Management 3.0 Mindset: Part 1

By Diane Brady, CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP

This is the first article in a new series by Diane Brady, CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP. Diane is an Agile Project Management Professional working in the Pacific Northwest with 18 years of project management and consulting experience working in the Information Technology industry.  She is passionate about using agile techniques to create and improve systems, building dynamic teams, and serving teams to achieve amazing results! She has served on the board of the PMI Portland Chapter in the capacity of President as well as active in professional development portfolio for the Chapter and is currently an Agile Instructor.

I have long been a fan of the Management 3.0 mindset.  What is Management 3.0 you ask?

It is a new model, rooted in agile, for working in complex environments that require engaged, thinking, people to adapt and react on changes as they emerge.  Many effects in complex systems have multiple causes and circular relationships between causes and effects.  

The Management 3.0 model addresses the under-represented managerial side of the agile (adaptive) world.  Management 3.0 is grounded in science and leans heavily on the complex systems theory.  The world today is too complex to give you a list of practices…you need to think differently with insight into what sets the stage for engagement and motivation….what promotes disciplined and improvement practices.

The materials correspond nicely with J. Richard Hackman’s research for setting a team up for success.  I use various materials available from the Management 3.0 website, https://management30.com/.  The tools provide an interactive, fun way to get people involved. I have used them in different ways and have created a few of my own along the way.  I frequently use vision and goals, boundaries and constraints, and the Delegation Board (I created my own version of this) to launch new projects and sometimes just to coach managers outside of the core project team on how to leave the team plenty of space to self-organize, experiment and create amazing results.  I have enjoyed watching teams grow and learn, unleashing greater potential as they become more engaged and taking significant responsibility for their work.

Here are some of these Management 3.0 ideas and techniques I use frequently.

• Stakeholder orientation – Six Pillars of Marti (good practices)

• Stakeholder orientation/sponsor - Manage the system for the people (vision and goals, boundaries and constraints, and the Delegation Board)

• Energize the team and unleash potential – Personal maps, work profiles/project credits, moving motivators (Champfrogs), celebration grid, merit money, Kudo box, Metrics and Ecosystems

• Change management techniques - How you can change a social complex system, the four facets of social change

I like the Management 3.0 materials because it is a fun and engaging way to work with teams.  I thought it would be nice to share some of these with you over the next few months starting with Stakeholder Orientation.  As an agile project manager, I work differently and it is often necessary to talk about this style and to influence others why I work this way and how it works.  The two tools I used frequently are 1) Marti the six eyed monster and 2) manage the system not the people diagram.

Curious, aren’t you?

Marti, the six eyed monster, has six pillars representing good agile practices that managers and stakeholders should understand and support in order to get amazing creativity and engagement with agile teams.   This usually requires a little conversation around good chaos (giving people space to figure things out on their own) and bad chaos (spinning out of control or anarchy).  I keep Marti at my desk, handy for those conversations about developing people and good practices.  More about Marti in my next article, but to hold you over until then, here is a picture.  

Manage the System, Not the People

Manage the System, Not the People is this notion that if you set the stage properly by establishing the vision (overarching purpose) in an exciting  and challenging way, giving the necessary boundaries and constraints, and supporting the work by resolving roadblocks, you will create an incubator for growing a self-organizing, high performing team.   I can tell you this does work.   I now kick projects off in this way.

Naturally this doesn’t happen overnight, it takes patience and time.  This usually takes three to four months to see results, so gaining support ahead of time is a good idea.  I have had this conversation so many times that I created this handy image below for talking through the points.  And sometimes I just draw it on the whiteboard, a piece of paper or a napkin!

I am fond of using a sports analogy about kicking the ball between the goalposts, having the whole field to get the job done while staying inside the boundary lines, having the one big goal to unite the team in focusing on the finish line.  The team might fumble the ball and have a few penalties but they will learn and adapt on their own.  This represents the multiple moving parts with complex cause and effect scenarios requiring adaption as different plays emerge.

Assuming you have swayed the manager/sponsor and have stakeholder support and alignment, you can start working on the incubator with the Kick-off meeting which includes revealing the vision, boundaries and constraints to the team and walking through the Delegation Board and characteristics of high-performing team.  

Vision – Where Are We Going, What Is Our Purpose

This is difficult to get the hang of at first, so you should expect to work through creating the high-level vision together prior to the kick-off.  Here are my talking points on vision to review with managers and sponsors:

• Research confirms that clarity on direction makes a significant difference and can be a major force behind motivation, commitment, and productivity.

• The vision should be an overarching purpose, the big dream, and a visionary concept.

• The vision should be stated so that it excites the imagination and challenges people.

• This should be something that they can be proud of as they move toward it.

Constraints and Boundaries

The next step is looking at constraints and boundaries.   You definitely want to think this through as much as possible ahead of time so you don’t accidentally demotivate the team later by throwing a curve ball at them after they get rolling.  

