E078: Self-managed teams

And this is Lisa. Hi. This is

James. And just before we start this episode, I wanted to remind you that you can support us via Patreon on our website at WWW dot, World of work.io. Forward, slash support. Okay, let's get on with the episode. Hello. This is James and this is Lisa, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. What are we speaking about today? Well,

this is a fascinating conversation with Perry Thames about self managed teams, what they are, what the potential of them in the workplace is, and how to actually bring them to life. It's really

exciting as a topic. I'm really glad we got to speak to him, because self managed teams is one of those phrases that you hear more and more, and self management is more common. So it'll be really interesting to see what some of the experience he has from trying to introduce self managed teams to organizations around the world is and some real examples of how people can do this. Yeah, so welcome to our new episode.

Okay, so here we are in the main body of this podcast. We are joined today by Perry Tims, and we're going to be speaking about self management and self managed teams before we get into that. Though, Perry, would you be able to say a bit about yourself and your background and what you're working on at

the minute, of course, thank you. So thank you for having me. It's always great to get these kind of opportunities to share stuff that you believe in and are passionate about and working so I started my working life in the civil service in the UK, and got into a position where I worked a lot on projects, including tech projects, and in it, I wasn't a techie. I did try out as a coder, and whilst I passed the exams, I just hated it. I was a user, so I was helping them understand what the tech was there to do, and then I would test their modules. And then, because I knew the system, the project managers would say, hey, why don't you train the users? And it was the training piece that really got me into HR and learning. And so I moved into that about 17 years ago. And then I think if I sort of Fast forward to about 2008 nine, I started to discover there were some alternatives to how work was done. I read, yes, Ricardo Semler, iconic book, Maverick and and I suddenly found there were all these self managed, self directed teams going on, and it sparked my attention. And from that point on, I've been really interested in it. And I guess you'd say now I'm a little bit obsessed about that as a potential future model for the way work could be

done. Yeah, it's exciting, right? And it's topical. And we hear the phrase self managed around quite a bit, I guess, to start things off, when, when you think of a self managed team, what does it actually mean to you? What is a self managed team?

Yeah, I guess a question that doesn't have a really, really short, sharp answer, except that I think there are people with a purpose who direct themselves to deliver that purpose. So, I mean, that's as short as I can get it. And by Sure, direct themselves. I mean, there aren't heaps of process and bureaucracy that they have to wade through. There aren't layers of management that direct them. But what self management isn't is just this pointless gathering of people who make stuff up as they go along, which I think is perhaps a little bit of a myth in who are doubtful of its sort of power and usefulness. The purpose is the thing that brings people together, the people then create the kind of bonds and the processes and the ways of being together that deliver that. But ultimately, there's a reason for it. It isn't just some random act of stuff, and it isn't just a counter reaction either to other forms of construct. So, yeah, I think the purpose in the people is the kind of crucial bond between them.

And as I said a second ago, it seems like self managed teams and self management is becoming more popular, or at least more in the public consciousness. Have you got a sense on why that's happening? Is there any sort of shift happening in the work that we do, or the types of ways that we organize ourselves that's leading to this? Or is it just an evolution? What are your thoughts on its subject? Yeah, I

mean, I think there is an evolution going on, and I think that evolution has come in a number of different ways. I think when you look at the construct of work, if we go back to, you know, sort of industrial revolution time, and then into the sort of, I suppose, post war, advent of, you know, mass manufacturing and so on that came out of that, I think the machinery of work was the prevailing rhythm, tempo and model. And then as we started to get a little bit more, I think, enlightened about our our sense of being in the world, I guess, you know, financial crashes and terrorism and things like that, we forced ourselves to question, what is it all about this acquisition of wealth and this thing? So I think that's the evolutionary bit, which is also then part of the systems. But, I mean, I go back to August comp in the late. 1800s started to observe people in a scientific sense, and could realize, actually, we didn't always need this machinery and process and scrutiny. And so he started to develop a sociocratic framework where he said, You know, it's not hierarchical. There are different ways of doing it. And I guess that was picked up on in the 1970s by some Dutch I guess again, sort of psychologists and researchers who were looking at people who came together in, I suppose you'd say, sort of extreme purpose led initiatives like health and disaster recovery and and peace or and there wasn't any hierarchical structure there, yet, people got things done. So I think it came from that. And so I think we've studied like human endeavor and the collective sense and we've, I think, realized that the construct we have of hierarchical command and control isn't a natural state as we might think it is. And we think of wolf packs or whatever, yeah, and I guess hive mind and other forms of coming together in the animal world again, I think has given us a sense that actually maybe we're not as kind of, you know, tribal and chieftain like as we think we are.

