Colin (00:01.312)

Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of The Growth System, the podcast that looks at B2B growth through a systems thinking lens. I'm Colin Shakespeare.

Chris (00:10.774)

I'm Chris Bayless.

Colin (00:13.012)

And today we are, I guess, stepping further into the kind of operations segment of our series about the dimensions of the growth team operating system. guess stepping a little bit further away from the kind of theory side of things and into what we actually do in practice here, because we're going to be talking about structure. Now, Chris, what do we mean by structure in this context?

Chris (00:42.018)

Well, structure, think particularly, I think it's a great question, because in a systems world, we talk about structure a lot, we talk about structure being the, you know, the sort of arbiter of systems behavior, if you like, but today, what we're really talking about is, in some ways, what we might consider to be the org chart, we're talking about people and how they are structured to get the best effect out of the growth team. So

In a future episode of that, possibly the next episode, we're to be talking about infrastructure, the stuff that kind of powers the people. But today we are really just focusing on the most important part of the organisation, which are the people that work within it. And we're going to be hopefully talking about some fairly interesting concepts in terms of how we can take a...

I guess somewhat non-traditional view of structure and teams and team formation and apply some systems thinking into that to perhaps bring forward some ideas on how you might stitch together the people in your growth team a little better.

Colin (01:44.972)

So I guess the systems thinking take on organizational structure might be somewhat different to what the audience are used to. I guess we're used to thinking about structure in terms of, as you put it, the org chart. But it's a little bit more of a deeper concept, isn't it? I guess it tends to see organizations more as a sort of...

a living organism of...

Chris (02:16.544)

of people, yeah.

Colin (02:17.132)

parts which interact with the whole, know, but yeah, I guess what I was trying to get across there is yes, the people, but also groups of people as in departments and teams. And I guess there are kind of different perspectives there. So structures, you can look at it slightly differently from each perspective.

Chris (02:33.176)

Yeah.

Absolutely. think that in many ways is really the kind of the root of the question because, you know, what are we as an organization? Well, we particularly in, you know, professional services always, but fundamentally in any organization, more or less, we are just a collection of people. You know, they, the sort of the human beings in your organization that are sort of organism revel, they're all the same, but they have different skills and they have different experiences.

And as organizations, we, you know, in some ways arbitrarily, but in, you know, another more important way in a quite considered manner.

take this collection of people, this kind of complex human system that we have, and we make sense of it by creating teams and departments and seniority levels and job titles. And then we stitch all of that together in this traditional view of the org chart, which in some ways has a sort of relationship, I guess, with systems mapping. How are all these people stuck together? How are they interconnected to use our kind of systems language? But that's not the be all and end all of the structure.

as the Orc Chart as we'll go and explore because a lot of these connections of these kind of organisms, these kind of, as you say, the sort of people in this complex, you know, adaptive human system that we've got, well, they can get stuck together in lots of different ways as we'll talk about and, you know, that's where some of the magic can happen.

Colin (04:05.548)

Yeah, I guess something that we should sort of free our mind from as we go into the episode is just thinking about structure in terms of the formal structures, as in the org chart, and sort of accept that systems thinking also looks at the informal structures and networks and ways that sort of information and sort of decision making.

flows throughout the organization as well and recognizes the reality of that, I guess.

Chris (04:41.472)

Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, if we were doing a sort of, you know, if we had our sort of systems thinking, you know, master's hat on, or maybe not undergraduate hat on, we were doing a stocks and flows diagram, or information is the stock that's flowing through the system. And structure impacts collaboration, and it impacts

kind of the way that we do goal management, it impacts ultimately how effectively we can get whatever needs to be done done. And we know that poorly conceived formal structures cause bureaucracy, they cause slow decision making, they stifle innovation, and conversely, know, structures which maybe aren't informal enough.

cause confusion, they cause duplication of effort, they cause frustration within the human beings that kind of live within that system and I have to operate within that system every day because they don't know how to get stuff done. So what I guess we're going to be hopefully aiming towards today is what's that sweet spot in the middle and what are the different ways you can approach that.

