Over the past decade, I've worked with three companies full-time, transforming them into New Work role models. Through these experiences, I've distilled nine key practices necessary for a sustainable New Work implementation.
You might ask yourself:
- Why are there nine New Work by Design key practices? Why not eight or ten?
- Why these nine in particular and not others? Could you leave any of them out?
The answer is:
- Taking any of them out substantially reduces intrinsic motivation.
- They support and enable each other. Leaving any of them out destabilizes the whole system.
Here is how they influence each other.
Local inclusive decision-making
enables ...
- Leading by attracting: When everyone knows their voice will be heard, leaders can more easily create commitment and enthusiasm in others.
- Autonomous teams: When everyone is clear on how to make decisions, teams can act on the autonomy they are given.
- Aligned autonomous goals: Goal alignment is a specific case of decision-making. When teams are included in decision-making, they feel a sense of ownership and are motivated to set and achieve their goals.
- Constructive conflict: Inclusive decision-making promotes open dialogue, encouraging people to address and resolve disagreements constructively.
Whereas central top-down decision-making diminishes ...
- Leading by attracting: When people are not involved in decisions, they tend to mistrust their leaders more.
- Autonomous teams: When it is unclear on how decisions are made and who is allowed to make which decisions, teams cannot act on the autonomy they are given.
- Aligned autonomous goals: When people are not used to making decisions together, it is much more difficult to align on goals.
- Constructive conflict: When people are used to problems being escalated up and solutions being passed down, that is also how they will deal with conflict.
Defaulting to transparency
enables ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: Transparency ensures everyone has access to the necessary information to make informed decisions.
- Leading by attracting: Building trust through transparency helps leaders convince others about the way forward.
- Constructive conflict: When information is transparent, conflicts can be addressed openly and based on facts rather than assumptions.
Whereas defaulting to secrecy diminishes ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: No access to relevant information prevents people from participating in decisions.
- Leading by attracting: Secrecy undermines trust and creates an artificial power imbalance. The stories we make up in our heads are usually worse than the truth.
- Constructive conflict: When information is secret, many conflicts arise due to misinterpretation of events.
Leading by attracting
enables ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: When leaders explain their reasoning to convince others to follow out of their own free will, people experience that their opinion matters.
- Aligned autonomous goals: Attracting teams to common higher-level goals empowers them to derive their own goals from them and align those with other teams.
- Strong relationships: Leaders who attract others foster stronger interpersonal connections between them. A shared enemy unites. A shared leader does too.
Whereas leading by dictating diminishes ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: When people are used to decisions being passed down to them from their leader, they will defer decisions to them even when they could make the decisions themselves.
- Aligned autonomous goals: Teams cannot derive their own goals from higher-level goals they are not convinced of.
- Strong relationships: Leaders who don't treat other's on eye-level, don't set the right example for healthy relationships.
Aligned autonomous goals
enable ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: When people feel ownership for their goals, they are more invested in making decisions to achieve them.
- Autonomous Teams: Teams that align their goals with the broader organizational mission can operate more independently and effectively.
Whereas divide and conquer goals diminish ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: When people are not involved in goal setting, they often find the goals unrealistic and/or misdirected.
- Autonomous Teams: By creating depend goals, you also create dependent teams.
Autonomous teams
enable ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: Teams with the expertise to own customer value end-to-end can make better local decisions.
- Constructive Conflict: Autonomous teams are better equipped to manage conflicts constructively, as they have the authority and responsibility to resolve issues internally.
- Aligned autonomous goals: Autonomous teams can set and achieve their own goals in alignment with the higher-level company goals.
Whereas functional teams diminish ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: When teams strongly depend on other teams to deliver customer value they can make decisions on their own.
- Constructive Conflict: Conflicts most often arise between dependent teams. Since their members usually don't interact on a daily basis and have different leaders, conflicts tend to get escalated right away if addressed at all.
- Aligned autonomous goals: In the absence of ownership for customer value end-to-end, functional teams tend to lose sight of the value of their work and become so-called feature-factories, meaning they just implement one feature after another without a bigger picture.
Constructive conflict
enables ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: Knowing how to handle disagreements constructively encourages participation in decision-making.
- Growth-oriented feedback: Constructive conflict lays the foundation for giving and receiving feedback that focuses on personal and professional growth. Advice is constructive feedback.
- Strong relationships: Knowing that they can deal with conflict constructively lets people dare to relate with others on a deeper level.
Whereas avoiding conflict diminishes ...
- Local inclusive decision-making: The fear that someone might disagree with your opinion stifles participation in decision-making.
- Growth-oriented feedback: The fear of disappointing someone or making them angry lets us avoid pointing out growth areas.
- Strong relationships: When conflict is scary and avoided, it is safer to keep relationships shallow and superficial.
Growth-oriented feedback
enables ...
- Guidance on individual growth path: Regular, constructive feedback helps individuals understand how to grow and develop within the organization.
- Aligned autonomous goals: People who want to grow set themselves ambitious goals and want to be on a team that does the same.
- Constructive conflict: When people are used to constructive but challenging feedback, conflict becomes a lot easier. Conflict mediation is just an intense and guided form of feedback.
Whereas salary-dominated feedback diminishes ...
- Guidance on individual growth path: When the focus is on salary as an extrinsic motivator, it's best to appear confident and strong all the time. This makes it difficult to admit and address areas for growth.
- Aligned autonomous goals: Attaching pay-raises or bonuses to pre-negotiated goals gives people the incentive to negotiate these goals as low as possible, so they can easily reach them and get the pay-raise or bonus.
- Constructive conflict: When people are not used to constructive but challenging feedback, conflict becomes an attack and danger to someone's status and livelihood.
Guidance on individual growth path
enables ...
- Aligned autonomous goals: Individuals who are clear on their individual goals are more capable to map those to meaningful team goals.
- Growth-oriented feedback: When people are supported on a growth path that is actually motivating for them, they seek out and welcome feedback to make progress.
Whereas climbing a career ladder diminishes ...
- Aligned autonomous goals: Career ladders with scarce opportunities for advancement encourage a focus on personal advancement rather than achieving team goals.
- Growth-oriented feedback: When it's all about climbing the next step on a career ladder, people look for confirmation that they are there. Any challenging feedback becomes a setback.
Strong relationships
enable ...
- Local Inclusive Decision-Making: Strong relationships encourage open communication and inclusive decision-making.
- Constructive Conflict: Strong relationships provide the foundation for resolving conflicts constructively and collaboratively.
Whereas a focus on star individuals diminishes ...
- Local Inclusive Decision-Making: To be seen as the best, it's more useful to have the right answer than to be curious about others' perspective.
- Constructive Conflict: Others disagreeing with you threatens your status.
These nine key practices are interconnected. Each practice supports and enhances others, creating a holistic system that fosters intrinsic motivation. Removing or neglecting any one of them destabilizes the entire system.
Ready to move forward in your transformation? Cohorts for my Transformation course start in January, May, and September.
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