A few weeks back, I started a talk on introducing myself as someone who is not officially responsible for anything, which makes me unofficially responsible for everything. I also talked about how with working in self-organized teams, I find myself often identifying the gaps and volunteering for things that would otherwise fall between.
I'm a big believer in self-organization, and people stepping up to the challenges. I know self-organized teams make me happy, and I wouldn't care to work in any other way.
A lot of communication is one on one, so to talk to my team, I've come to accept that the discussion can come through any of my team mates. There's no "I must be invited to a meeting", but there's "the team representation needs to be present in the meeting". We learn from each other a lot on what questions the others would like answered, and a lot of times whoever acts on the information is the best person to be in the discussion, over someone with assigned power.
I've seen what assigned responsibilities do: they create silos and bottlenecks, that I spend time bringing down. And yet, culturally some people just can't believe there is such a thing as self-organized team - there must be a responsible individual.
I run into this collision of ideas today, as I was seeking a bigger research->delivery task for my team to complete during the difficult summer period when some are here and some are away, and lack of shared responsibilities really shows its ugliest side. As I was asking, I heard that one of my team members has been "assigned responsible" for the research, and the rest of us just do tasks he assigns.
I felt the urge of fleeing. Instead, I wrote this down as a reminder for myself to work more on what I believe an efficient R&D to be: self-organized, with shared responsibilities.
I wonder if that will ever fit the idea of "career advancement" and "more assigned responsibility". Time will tell.
I'm a big believer in self-organization, and people stepping up to the challenges. I know self-organized teams make me happy, and I wouldn't care to work in any other way.
A lot of communication is one on one, so to talk to my team, I've come to accept that the discussion can come through any of my team mates. There's no "I must be invited to a meeting", but there's "the team representation needs to be present in the meeting". We learn from each other a lot on what questions the others would like answered, and a lot of times whoever acts on the information is the best person to be in the discussion, over someone with assigned power.
I've seen what assigned responsibilities do: they create silos and bottlenecks, that I spend time bringing down. And yet, culturally some people just can't believe there is such a thing as self-organized team - there must be a responsible individual.
I run into this collision of ideas today, as I was seeking a bigger research->delivery task for my team to complete during the difficult summer period when some are here and some are away, and lack of shared responsibilities really shows its ugliest side. As I was asking, I heard that one of my team members has been "assigned responsible" for the research, and the rest of us just do tasks he assigns.
I felt the urge of fleeing. Instead, I wrote this down as a reminder for myself to work more on what I believe an efficient R&D to be: self-organized, with shared responsibilities.
I wonder if that will ever fit the idea of "career advancement" and "more assigned responsibility". Time will tell.