Colin (05:57.388)

Yeah, this is something that I think we necessarily are quite opinionated on. We have a particular view on structure and how to use structure for the benefit of the growth team. So it would be a little bit, I guess, slightly less theoretical than some of the episodes around orientation and things like that. fact, we should probably... Yeah, we should probably... I like the theory bits. I like the theory bits.

Chris (06:19.842)

We've said that before.

Colin (06:27.318)

But that's just me. I think what we should do is actually break the episode down somewhat to make sure that we give relatively even coverage. think we should go into exploring the big picture organizational viewpoint and the benefits of a flexible mission aligned structure to the organization as a whole. And then maybe zoom into this team perspective and have a think about how

Chris (06:38.518)

Okay.

Colin (06:56.812)

cross-functional squads form and then deliver impact. then I guess ultimately the sort of individual lens and how individual contributors can thrive and also help shape what is really a living system. It's not like, know, too often I think we think about the org chart as essentially quite deterministic and fixed. Therefore structure is deterministic and fixed.

Chris (07:20.501)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes, love that. Because I think that is such a...

easy to escape from point of view when you are a senior manager in a big organization, you've got an org chart and of course is deterministic, everybody is in the bottom of their tree, know, they are a root and branch structure, but of course, that's not how real life works, is it? You know, as individuals, we do shape our living system, you know, we do create informal teams, we do pass information through informal structures. And ultimately, the functioning of the organization

depends on the way that the individuals actually behave, not the way that we want them to behave, and that really comes back to kind of the concept of immersion behavior we talk about a lot.

Colin (08:12.02)

Yeah, okay. So let's maybe dive in to sort of the organization's perspective and sort of, I guess, should kick off by sort of looking at the organization as a purposeful system. The research, think, for this episode was particularly interesting. There's actually way more to say about structure from a systems thinking perspective. Of course, there would be than

than I guess I expected diving into this.

Chris (08:44.654)

There's so much written on this stuff. I I really like the fifth discipline, if anyone fancies in bedtime reading on this subject. It's a great book. think it's on my, certainly on my shelf behind me somewhere. Yes, right behind me. Fantastic work, great work on systems thinking, but it really digs into this.

know, particular episode's point, I guess. So that's one for further reading, I would suggest.

Colin (09:15.168)

Yeah, one of the most backbone text of the Growth System podcast, you might say.

Chris (09:24.263)

It comes up a fair bit in the notes I must say.

Colin (09:28.182)

So guess the important point since we're talking about, we're doing this series in a particular order is to sort of stress that the structures should serve the purpose, right?

Chris (09:44.94)

Yeah, that's it. That's what it's all about.

Colin (09:48.62)

at the simplest level, so structure is mission driven or purpose driven. Everyone from top to bottom sees how their roles actually contribute to their shared purpose. that obviously fosters clarity and engagement and mitigates the risk of the converse being true. Muddy waters and disengagement.

Chris (10:11.746)

Yeah, absolutely.

And it was no coincidence that the first episode of this series, that the first dimension in the operating system that we have defined is purpose. as we have said a million times before, know, business is a goal seeking systems. And when we say purpose, you know, just to reiterate, we're not talking about CSR, we're not talking about, you know, how

know, the business wants to leave a little mark on the world or whatever wonderfully, you know, important thing that it wants to do because we are not belittling purpose in that sense whatsoever. But we just must clarify that when we talk about purpose, we're talking about the mission, we're talking about goals, we're talking about ultimately, where are we trying to get to? And, you know, the

Certainly the sort of systems view, as you kind of alluded to, you really need to see organizations as purposeful systems.

I think it's a Ruslakoff phrase, isn't it? But ultimately, the point here is that the structure of the organization needs to be mission driven. So everybody in the org or the sub part of the org that we are talking about, whatever it might be, wherever we've drawn our boundary from top to bottom needs to see how their roles contribute to shared purpose.

Chris (11:40.05)

And ultimately, the more adeptly we can manage that point, the more we can ensure that everybody does understand how they contribute to purpose or the purpose, you know, the more clarity we've got, the more engagement we've got, you know, the more we kind of create an effective mental model, the more we drive those deep structuring principles that we won't talk about again, because we've talked about on another episode, or at least.