I've got a whole host of questions on the background as ever. The first one I'm going to go in with is, you started talking about the importance of purpose, ledness, or at least having a common purpose, being maybe an enabler for this type of thing. Is it a prerequisite? I mean, when we think about the organizations that are exploring and succeeding in self management, are they all purpose LED? Can it work anywhere? What industries are doing it?

I think there is a sense of a calling and almost like a magnetic force that needs to be there. I mean, it doesn't have to be something, you know, superbly artisan or artistic or religious or anything though, you know, I think some people can come together and say, you know, we've got a really disused part of land near us. It's a mess. Our purpose is to make this place look like it's flourishing. And we, you know, that seems like such a trite tidy up thing to do, but the purpose in them is is bigger than the acts that they're doing, as in clearing up and tidying up and landscape gardening. So so I don't want to over conflate what purpose is. I don't think we have to have a nobility to absolutely everything we do in order to create self management. I think we have to have people who go, I'm moved enough that I want to do this and I see others who want to do it with me, let's work out the best way of creating an equalizing and very participative way of getting that done without the kind of clipboard and the supervised time routines and stuff that we associate with work. Do you know what I mean? So I think purpose is important, but don't always think purpose is some higher plateau, almost quasi religious thing, because it it might not be, it might be very near to people and just something very functional. Yeah.

And if we think about the sort of real life examples of where self managed teams are coming out, are those industry agnostic at the minute? Are they functional agnostic? Do they, you know, span all those areas, or do you see them in certain areas? It's a really

interesting question that when I talk about this a lot, which I do when I get stage time and things like this, I do often get questions from people saying, Oh, well, it's okay in this space, because the purpose is the overriding factor. And again, I sort of balk a bit at that, because I just don't believe that you can again, tag purpose to just some higher plane thing. And so I've seen it work in engineering companies. I've picked up stories in healthcare and seen it happen there myself. I've seen it in high process, almost like, you know, very functional admin areas that wouldn't have said self management is needed in those areas, but, but it absolutely works, because people have a sense of agency over their own work and activities and choices, and suddenly their work becomes more enjoyable, because it isn't, you know, forced upon them, so to speak. And while I'm on that train of thought, there is this, I guess you'd say, either research or thread that says people don't leave bad companies. They leave bad managers, right? Yes, I see that a lot, and I do sort of understand that that might be a really bad relationship that needs, you know, some form of breakage in order to create some sanctity out of it. But I think people leave a workplace because they can't influence what around them that they want to see happen. And sometimes the manager is the obstacle, but other times the system is too big, or whatever it might be. So I think that's where I really see self management come alive. It isn't just it is industry agnostic, because I think it's about people having agency and that autonomy and an alignment to something that adds value, creates impacts, and so on. So I think it could work anywhere

I was. I was having a conversation when I knew we were doing this podcast and exploring this with some people, and I was looking for examples and just getting some thoughts from people. And one of the organizations that popped up is an organization called valve. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. And apparently, you know, they've gone from. So a very small group to now a large group that's very much self managed. And one of the guys I was speaking to was an org psychologist from the States, and he would say one of the things that's interesting about valve, based on his knowledge of it, is that while they are very much self managed in the organization, the recruitment process is very different to a normal organization. Do you think that self management requires a certain type of person or a certain type of filtering process to be effective? Or what are your thoughts on that

