and where you don't think it's wrong to make take bad decisions i mean we all make errors and it's if i think it's one of the things of being really efficient is creating a workplace where you share your errors so that you can learn by it we in it do that a lot and also in the aviation business this is actually quite important that you share your errors because otherwise you can't learn from it so we take heaps of wrong decisions all the time and it's nobody's being scolded by it so but that's a local culture i think also so that's yeah that's a big question because it's it's it's it's trust how do you build trust in in a relationship with the people cool and this has been about the 60 minutes we've had with you and i think at the end of our 60 minutes here first of all a fantastic big thank you to you jens i think it has been very great to have you here with us to add a little bit something to just our consultant slides so thank you very much i think if i should say a final word it is emphasizing of course we are rooting for you if you want to try to do what we might call a new way or roundabout leadership and management but please bear in mind there are a lot of great experiences from jens and other people who've done some of these things before so we're rooting for you but also big encouragement to take and learn some of what's already out there thank you for a nice morning yes and thank you you're welcome thank you care My