So yes, absolutely. That's really our starter for 10 is, you know, the org is a purposeful system. The structure needs to ensure that it is aligned to that purpose. So that's our kind of guiding principle. But of course, the typical sort of corporate response to that is the org chart. And org charts are really for me,

I don't know I think. What do I think about org charts? I mean, I was about to sort of say how much I don't like org charts. I mean, I think there is a there is a reality that organizations or the majority of organizations are broadly speaking hierarchical. They have teams in them, you know, and teams, whether they are formal or informal, are effective way of getting stuff done.

human beings are best when they collaborate. So putting people into sort of broad clusters where they can collaborate is of course a sensible thing to do. And if you have a very large organization, a way of mapping that out is important. So not necessarily knocking the org chart as something you don't need to do, because I think there is definitely a role for the org chart. But what the org chart doesn't do is

really emphasize the relationship between the individual contributors that appear on that org chart at any kind of meaningful purpose driven level. know, any org chart you see will have someone's name and someone's job title. And if they've used a snazzy bit of org chart software, it might be integrated with Active Directory and telling you how to get hold of some batch, but it's not actually going to tell you what they do.

Colin (13:54.652)

get hold of them a couple of years ago before their number changed and no one updated workday or whatever.

Chris (13:56.942)

Yeah, before they move desks. Yeah, exactly that. But it's not going to tell you what their role is. It's not going to tell you what their responsibilities are. It's not going to tell you what outcomes they own. It's not going to tell you who else they collaborate with to get those outcomes over the line in different teams. It's all it's really going to tell you is who they report to. And that obviously is an issue.

because the concept of what I would turn the accountability chart, but ultimately an expanded view of the Ork chart, an expanded role of the Ork chart perhaps, has for me, absolutely fundamental level, at a fundamental level, a sort of diagnostic purpose. Because as soon as you go through this, and I'm speaking about this with

a great deal of passion because we're actually going through a couple of sort of, know, great system design kind of onboardings at the moment. And I just recently this week just seen again and again how powerful this exercise is because just writing down on a piece of paper, you know, virtual or otherwise, whoever in the organization is what they're accountable for, what they're measured on, you know, what their actual

purpose of their role is, so what they're supposed to achieve with it and what they can make, for instance, decisions about. That's one I really like putting on the sort of accountability chart. What have they got authority to decide on? And in isolation, that's a fairly laborious exercise, particularly in a large organization. But then you see it, you see it all together. You see it in one place and on one page. And even if you just zoom right into a small team.

you suddenly see what's not on there.

Colin (15:51.596)

Yeah, that's good to see. There's also what's not there.

Chris (15:55.47)

Exactly. And that's the really interesting bit when we start taking a kind of systems based view of structure is documentation, you know, the as is view. And actually for, you know, people that I don't, I'm sure we've talked about this on an episode before, but very broadly speaking, our process is as is map of the system, understand what the issues list is, opportunity impact assessment to be architecture, go build it.

nutshell, a very, very condensed nutshell. you know, when you do that, as is mapping, when you put the accountability chart together in that way, I can pretty much guarantee it's not a view that anyone's seen before in the organization. And it does not take, you know, a consultancy company like us to come in and say, well, you know, look at look at the gap there. People see it straight away. but no one owns this really important metric or

everyone's being measured on something over here, but it doesn't align to the purpose that we've got over there. No one has the authority to make decisions about anything. So that's probably slowing stuff down, isn't it? It's obvious. I'd love to say that our view on this is somehow kind of magical and sort of non-understandable by anyone that doesn't have a serious sort of systems credential. It's just obvious stuff. Stick on a piece of paper, you're gonna see it.

And that kind of view of the world, that alternative view of the Org Chart is, you know, take one thing away from this episode, go do that. Do it in a spreadsheet. know, message us afterwards in, or, you know, put a comment and we can actually send you a nice Miro chart with a nice plugin where you can click a button and it gives you a template and lets you do all of that and creates a nice hierarchical chart. It's a great thing to do. So yes, that's me.

evangelizing about the accountability chart and how that can be pretty transformational while still maintaining an orchestra.