great question? So again, I'm not going to give it a yes and no. I think there are some people with a stronger predisposition to favor this kind of way. And so, you know, there may be something in them where there's a desire to not be forced into doing things and to be more, you know, part of a collective. But equally, there are lots of people who are conditioned through their life, through the education system, through the work they do, who actually are not predisposed to it, but when taught the benefits and the realization of how much, much, much more human it is, suddenly move away from that precondition and go, Hey, now I've discovered this. I really want it to be how I there may be a few people who are pre dispositioned towards wanting to have people around them who take the lead and look after things that they don't want to. So I think they're on the spectrum. You've got those ends, the predisposition, almost like a sensibility, and then in the middle, you've got tons of people who are conditioned, and they are people who can be skilled and confident enough to move towards self management. So I see it as that kind of distribution curve. You know, Perry, you you raise something really interesting, because much of Lisa, oh no, sorry, Perry, Lisa was saying something, and she's going to hear me now. Yes, we're good, okay, my

apologies, Perry. You were saying something interesting. There about the hierarchy, and I'm thinking of the work right now of David Rock with his scarf model, right? So, status, certainty, autonomy, relation, relational and fairness. How do people respond in terms of having come out of educational systems that provide a certain amount of status, if you're working in a self managed team, presumably everybody is at the same level in terms of status, what? What are people's reactions, or what? What do you have to either give up? And what do you gain when you go from a traditional structure to a self managed structure? Yeah,

and I've seen that, so that's a really pertinent question. So I've seen people who's who, who are almost so anti status that they want to, really, you know, be still invisible within a self managed system and and actually, whilst that may be alluring, I don't think that's right, because I think there are times you have to step in and be in in a leading position, or, you know, a supportive position. So if some people think, Oh, this is a great place for me to not get told what to do, so I can be, you know, almost like just an invisible force. I don't think it's quite that, but I think what you're talking about is that, you know, we're conditioned to achieve. We get awards. We have captains of sporting teams. We have people who are, I suppose you'd say, prefects or senior within a school instructor. And they expect that to be the case when they go into the working structure too. And so they may have a little dented ego when suddenly everybody is a quite equal part of a system. And my response to it is often that the ego side of things is replaced by a sense of being part of an eco system. And so it ego eco that's easy flip, but but situationally, within self managed environments, what I've seen is there are times when people say, I'm going to hold this space. I'm going to create a leading proposition that I would like to invite people to join me in. And we'll share how we do that. So your status, then, is as the convener of that space, that issue, that opportunity. It doesn't mean you have to tell everybody what to do, though, that's the I think the kind of the beauty in this is that you can create the sense of something needed, and if people respond to it, then you work out how you do it. So you can get a kick from the status by being the person that takes that leading role, but you don't have to then lead the entire thing from start to finish. So, yeah, so I've seen the status thing played in both ways, kind of, you know, shrinking and being invisible to I like to be out front and I like to lead. And it's like, well, you'll still get that chance, but you'll get people who will equalize and give you a sense of, you know, connectedness, about what that leading will look like. And it's almost like you have to then say to people, okay, my status here is to hold this space and create the opportunity for people to come together and do things. What would you need me to do as a leading part of this? And then they help you construct the, I guess, the rhythm that you need to adopt,

yeah, and I think what you're saying, or I'm listening both to what you're saying and reading between. In the lines is that this requires a certain amount of maturity and willingness to step into conversations. And I'm curious around how people in these groups navigate conflict, because in many traditional organizations, if I have a problem with somebody, I can avoid dealing with them directly by going to either my boss or that person's boss. Now, there's nobody to go to to help fix it. I actually have to have the communication skills and the conflict resolution skills to engage with my peers. So can you say a little bit about how conflict is managed in self managed teams?

Yeah. And again, I think this is one of the things people outside it who have not experienced it will say, Well, surely it's just a talking shop then where you're trying to get consensus if there's an outlying view and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, well, not really what I've seen in some and you're right to use the word maturity, by the way, because what I've seen in mature ways that this has manifested itself as a as a system that people can both respond to and shape, is that conflict is considered to be an engaging opportunity rather than a punishing or, you know, a really, kind of fraught and dangerous part of the process. So, right? It's an interesting thing. Again, again, about ego, because it's not, I don't like how you're making that decision, it would be something like, I have a sense this decision is troubling me because, and so you take the person out of the conversation, and you put the thing as the thing that you want to challenge. And I've seen that become a really, really sensible way of avoiding, you know, people literally raising hackles because they think they don't like me, or they hate me, or they're taking me on, and it's like it's this thing that I'm saying is what we should do that's being challenged. So what is it about this thing we need to unpack and discover and work through Now that does take maturity? So I've seen some great stuff from an organization based in Sweden who are helping organizations learn how to do this more. They're called tough leadership, T, U, double f, which in Swedish, believe it or not, means tough as in T, A, U, G, H, yes, nice phonetic transit translations. And what they do is they teach people how to hold that conflict as an opportunity to not go on an assault or feel they've got to defend themselves. But actually, table the issue, they call it a moose head. They call it a moose head, like, it's a rotting moose head on the table. And you keep pointing to that and say, like, how do we get this stinking moose head off the table? It's not like, who put the stinking moose head there? Do you know what I mean? I think, yeah. The difference is not what's your personal attachment to the thing is, what is the thing? And let's work on that that really helps with conflict engagement, as as Mickey cash tan calls it conflict engagement. It takes the sting out of it. It stops it being a, you know, a rippling undercurrent where you just bitch about people to others. You You don't need to do that. Yeah,

