Managers, Know When to Manage and When to Let Your Team Self-Organize

When it comes to organizing traffic flow, there are two different systems. One is the traditional traffic light, which tells people when to stop and go; it needs energy and electricity, and it sometimes requires a long wait at a red light, even when there’s no traffic at all.

Operating traffic lights can get complicated. Adjustments need to be made for different intersections, for traffic flowing in different directions and different times of day or even times of year. What seems like an automatic system requires constant oversight, and that’s when everything’s working just as it should—without some unforeseen event occurring, like an electricity outage.

Then there is the roundabout, a circular system with roads flowing in and out of it. Cars enter, yield to other cars, then make their exit. It’s a system that requires no energy, just some rules, and it works. It outshines the traffic-light system most where traffic is unpredictable.

This is what self-organization looks like. It’s simple and effective, and there’s a built-in shared responsibility for the outcome. In this case, everyone who drives in and out of the roundabout partly owns its success. The same self-organization techniques used in a roundabout can also work in a business. And when teams work together, people become empowered. They become owners of the result.

Many managers fall into a micromanagement trap.When work is sliced horizontally, they can’t avoid it. That’s because this way of working is designed to keep people in their assigned roles, doing only the job that they’ve been given and nothing more. What’s worse is that when there’s a work overload, these managers often add more people, which means that they have more people to oversee.

In contrast, when vertically sliced work is handed over to teams, they intuitively self-organize and make decisions on their own—like drivers going in and out of a round-about. Instead of waiting for tasks to be handed down by their superiors, they work independently or collaborate with others while keeping the end goal in mind. Vertically sliced work saves time, produces better and faster results, and shifts all of the coordination, responsibility, and ownership away from you and onto your team members.

Under the right conditions, self-organization can occur spontaneously among people who’ve never met. This is always motivating and empowering.

Focusing on the why also increases motivation. If we feel connected with what we are doing, and if it is something that we believe is helping other people, it increases our performance and productivity. If a vertically sliced team is asked to work on a morally questionable project—such as manipulating the public or creating a product that’s known to be addictive—self-organization won’t be effective. Self-organization works well when we know the why behind it and can all rally behind with a good and clear conscience.

Because the goal of a project must be authentic in order for individuals to accept it and self-organize, team members effectively filter out whatever seems disingenuous. If something smells fishy, they may refuse to take part, sabotaging the entire process. That’s why the why matters—why it’s critical to communicate your reasoning to your team if you’d like for them to self-organize. That’s also why I like relying on self-organization so much: it’s a productivity multiplier for good causes.

Unlike traditional processes where people don’t stray from their assigned roles, vertical slicing requires self-organization and collaboration across various platforms in order to be successful. Achieving one tangible result is what counts; it’s not just everyone fulfilling their work obligation. But for this to happen, the understanding of roles needs to shift.

When teams are in danger of missing a project deadline, companies often bring together all the key people in one room and ask them to work as much as needed to get the project through the door in time. I’ve heard many different names for this—“crunch time,” “code yellow,” and “war zone,” to name a few—but during this time, formal roles are meaningless. People just contribute whatever they can to succeed with the project.

If you’ve ever been in the room during crunch time, you know this is often when many of the most significant results are achieved and decisions are met. Imagine being that productive as a team without the same level of exhaustion. That’s what it feels like to work on a team that practices vertical slicing.

In other words, hiring for a team that practices vertical slicing requires a different set of expectations. A different way of working. However, you don’t need to change all the human resources processes to leverage the power of cross-functional teamwork. In most organizations, there already are lots of employees who long to have more impact.

When you begin your first vertical slicing initiatives, these people will typically volunteer. Once these initiatives show positive results, they pave the way for more people in the organization to rethink their ways of working, including processes for hiring and promoting.

Written by Anton Skornyakov.

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