Colin (17:57.918)

One thing I would add to what you've said about the accountability chart is if you have ever, as I have while working with yourself, Chris, found yourself on an accountability chart for the first time, it's actually quite an empowering experience. you can hit the nail on the head, they were sort of, not just who's accountable for what, but who is empowered to make decisions about what.

Chris (18:09.422)

Thank

Colin (18:25.004)

you see yourself there on the accountability chart, no longer, it doesn't say I report to Chris, I do report to Chris by the way folks, it says Colin you need to make decisions about this and in fact you own this and are accountable for this. therefore not only to give one an imperative to get things done but it genuinely is actually empowering.

Chris (18:51.31)

we should do an episode at some point about accountability generally. About like, know, racy and all of those kind of, you know, charts which people love to do. You know, I think that could be quite interesting, I think, in terms of how accountability drives action, or indeed inaction. So stepping back from the org chart view,

focusing in on purpose and aligning purpose through the mechanism of the accountability chart. When we're in that sort of, how are we gonna start shaping the org? That's a great way to do it. But even that to some degree doesn't really get you into the sort of informal structure, I guess, of the organization. And...

That's a really, really interesting thing. And unfortunately, not one that I have an off the 12th mirror chart to fix. you know, perhaps let's talk about that kind of relationship between formal and informal structure, because even the exercise I've just described is still a form of formal structure. is, you who's in what team, what are they accountable for? is collaborative, but it is fundamentally somewhat deterministic still, as you say.

informal networks, relationships, trust, personal allegiances, there's a lot of heavy lifting that happens there in terms of how structure aligns to purpose and those kind of informal networks within the org are something that

can work against you, or they can work for you if you recognize them and appreciate them for what they are. something that I'm a big advocate for is using those informal networks as a mechanism for bridging silos, particularly in larger organizations. In an organization the size of us, it doesn't.

Chris (21:06.082)

that's not a thing. Informal networks are still a thing, but they're not a mechanism for really doing anything other than building relationships. But in large organizations, listening to the quiet signals, having that understanding of where the sort of invisible wiring is running and...

leveraging that in a way by kind of forming task forces, you know, building that sort of cross functional teaming mission based teams. Yeah, that can be a really good way to get stuff done.

by adding some sort of formal structure to that sort of invisible wiring that kind of already exists. And you see this particularly in growth teams, I think, because you tend to have this sort of personal level relationship between sellers and marketers that transcends the formal relationship. And I think that in organizations that have, that are misaligned, in our humble opinion, that

haven't gone down the route of shared goal setting, that haven't really become a growth team with a single line of report and leadership that don't kind of, you know, ideate solutions together, they just talk about what they're both doing once a week. You know, these back channel routes can be really, really powerful in starting to kind of drive network effect. And it's something that, you know,

it's to be aware of, think. And, you know, being able to build informal task forces and kind of mission-based themes, which I guess we'll talk about as we go on, is a great way to start formalizing some of those relationships that already exist.

Colin (22:59.818)

So is it fair to say that we see part of the role of leadership of the growth team is finding that balance, that fulcrum between standardization and autonomy, like with too much top down, sort of control and rigidity stifles creativity and can create sort of rigid but also brittle structures, but too much freedom obviously creates sort of chaos, brand inconsistency, you name it.

So it's kind of about managing that tension and maybe sort of setting overarching policies and making sure people are moving towards the common goals. Obviously we'll get back onto another episode probably into sort of goal conflicts and things like that again. But I guess if those structures, I guess these are also structures that are in place that then perhaps that allows us the leeway to maybe let local teams adapt.

how they do things and I guess leaders need to keep adjusting that balance. It's not set and forget as we also did an episode about.