that depersonalization powerful, and I love for rotting moose head is a little bit more direct than the elephant in the room. So there's a little bit there about the conflict and ways to just more broadly when we think about organizations and the cultures of organizations, which is something that we're interested in, the cultures are sometimes shaped by things like leadership and things like values and behaviors, and there are efforts and initiatives to shape these in a self managed team. How does one go about defining a culture, shaping it, or is it purely organic? How does that I

mean, it's really, I guess, what I've seen in self managed teams, and again, it comes back to the point Lisa made about maturity, is that cultures of it's really adult conversation. It's like, you know, what? How are we being here? What's the, what's the vibe we're creating? And you kind of name it very differently. So it doesn't feel like it's a construct of the boardroom to a set of values. They seem to emerge from it. So there is a degree of allowing it to emerge. And I say it, I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of weird, isn't it, because it's like a force field rather than a thing you can grab hold of. But I think equally, the way people act, and the way people perhaps want and need to act in the interests of the work that you're doing and the purpose you have can be, to some degree, I use the word lightly, but I don't, you know, might sound a bit heavy engineered. So you may say that as a self managed team, what you really want to do is have something like an open and transparent salary structure. Now, to some people, they would just freak out about what, what, knowing what other people learned, or whatever. So there's a way to deal with that. And you know, you have to kind of go into it gently. You have to create the right culture the way that's an openness that people understand, and then then you bring it to some sense of order, and there's a purpose to it. So, so, so this, I think, is where you can be more and again, I use the word wisely, kind of humanist about things, rather than machine, like an engineer in that sense. So I think culture is very deliberate in these teams. It's because people really sign up to pledges to each other, to do things in a certain way and respect and values based approaches really, really ooze out of every conversation. But I've seen a few organizations where self management is absolutely how they operate, and then there's a couple of people who are frustrated, perhaps about a certain decision that could be made that isn't. And perhaps they want to direct that to add somebody to say, you make that call, because we need you to make that call. And that's the kind of thing where it can get a little bit go a little bit underground, and a subculture creates it's like, oh, they're not brave enough to make that call. So, yeah, you know what I mean. So you can still get some of those cultural like, sort of fractures, even in a self managed situation. So it isn't all hugs and, you know, everybody's super happy in a self management system, it could be really hard. And sometimes how you find a resolution that isn't just in one person makes it more complex. What

do you see of relationship between, I guess, informational power or expertise, and then the broader teams within self managed teams, is there, is there added weight for expertise? Or how does that dynamic play out? That's

a great question. I think I'd like to again, say that the maturity of those I've seen and experienced and worked in has this huge amount of respect for that kind of expertise, and there's a real understanding about how to leverage it, without the person feeling like they've got to step in or be, you know, thrown work. They're considered to be very, very sort of sage, like and very consultative and very reliable in that sense. So I do think people have respect and reverence for expertise. These aren't just like super generalists who work in self management. They're more adaptable. I would say perhaps they are equally allowed to develop specialities, because often that's where their passion is, or that's where the client or the purpose needs. So I'd say that's a part of it, and the power aspect to it is often where we see it in conventional structures become almost like a shield, like I'm impenetrable because I'm the only one who knows this, and they don't give it away in self managed systems, I see it the opposite. I see it where people are trying to create shared knowledge, legacy, inclusion, because they don't fear that they're going to be displaced in any sense or purpose. So it does create a different environment in terms of how like encircled people are. Yeah, and I often say that in traditional structures, that the reason you have divisions is because they're divisive and they're divided, whereas in self management, you don't tend to get that. You often don't even have a structure. You just have this swarm mentality to how you assemble around a problem. So I think the power and the positioning side of things seems to be less of an issue. Where people are like, I don't need a career path because I'm doing the work I love. So, so that's it, you know, they're quite content, yeah. So, yeah,

