Story:
Explosive Change, Nimble Response, Evolving on the Edge - Leadership and Surfing

Like I said, I was brought in from outside the company and outside the industry to usher in change. The command was get this fixed or we will find someone who can. To fix it I knew that it didn't just need a reshuffling of the boxes on the org. chart nor did it just need a simple process overhaul.  To build a model that mirrored the current globally webbed landscape, I needed to break down the management of science and lead with an innovative hand where teams were held accountable to the innovations they implement. Coupled with that, I was personally compelled to build from the ground up a leadership model of mentoring, coaching and teaching.  I wanted to build a place where people learned from failure instead of fear it.  I wanted to tear down the "I say and you do" culture and build a place of trust and risk. From my experience of 5 years as a high school English teacher, soccer and surf coach, and my 15 years as business leader, executive, and entrepreneur, I have learned that fundamentally if people are to excel, they must be valued, trusted, and then let loose to live and create on the edge.

When I started, my team was one of specializations and assembly line mentalities. They "assembled widgets" according to task assignments and communication was minimal and limited to their sphere of influence - billing, close out calls, dispatch, product orders, etc.  In other words, each person had an isolated task only and kept to themselves and lived only in their assigned world.  My first goal was to break down the fear and instill trust.  Second, I needed to create interconnections within the team that reverberated like the spider's web at all interactions.  Finally, I had to build teams that innovated and created based on need that were then accountable by those innovations. I had to break down the assembly line mentality, the fear of failure, and then lift the shadow of the heavy hand of corporate consequence. I had to open up the system. 

First, I sat myself down in a chair in the aisles every day with the team one at a time for the first few months getting to know them personally and professionaly, and then I dove into their accounts and processes to understand their life in the "trenches" with the customer and the system. Second, once I established the framework of how things worked, I restrucutred how they went to process by doing away with isolated specializations and introduced interconnectivity and community.  Third, I created "circles" of 3-4 team members where they all intimately shared the load of achieveing high levels of customized service levels as a team of peers on all points of delivery.

In doing this, I elimatned the task mentality where one person was only responsible for his/her specialization and had them instead bear the entire process of an account from cradde to grave.  In other words, instead of just being in charge of billing, they were now in charge of an account where billing was just one bit of the whole.  However, not only were they responsible for their own portoflio of accounts where they fulfilled orders and interacted directly with the client, but they had to now be keenly aware of their teams portfolio and unique nuances so they could support the team.  Instead of living in the silo, they now had to interconnect with the team.  The team was forced to collaborate and innovate together as well as intimately support in order to achieve success.  Although I held individuals responsible for their named accounts, I also tasked the entire team with aggregate health of the team portfolio.  When one failed, it was because of the teams struggle to raise support and create a culture of  interconnectivity and community. 

In order to make this stick, I took the tool from the "managing without managers" model at the highly effective company Morning Star in Norhtern California (http://morningstarco.com/index.cgi?Page=Self-Management).  I took their concept and created our own CLOU.  I simplified the content of the C.L.O.U. - Colleague Letter of Understanding - so that we could build on our own DNA.  At Morning Star (HBR and Gary Hamel), this is how they manage without managers.  On our teams, each person is required to input their own metrics in 15-18 key measurable categories in their process ownership to guide productivity, and then the team as a whole approves or amends the metrics.  The team then uses this to gauge the performance of their peers, hold each other accountable, and direct outcomes.

As a shape, circles have no beginning and no end.  There is no head and no lowest denominator.  The strength of the circle is the unity and uniformity of structure. I borrowed the concept of circles from a book called "The Starfish and the Spider" by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.  In it they talked of the great successes of the Apache Native Americans who held off the entire Spanish Army through decentralized circles or communities.  They could plan and launch an attack at anytime from anywhere from any "circle" on any part of the Spanish fleet.  They didn't have a specific leader commanding and controlling and therefore didn't need the premission to act or move.  They moved on their own strategic initiative. In contrast, the Spanich military had to rally, build, and then execute an extensive plan becuase it was dependent on a single leader and the centralized struture of the entire military group. Here is an excerpt from their book, "Circles are important to nearly every decentralized organization...The Apaches for example, lived in many small, nonhierarchical groups spread across the Southwest.  Though they shared a common heritage and traditon, each group maintained its own particular habits and norms. Each Apache group resembled a circle: independent and autonomous...This doesn't mean that a decentralized system is the same as anarchy.  There are rules and norms, but these aren't enforced by any one person. Rather, the power is distributed among all the people and across geographic regions...Because there was no capital or command post, Apache decision were made all over the place" (Brafman and Beckstrom, P. 20, 88). 

As our business grew by 40% in year 1, we were tasked to double the business the next year while only very minimally adding head count. As the circles executed and delivered excellent customer service, grew revenue by 40%, and built interconnnectivity and highly collaborative teams, the existing head count could only handle so much growth without crippling effectiveness.  The circles were working great, but without being able to add new members to the teams to share the load of the exploding business we were immediately limited.   

At the beginning of year 2, the "circles" and the C.L.O.U. (Morning Star) were well under way and yielding solid results in both concept and outcomes.  We had measurable results and a philosophical buy in from the team. People were learning to surf. However, with the new pressure from the executive team to double our business year over year, we needed yet another innovation.  Like Twitter, I needed to keep the practice of immediacy, transparency, and innovation vibrant through the circles but also find a new way to build on the momentum like a surfer does a wave.  While keeping with the practice of circles, we re-engineered how we went to process. By examining the business case of General Electric in Salisbury, NC, we learned that through high levels of team interconnectivity and collaboration, they were able to bring production of highly customizeable and complex circuit boards down from many, many weeks to 2-3 days.  They implemented a similar "circle" concept but shifted the structure.  They made teams populated by self directed, horizontal process owners of core processes.  These process owners 1) owned their own process, 2) were self-directed and didn't act as lone individuals, 3) were cross-trained to perform another's task, 4) had the freedom to think creatively and respond with flexibility, 5) used customer experience to drive the horizontal strucutre, and fianlly 6) the cultural components were openness, trust, and continuous improvement.

I took the "cirlces" foundation that propelled us so quickly into effectiveness and put into play this model of  horizontal process ownership. We changed again. By implementing these process owners into the already highly functioning, collaborative networks of circles, we were able to spread out and diffuse the amount of work across a horizontal experience.  Not only did this increase our "bandwidth," it created even more creativity and flexibility.  We could handle 2x the business while holding to the minimal headcount additions permitted in the executive budget. Currently, under this concept of circles, my metaphor of surfing, and the structure of horizontal processes, we have doubled the business over last year.