Chris (24:05.87)

Yeah, I think that the point you're making there is a really interesting one. You you've got to kind of manage that tension, but it fundamentally matters really deep level what your starting point is. Because if you have already created, you know, an integrated team, a well aligned team,

you have a starting place where you have that shared view of goals, that shared view of purpose, that shared view of accountability, then actually,

you can rely a reasonable amount on self-organization because you have those guardrails in that come from a kind of goals and purpose view and accountability view of the world. we've talked a few times about kind of mental models and kind of deep structuring principles. The more deep structure you have in there and the more that is orientated towards the direction that you want to go, the more freedom you can allow the team to have. And that is a virtuous circle because

our ability to react, our ability to be agile, our ability to kind of be nimble and, you know, respond to opportunities. You know, that often is the is the difference between success and failure in fast moving markets. But if you haven't sort of crossed the chasm into an area where you have, you know, let's broadly call it an aligned team, then you need more structure.

because you need to have, you need to devolve the governance up the organization to the point where it does actually intersect normally in a person that's too busy to actually manage the intersection, but that's kind of a big thing you're fixing it. you know, this is something we talk about a lot is devolving responsibility for alignment upwards. And actually, probably what we don't talk about is that sometimes if you haven't changed the structure or for you,

Colin (25:53.548)

You

Chris (26:08.438)

you do actually need to do that. That serves a purpose because if you have a heavily siloed organization, then how are you going to make a nimble response to or someone to make a nimble response to something and then you're not the downstream or upstream team person, whatever it might be, it's not going to be prepared for that. It's not potentially going to be something they're going to have time to do. It's going to fall down. So you need to sort of manage that kind of...

central control mechanism based on the reality and the team that you have. And I guess in a nutshell, that's why we're talking about structure, because you need to have the structure right to enable you to do the things that allow you to move faster. That is sort of structure and emergent behavior in action, I guess.

Colin (26:57.241)

You mentioned a few things there that I think might help us segue onto this team perspective.

Essentially, I guess growth challenges really will fit neatly into one particular department's skill set. So you're going to need marketing and product and data and customer success folks, sort of collaborating seamlessly and operating in rigid, well-structured, everyone does what it says on the org chart, if it says anything other than who you report to. That structure can impede that.

cross-functional collaboration. And so I guess the structure that we would kind of recommend, depending on the circumstances obviously, but typically would sort of be able to enable cross-functional squads or teams to come together and bring sort of diverse viewpoints and expertise together and actually reduce friction and maybe solve problems faster and better.

Chris (28:01.782)

Yeah, I think that cross functional tubing is something that gets talked about quite a lot. And it is a

powerful tool when it exists in the right structure, kind of what we were talking about a second ago, I guess that was your, I guess that's the segue, right? It's that if you have a well aligned set of teams, we have well understood purpose, then mission based teams or cross functional teams, call them what you will, can be super effective.

Colin (28:39.66)

prefer mission based teams to cross functional actually.

Chris (28:43.054)

I like mission-based teams, yeah, because it implies the goal, right? It implies the mission. And, you know, if they've got a specific purpose, you know, whether that is like a product launch or a, you know, particularly large campaign or a...

I don't know, response to some kind of market condition, then they can be super powerful because you get all the right people around the table. But the mistake that people make in my experience in kind of creating mission based teams is that they, well, two things is that they don't create the right governance in that mission based team, i.e.

they create a talking shop, they don't actually give anybody the power to make decisions about anything. So that kind of devolved authority is really, key. And

I think when you're doing something really important, you need to also have that ability to move fast. I think that decision-making capability is really critical there and it's often missed. So I think that's at a governance network. I think the other thing that's really often missed in this, and we've talked about this in strategy formation, and it's kind of a version of the same thing, is that...

people don't get released from the other stuff they're supposed to be doing. So, you know, mission-based teams have a habit of going very slow and having big long gaps between meetings because you've got, you know, X number of really busy people that already had a full day, that are now responsible for doing a new thing, like launching a new product, and they haven't been released from any of the other stuff. So that is something that...

Chris (30:37.55)

has a particular relationship, I think, as well with measurement and personal individual contributor measurement. People do what they're measured on, as we always say. If you haven't changed the framework of measurement so they're measured on the success of what they're doing within the mission-based team, or you've done that but it's only additive, so they still got to achieve everything else they were struggling to achieve, you're going to have failure within that. So I think it's coming back as we always do to that system view. You can't just say, oh great, mission-based teams, that's lovely. We're going to smash these people together.

and they're going to crack on and deliver something great. Well, they're probably not. If you haven't given the ability to make decisions, you haven't released them from the work and you haven't changed the framework of measurement on how you kind of relate their personal success to whatever's supposed to come out of that. it's, you know, sometimes they're a bit of a pipe dream in terms of what they can actually achieve, but of course done right, then there is a whole bunch of great stuff that can come out of that.