we've spoken a bit about, as we've gone through this, about benefits to the individual, and some of those benefits around, you know, quality of experience at work and all those types of things. From an organizational perspective, what do you see the benefits being to organizations of adopting

someone like this? Yeah. So, so that fluidity that I talked about, that sort of swarm mentality, does seem to be a real attribute of self managed teams where, you know, it's like, right? Guys, we've got this massive problem. You know, what they don't need to do is, I'm going to pick you from this division, you from this division, and you from this division, and force you to solve that problem. There's often a real sense of stepping in and a real sense of self assembly and how you do that. So that feels like it's rapid. It feels like it's got people, you know, on the front foot and wanting to get engaged in that kind of resolution so that, I think, is an organizational benefit, the reactiveness to it. I do see something about the the acquisition, the hiring side of things that you talked about earlier on when you mentioned the valve example, where, because the culture and the way of working is primarily the sort of overriding system that expertise and past history tends to be less what you're looking for in the candidate for a role in a self managed team. You might want somebody who is a Java code developer, but you'd also want to see that somebody has the ability to work creatively, to be a little bit multi disciplinary and all that kind of thing. So I think you start from a point of, can we find people who, who who will get our culture, who will get our system and mode of operating, who will enrich it in different ways? Oh, and, and they are they super competent and certificated and validated and all that kind of thing. And I've seen some self managed organizations hire people who look like that on the outside, who then come in and want to start bringing in some hierarchical stuff. And believe me, the system rejects them pretty quickly. So they don't last very long. They struggle themselves. They find themselves lost. They try and assert even more tight power, and it just fails. So I think the recruitment process is likely to mean this is a long way of saying it. Long Way likely to mean you will get the right people and they'll stay with you, and so your attrition costs are flattened, your cultural sort of norms are integrated pretty quickly. Performances is often an easy uptick and and I don't think you get people who are massively worried about, you know, progression and super, super, super sized salaries. They tend to be a little bit more like, let's just build this thing up and let's grow with it, and let's, you know, acquire as we get bigger and better. So you don't get any of those brilliant jerks. Is what, I guess, is the shorthand phrase,

yeah, because you're you're getting people who are self selecting, I think, in a way, to the the ideology of of what it means. So So Perry, let me ask you this. So there's one thing that you get it and you aspire to it, but if you want to actually do it, like if we were to talk about practicalities, I have a couple of questions on that. So one is, you know, if you're a leader in an organization. How do you get started on this? But also, can you be a leader in an organization if the organ, the entire organization, doesn't embrace this way of working, but you yourself want to create the opportunities within your area, your department, to be able to do this in a really in a real way, in the real world, as we often saying, That's

exactly where I'm going to try and land this. So some examples I've seen are actually, and it's kind of a combined answer of both of those questions, but I will split the rest of this. There is often a source who will say, this is the way we should be, the self management thing. So it is literally like you have somebody who decrees freedom or who mandates this kind of self direction. And so I guess that's often where it starts. It isn't a kind of I've rarely seen it as a bottom up revolution that needs to convince the boss you can trust us, let go. I mean, sometimes it is, but it's more that there's a pretty benevolent source in a leadership role. And so they're comfortable with saying, I'm still happy to do the leading thing I need to do legally or to the shareholders, if we've got them, or, you know, whatever it might be. So they play a role. But what they're effectively saying is, I don't need to control everything. I don't need to decide everything. I actually want you to do it because you're closer to customers. You see the opportunities there way more than I do. And therefore I would like to start from saying, yes, you can do what you want. And then you know, you might come to me because you just want me to say, Yeah, I think this fits the company's future direction, or whatever it might be. So they're like an alignment checker. So yeah, so practically, that often is the best place to start a benevolent source somewhere in the organization decrees this is going to be a good thing for us because we're practically working that way now, or it looks like it's the right thing to do. So where it gets stuck is if there isn't that belief, if you've got, say, a middle manager trying to create this sense of self management, and the senior people around them who still hold the power go, no, no, we're not going to do it. Then the chances are it is really unlikely to happen. So somebody will need to be that centrifugal force is the phrase I use rather okay, like the champion, yes, yeah,

