How can you scale without authority?

A few weeks ago I was at the Royal Albert Hall for one of the BBC proms concerts. I’m there to listen to an orchestra perform a concert but what always amazes me is how the players work together. How do they do that? How do they all know exactly, to the split second, to push their bows up? And exactly when to pull them down?

Sure there is a score, and a conductor giving them clues but there is more to it than that. How can they all play the same tune at exactly the same time? Soloist I understand, easy, one person, but in an orchestra? Synchronised every second? Now that is what I call a scaling problem.

Do you scale?

Let me ask: Do you scale? and how do you do it?

Do you lie awake at night trying to work out how your team can work together with three other teams all building parts of one solution? – like the violins working with the wind section, and occasionally a big drum coming in.

Scaling seems to be a perennial conversation, and inevitably it actually means scaling up: how should we scale our company? how should we scale our team? should we use SAFe? or LeSS or some other scaling framework?

Organising in the large frequently boils down to giving some people authority to tell others what to do. Sometimes that is by issuing direct instructions today “Today you do this, you do the other and you do that thing.”

Less often it is by setting rules, rules are standing orders: “all expenses must be approves by a senior member of staff”. And sometimes by mandating what is to be the output “Don’t stop until all products are 10cm in length and weigh 100g.”

In the modern work environment where individuals and teams expect autonomy – perhaps they are Gen-Z or perhaps because they take an agile approach – this creates a lot of tension. While a framework might reconcile some tensions it still boils down to giving someone authority at some time. It becomes an exercise in passing the authority baton: the Product Owner mandates what is to be done and passes the baton to the Scrum Master. When the work is done the baton is passed to the Release Engine, next is the Business Owner who decides success or failure.

Leadership doesn’t so much emerge as gets programmed. There are fewer opportunities for shared leadership and what there is happens as a time share. Many teams are still following somebody elses plan rather than co-creating.

Less common scaling methods

Yet there are other co-ordination mechanisms out there which are all too frequently overlooked. In fact, in his latest book my favourite management thinker Henry Mintzberg sets out six:

1. Mutual Adjustment: Communicating directly

2. Direct Supervision: Issuing Instructions

3. Standardizing the work: Establishing rules

4. Standardizing the outputs: Controlling performance

5. Standardizing the Skills and Knowledge: Prior Training

6. Standardizing the Norms: Sharing Beliefs

Numbers 2, 3 and 4 utilise authority, someone issues the instructions, someone sets the rules and someone controls performance. These are the ones which formal scaling approaches rely on. The brand name frameworks say little about 1, 5 and 6 – missed opportunities.

Number 1 and 6 tend to be what happens informally in small companies and families. Those scaling teams and projects may treat them with suspicion.

Number 5 is key to orchestras, other arts and the military. Actors and musicians often spend more time rehearsing than performing. Armies will train soldiers again and again. Military training is expensive too: they will be sent to foreign climes for exercises and train with allied nations to make sure their troops can work together. (Such exercises can also send a message to potential opponents too.)

How does the BBC orchestra do it? Don’t ask me! I see the conductor doing 2, the music score controls the output 4, and I know they have trained as individuals for years then rehearsed together, 5. I’d hazard a guess that 1, 3 and 6 also play a part.

Technology companies try to recruit skilled “plug compatible” staff. New employees arrive ready trained and are expected to substitute for one another. One Java programmer leaves so they hire a ready trained one to replace them. They might get a half-day induction but they then they are thrown into the team without any training.

The emphasis on existing skills almost precludes shared training or finding common beliefs. Companies rely on #2, #3 and #4 to instruct them what to do. Some companies embrace #1 while other insist on several thousand kilometres separation. (In the online world casual, ad hoc, conversations are rare, you need to schedule video calls 2 weeks in advance.)

A better way to scale

So, instead of scaling with authority – instructions, rules and controls – what if scaling was done through training and rehearsal? Instead of standardising by mandate what if scaling was done through collaboration and exploration? And what if shared leadership was acknowledges and embraced?

Instead of scaling with the written word, what if people are brought together to find common beliefs, common values and to create a shared understanding of what work goals were? And then practice working together?

I think this is one of the challenges for the next decade. Most of our companies, their structure, organization and management thinking is predicated on the assumption of authority and that people can be told what to do. It is an assumption which increasingly doesn’t hold and even if it does there are commercial, competitive, advantages, for those who can find different, superior, ways of working. That is the new challenge.

Like to conitinue the conversation? DM me and we'll arrange a chat.

Opening image of a proms concert from courtest EddieColdrick CCL licesne via Wikicommons