And really, think it comes down to whether you create a mission based team or whether actually you're just doing a restructure. When you're forming a team, it really does start with that alignment to purpose. So if you've got a crystal clear mission, then

you've got a kind of a North Star. This is a particular view I like in terms of shared decision sort of shared goal setting. But if you've all got a North Star to aim for and you can collaborate on the levers that are going to help you get there and you're to build a framework of measurement underneath that, then you can really, effectively align purpose within that team. And of course, coming back to the thoughts that I shared earlier on the accountability chart.

You can better align roles and responsibilities and therefore accountability. You can take whatever you took from a metrics view or a goals view from the alignment of purpose and you can align that to individuals. And then you're on to a great start. I think that there's also this kind of, we get into a team governance and collaboration piece and I'm sort of.

Chris (32:43.33)

Hesitating to get into that because we're going to talk about that on another episode in more detail. certainly the sort of nod to that I would give is that if you're building a mission based team or any team, thinking about the feedback loops is really critical. So what the sort of op rhythm we have within that team is pretty key. Are we doing?

Agile, are we kind of doing operational retros? Are we doing project based retrospectives? Are we, you know, regularly kind of try and understand where friction is coming from and, you know, starting to adapt our behavior and our composition based on actively listening to those kinds of feedback loops by putting them in place. I think there's also maybe just a point about size as well of team and sort of composition.

You need the right people around the table, but nothing ever good came of having too many people around the table talking about something. I used to work with a guy called Tristan who set up a consultancy called Room 44. And that just really came from a thought. I'm not sure where the thought comes from. I must look it up. Great guy, really interesting business.

But that was from when you're making a sort of mission-based team, or you're doing a sort of design thinking type exercise, Room 44 is Room 44. Four is the optimum number to have in a team if you want to really move fast and bring great ideas forward and explore them at speed.

Colin (34:24.32)

I'm sure I saw something in the... about how sort of military teams and squads are structured. It's quite deliberately kind of based around a similar concept where you can... the average person will have this sort of... or even the average soldier will have the capability to think about someone they report to and...

three people adjacent to them. So in other words, sort of teams of four seeming quite, and one direct line of reporting sort of thing, even in a sort of combined arms or cross-functional team, if you like. So it seems to chime with a psychological research on this. So I think four is a kind of magic number on that one. I wouldn't do my thing and I'll pull back from talking about that one. But actually this episode got me really thinking about that. Cause of course that's one area where

Chris (35:09.998)

Interesting. Yeah. Yes.

Colin (35:23.02)

structure is extremely important and emphasisable.

Chris (35:27.086)

Absolutely. Yeah, interesting. So where do we go next?

Colin (35:37.558)

Well, we've looked a little bit into the team perspective. I think that there are probably other things that we could say about structure from the team perspective. We haven't really gone into, I guess, we can structure the organization, structure teams with, I guess, the right

combination to create a group that becomes smarter than the sum of its parts, if you like, the sort of team learning angle.

Chris (36:15.79)

So we're kind of getting to that fifth discipline, you know, learning, organizing.

Colin (36:15.882)

which, yeah, yeah, going back to the sort of the sort of Bible that is the fifth discipline sort of thing. And I guess thinking about how it works in practice as well, have sort of in these, when you first form a cross-functional team, as you see, it kind of sounds great, let's form this cross-functional team, but people come in with their own departmental biases and

I think you need to surface the assumptions early. Like I've actually worked in the of cross disciplinary research teams in academia where we had people from people who were interested in comparative folklore. I won't even explain what that is. Archaeologists who by the way don't get on with historians and classicists and all these people kind of. And what it is is you're studying things that have got very limited evidence and you have to bring in.

linguists, archaeologists, historians, comparative folklorists, art historians, and all these disciplines which are in practice very different, attract very different people who think about things in very different ways and come with their own set of assumptions and biases that maybe the other people from the other functions or disciplines in the case of academia just don't really know about. They just don't really know about that. So think it's important to sort of surface

those assumptions early is something, you know, it's maybe a little bit of a side point, but I think it's something that's worth pointing out.