yeah. So get that then, then to assume that everybody is going to go, hurrah. Is actually not the right assumption. Yes, there will be a lot of people who go, what you are crazy. What do you mean? And I love the story of Dan price out at gravity payments, who set everybody's salary on 70,000 US dollars. And there were some people there hated it and left, but their 3x growth. So it's proving to work. But yeah, you will get some people who go, I am I did not come here for this. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to be part of this. And I think we have to respect that those pre conditioned, not preconditioned, but pre determined, kind of responses to that are, this is not what I need. And I think we have to allow those people to make the choice of another place to be. And I guess Tony Shea has done that at Zappos probably three times now. So I think then you have to describe to people what it means and what they will gain and what they might have to let go of in this situation. And I think that's absolutely the starting point of the conversation. People need to go, okay, I get the principle, I think it's probably right, but, but what does it mean? What am I going to have to let go of, and what am I going to what am I going to have to acquire in order to make this work? And and I think you can start with some interest, and you can probably start with some eagerness, and then practicalities kick in pretty quickly, like, so, who sets my salary now? You know those kind of things. And so, yeah, I think you you, you have to work with people to then build it with them, and then they will create it in their own kind of, you know, determination, and then that's part of them. So you don't need a consultant like me to come in and force it. Absolutely not.

And with this, do you see organizations trying this as a big banger? Search. Or do you see sub areas working on it individually first? I mean, if they move in this direction, how

does that? Yeah, so I think that definitely depends on scale. So yeah, I see some startups who kind of get this as the right thing to do, and they start to scale, and then they get to a size, and then they think this is no longer operational, and they revert to perhaps more traditional structure. I see that people who are of a certain size, who have started to feel that the traditional stuff isn't serving them well, do want to unhook themselves from that to create this. And then in really large corporations, it is really tricky, but I know of a very famous cosmetics manufacturer whose marketing team said, this is going to work for us. And they allowed them to explore, experiment with it, and it worked really well, but manufacturing said, No, that's not going to work for us, so they just left it. So my suspicion is, and I've even worked in a company that did this, you will see quite a few kind of hybrids with a bit of self management and connections into governance and so on, and lots of traditional still in the very, very large organizations. And

you said earlier that starting this, in your opinion, or in your experience, often stems from somebody who's a champion of it, whatever language we want to use when organizations are handed over from a founder or things like that, that's a really tough period. Oh, yeah, when organizations move away, or when that charismatic or champion leader is no longer in role, what happens there? Do you see that transition working?

It does weaken it sometimes. So the reinvented organizations, and also freedom, Inc, by is it gets stories of Favi, the engineering company in France, are a classic example where, you know, Jean Francois za priest was the power source behind the self managed, I guess you say, revolution within that company that works so well. Then he handed over to somebody else, and then they had to, then get somebody else take over. And apparently, then there was a reversion to traditional techniques, which just seemed to just not fit where, where things were. Now, I haven't really kept in touch with the fav story for a while, but it started to feel like it was being unpicked and it was damaging it. And I also think that happened in the results only working environment at Best Buy, same thing happened there. So the the you know, the force and the source when they're no longer there, can create in the successor, something where it just gets unpicked. And that would be a real shame, because it feels like we've got so far. But yeah, so it does happen. I guess creating about sustainability is

hard, yeah, right, and it's not quite the same as self management, but I love the interface carpet tile story of their CEO, Ray, who died, obviously in post, but left such a strong legacy about what they do that that company kind of lives his legacy. So I guess I like to think that those people who set off a self management revolution that works, even if they're no longer there through death or through abdication of sorts, their legacy is so strong that whoever takes the reins kind of builds on it. But it isn't always the case. Yeah,

well, that's nice. Well, I'm afraid Perry that we're going to have to end it there, just in the interest of time, we're getting to the end of our time on this. But just before we finish up, I just wanted to reach out and say, Is there anything people could do to learn more about self management? Anything you'd recommend? Anything people could do to learn more about you and your thoughts on self management? Yeah.