Remember, you not only get what you ask for, but you also don’t get what you don’t ask for.  Too often, sponsors, managers, and project managers forget to define clear constraints for the team. These are the goalposts and the playing field boundaries.  If you don’t define where you want to go and what the limits are, you are not going to get what you expect. Or, at least not in an efficient and cost-effective manner.  

Often, when we “empower” people, we don’t give them clear boundaries of their authority.  This means they find out by trial and error, incurring some emotional damage along the way.  It is a waste of time and resources to figure out where the boundary lines are.  Worse, it repeatedly kills team motivation.   Spent a little time up front and get this out of the way so everyone can get focused on the real work.  

Donald Reinertsen offers a list of Key Decision Areas and the choice of authorizing individuals or teams. This gives us a powerful tool for defining the boundaries of authority (team delegation).  I usually facilitate a workshop with the team once we have the vision and constraints defined.  Depending upon the maturity of the team, how long they have been working together (if at all), and how much they know about self-organizing team behaviors.   I sometimes set the stage by discussing team self-organizing, high performance characteristics so they are top of mind.

Depending upon the circumstances, I might talk separately with the manager/sponsor involved to make sure they understand our purpose and to ensure ahead of time I have their support.  It is sometimes intimidating to have the manager/sponsor in the session during this discussion with the team.  It is a judgment call you need to make depending upon the circumstances.  I often have the workshop session with the team, follow-up with a discussion with the manager/sponsor to get their input, and then schedule a second session where we work through the gaps together.  There is almost always some negotiating that has to happen before everyone is in agreement.  I have used the Delegation Matrix chart shown at the end of this article when we have gaps and need a visual we can use to work through to agreement.   

This can sometimes take a bit of time to get through but it is worth the time invested to set the team up for success in self-organizing their work and performing at an optimal level.  The Key Decision Areas below are examples and you can, and should, define any that are appropriate for your situation.    It is best to have a few ideas ready to present at the start of the session to get the team started.  

Use the Seven Levels of Authority Chart (below) along with Delegation Poker to establish the Boundary List.   I typically create a poster of the Seven Levels of Authority and walk through this with the team before we start (see Pick the Right Authority/Delegation Level section below).

Delegation Poker is a fun way to work through this.  You can download the Delegation Poker cards from the Management 3.0 site.   As the team talks through the Key Decision Areas they can vote by using the Delegation Poker cards, usually by asking them to show their card selection at the same time.  

Pick the Right Authority/Delegation Level

Empowerment of people changes the authority level.    When you empower someone, you can distinguish between different levels of authority.  Within each individual activity, we can choose between seven levels of authority.  

Authority needs to be set to the lowest level that is just enough to get the desired results from people.  

It may be necessary to create a Delegation Matrix as shown above while the manager and team work through the gaps to create an agreed-upon Boundary List.  The final Boundary List should have only one column for “Who” and one column for “How”.

Metrics to Guide Team Behavior

Another dimension of setting the team up for success is guiding the right team behavior.  Behavior emerges through the application of a few simple constraints similar to the way a flock of geese learns to work together to achieve their goal of migrating north or south:

• Agree on the team’s direction (alignment on purpose)

• Don’t collide with other team members (separation of roles, activities)

• Work together as a team (cohesion)

Developing a few key metrics at individual, team and organizational levels will support the direction and constraints established and form the desired behavior in the work environment.  You will need to experiment when you first start but you soon learn what to measure and at what level, and you get the feel for it after a bit of practice.  I recommend very little focus at the individual level.  Concentrate on what metrics will support the team and organization behavior to want to promote.  Be sure to communicate clearly what you will measure, how you will measure it, the frequency of measuring and how to report the results.  Use the measure for several cycles and modify it if you don’t get the results expected.  

Team Rules

Once the vision, direction, and constraints are established, the rules should be developed and managed by the team.  Managers can help the team form rules by setting aside time and getting a facilitator skilled in servant leadership to walk the team through establishing their charter as a team and the team rules.  It is natural for them to struggle a bit.  Managers should support them in their decision making but be careful not to tell them your rules to follow.  It is crucial to the team’s self-organizing success that they own the rules.  

I hope you have enjoyed these Management 3.0 techniques to kick-off a project.   Next month we can tackle Marti!

Management 3.0 Resources

Management 3.0 website, https://management30.com/

Why Management 3.0?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LPkbGpWMNs

Manage the system, not the people, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rotmxCzmiI

Video of Ester Derby talking on self-organizing teams (J. Richard Hackman’s research) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIz8hmKR_sg

About the Author

Diane Brady, CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP, is an Agile Project Management Professional working in the Pacific Northwest with 18 years of project management and consulting experience working in the Information Technology industry.  She is passionate about using agile techniques to create and improve systems, building dynamic teams, and serving teams to achieve amazing results! She has served on the board of the PMI Portland Chapter in the capacity of President as well as active in professional development portfolio for the Chapter and is currently an Agile Instructor.