Chris (37:42.37)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (37:49.27)

Yeah, absolutely. think that that kind of, I don't know why you call it like cross-functional pairing of those kind of like multi, sort of multi-perspectivity, I guess, within teams, you know, that's the power of kind of cross-functional teams is that you have lots of perspectives that kind of get brought to the party of solving the problem. And I think this is

we kind of realm it, sort of delve into the realms here of perhaps, you know, a bit more psychology than I am any, you know, any authority to talk about.

Colin (38:29.228)

Yeah, just a disclaimer here that neither Chris or I are qualified psychologists just so that in case anyone thought we were, which I'm pretty sure they probably didn't, but just to be sure.

Chris (38:34.336)

Certainly not. I might be in requirement of one, but yeah, certainly I'm not.

But I think you get into a really interesting area when you kind get into this area of kind of like fostering mutual understanding and how you kind of bring and manage, you know, ego and how you manage the sort of

the sort of the land grab, the intellectual kind of conceit that comes from, you know, poorly formed hierarchical organizations. I'm more important, I'm more senior than you, therefore my opinion is more important.

I'm the senior director and therefore everyone must listen to me or I'm supposed to perform for the group and they're all going to bow down to my importance and greater perspective and experience. I think that that really comes back to something that we talk about a reasonable amount within our organization, which is kind psychological safety, is that you're actually building an environment where that kind of cross-functional learning, that kind of multi-perspectivity can actually get onto the table.

in a way that is kind of comfortable for everyone, that's kind of candid, that there is nothing kind of really held back because there isn't a fear that if it, you that there are no bad ideas kind of a point as we kind of get into sort of how we get that intelligence from the wider team into the conversation. And I think really that comes from

Chris (40:11.854)

creating a sort of team culture where you, or indeed a company culture, where you sort of embrace dialogue and reflection and collective problem solving. And I think that's something that is quite hard to do, but is really vital if you're going to kind of drive effective structures and kind of challenge those sort of, I guess, norms about how teams should be stuck together.

And I think that's actually, again, coming back to my sort of, you know, hobby horse of the accountability chart. Accountability charts often are hierarchical in nature, but they don't have to be. You you could stick everyone in a blender of accountability, because if you've done it right, know, everyone's responsible for a thing. That's their thing. You know, and then we can work together on it. We can kind of build that sort of mutual understanding of success. So

That sort of team learning idea, I think really comes from creating like the environment for team learning and kind of having that core idea, that sort of unifying principle, I guess, that it's core that if you're going to create a learning organization, you've got to create the conditions for life, you've got to create the conditions for learning in the first place to enable you to do that. And I think that that is something that is a value.

It's a kind of core principle, I guess, that should form part of the mental model of your entire organization. That we are in a safe space, we value everyone's opinion, we have psychological safety, that we're in this together and that everybody has got a part to play in solving the problem, whatever that problem is.

Colin (41:59.914)

Yeah, I like that take on it. guess we should in the interest of this, probably quite a lot we could see around sort of cross-functional teams and particularly about the kind of creating a learning organization. Maybe again, we have come up with a potential future episode just through that discussion as we so often do. In the interest of time, I think it would be remiss of us to not leave enough time to move on to the sort of the perspective of the individual.

Chris (42:15.863)

Thank

Colin (42:30.056)

individual contributor really.

Chris (42:33.324)

Yes, absolutely. So I don't know where to get into this one. I guess just starting with our own experience here, and I just talking about values, I guess, kind of made the connection in my head, which is as an organization, one of our values, a value that we're really, really passionate about is mastery.

it's something that comes up a fair bit. It is actually a dimension within the Grays Team operating system. You know, in the fifth discipline, I think they talk about personal mastery off the top of my head. And ultimately, what we're talking about there is crafting a journey for every individual.

that not just improves their business skills, but also expands their kind of perspective that refines their mental model, I guess. And something that I don't think gets talked about nearly enough is the sort of concept of the whole self and...