So there is a growing band of people under the title reinventing work, who are starting to talk a lot more about self management. So you can find them if you Google reinvented work. But there are groups set up all over the world, and I'm part of that. My website is pthr.co.uk, and you can jump in there, get in touch with me, and I'll happily direct you to anybody who I know is doing this kind of work. So that's one way to find out there are quite a lot of resources sort of starting to grow, like there's a website for some facilitation techniques that work well in self management, called liberating structures. So that's worth looking at. The books that we mentioned, reinventing organizations, by Frederick Lalu, you have freedom Inc, by Isaac gets the corporate rebels aren't difficult to find. They talk about this stuff a lot. You could look at jostre block at beer Zorg, who's got some great stories of self management in nursing. And I think there's a growing base of literature. People like Gary Hamel write about it a lot in Harvard Business Review. So I think if you started to Google self management, you'd pick up some quite interesting threads and be able to follow it. The good news about self management is there's no one book and no one guy, because it quite literally, is your version, yeah, yeah.

Well, great. That's been super helpful and super interesting. Great. So, yeah. So just time to say thank you very much for me. Thank you great questions. I mean, you really tested me on this.

Well, you've passed with. Lying colors, and we've learned so much from you, Perry, you've made it you've taken the idea behind it and made it seem doable and real, and I guess, something for us to aspire to. Oh,

thank you very much. No, really glad for that. So thank you for the hosting, and look forward to more of your shows.

Okay, so you are back in the room with Lisa and myself. Now that was our conversation with Perry. Perry Tims all about self managed teams, and I thought that was really interesting. I thought he had some great points to say, and I think he spoke well about them. There's so much richness to the thinking that he brings to this. And I think we took some good questions at him, and he came up with some some pretty good answers. Did you have any key takeaways, Lisa, from your side?

Yeah, I think two of them. One was the idea that we need to unhook from entrenched behaviors around working in hierarchies, that there's part of it is working differently with other people, but part of it is also the sense of being a grown up and advocating for your own ideas and being able to work with other people in a way that is truly peer to peer. The P there's one little piece in there that was really interesting to me, and I would have loved to have dived in deeper, which was around the idea of compensation, and everybody basically knowing how much everyone is making. Because part of me initially thought, when Perry mentioned it, that everybody on the team would be making the same salary. But then when I thought further about different levels of expertise and where people are coming from, it would make sense that there would be different levels of compensation and how those conversations would happen. And the second thing quickly is that organizations can have hybrid so some departments can work with this model, but other ones, it might not work as effectively. Yeah,

fascinating stuff, and I think that point around the salaries is really interesting, and maybe that's something we'll explore a little bit more. And I'd love to see where some of the work that that Perry's doing goes in the coming years, as we see some of the organizations he's working with evolve, because I think that hybrid piece might might appear a little bit more often. I had a couple takeaways from that that I quite liked as well. And one of the things that struck me with this is about the fact that a lot of us is sort of evolutionary, and it's not for everybody. So I like some of his reflections around the fact that, you know, you make these changes, and people sometimes leave right, it really isn't for everyone, and that's okay. And then I guess people come in, and then that changes for dynamic again, but the will to work in just different ways there. So I kind of liked that. And I liked the focus on his carefully chosen word of humanist meaning, you know, focusing on the people, I think, more than than anything else. And I think that if you can get this right, it could be quite a human experience. So I, for one, would like to get to know some teams that are working in a self managed way, and get a bit more experience of it.

So yeah, and here the story, the lived experience of where, you know, where are the benefits? Obviously. I mean, it seems like there are quite a few of them, but, you know, in any situation that involves a bunch of people coming together. I'm sure that there are challenges to really focusing on the work and maybe not getting caught up in interpersonal dynamics, which we know is pretty much every workplace has examples of that. Yeah,

fascinating. Well, hopefully we'll get to speak to an organization one day. Okay, well, that's the end of this podcast. It was a pleasure getting to pull it together and present it to you. Hope you enjoyed it, and we will catch you in a few weeks. So it is goodbye from me and goodbye from me. Thanks for listening everyone.