This could be a whole episode and it wouldn't be an episode I'd be very good at talking about, but I know some people that certainly would that we could get on as a guest. But I am really bought in massively to the idea of mastery being more than just about education, about learning work stuff if we want to be reductive. I think that how we understand things like sleep and health and

diet and exercise, nutrition, whatever it might be. All of this contributes massively to personal effectiveness. And if we're talking about the individual contributor, when we talk about individual contributors, I think that almost becomes diminutive in its description. It's become a byword for the little guy in the org that doesn't, you know, that's not that important. We're all individuals.

Colin (44:30.794)

not accountable as much, know, he has less accountability, so I think this is an individual contributor.

Chris (44:34.69)

Yeah. But we're all individual contributors, right? We're all our own person. We're all an individual in the organization and we're all contributing. you know, whether you're the CEO or whether you're the, you know, the running the photocopier, if anyone does that anymore, you know, you're

you're bringing yourself to work, you're kind of using some of your personal agency and kind of, I don't know, you're giving a part of yourself to the business. And I think that there is a role for the business actually, and thinking about the whole self in terms of how we grow our people to be effective, but also to be effective as human beings and as you know, within their personal lives, because funny enough, it's a system, it's all interconnected. So that's a little again, another little hobby horse for me in this episode has been quite a hobby.

horsey kind of an episode. But I think that sort of continuous growth journey, however you want to define that, is something that needs to be codified into the way that you actually build your team structure. And sorry, go on, I've been rambling.

Colin (45:38.826)

No, no, was going to, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your flow, but you could probably hear the cogs turning in my mind and thinking that this mindset essentially is essential if you want to be able to do the kind of things we've just been talking about, fluid team structures and cross-functional teams and mission-based squads, whatever you want to call it. People need to be sort of living that value of mastery and kind of continuous.

Chris (45:42.126)

.

Colin (46:07.062)

personal development in order to just make that possible, right? And I guess where you probably saw that I was like, you know, being that kid in the class with their hand up, sorry, can I say something? Yeah, it really matters to structure and it's easy to see. think we can seeing it as a value is really easy. But I wondered if maybe, and I don't think we'll talk about this today, but I wonder if maybe there are ways that

this can be worked into the incentive structure. And when we get onto incentives, I hope that we will find some space to talk about it there, which is perhaps an angle that people don't think about in terms of incentives, although it's one of those things that makes sense when you think about it.

Chris (46:54.902)

Yeah absolutely, you know I think that well let me just say one thing to it just in perhaps in a I don't know sort of tooting our own horn here but actually I think there is a big relationship between mastery incentives and kind of viewing individuals as more than just a sort of vassal for doing work. That for me

is just we have a shorter than average, not wildly shorter than average working week, but you we have a 35 hour working week, which is our sort of full time contractual amount. And one of our other values is around flexibility. And we really encourage people to, yes, put clients first, yes, to make sure you've done everything, but we have great people and they typically are on top of stuff and

I want you to go for a walk in the middle of day if that helps you think I want you to go to the gym. I want you to be able to duck out and pick your kids up. I want you to be able to do whatever you need to do to kind of create a complete life where the business is supporting you and kind of creating that and in return getting giving some of that flexibility back. And I think that's sort of two way traffic.

also drives this kind of development of self but also leaves space for things like personal mastery and being able to kind of invest in the individual and have time that's kind of programmed in to be able to to develop as a person. So I think that's something that there is a relationship there between incentive values and kind of structure if you like.

Colin (48:36.486)

Yeah, just thinking as well about sort of values there that is really important for us as we'll come as no surprise to the audience that essentially thinking in systems is an important part of working at RevSpace. It's a value essentially, but I guess it's worth thinking in other organizations about, even just as an individual about how you can sort of contribute to being part of a sort of systems

orientated culture, essentially how do you encourage employees to look beyond their immediate tasks when they're down in the weeds and have deadlines and all the stresses that we all have and actually think about the whole system and how what they're doing, not just what they're doing in the moment, but how this bigger picture affects the whole system, which is, you know, that's

that's quite a difficult and complex thing to do and maybe not something that we can simply do through incentive structures or something like that.

Chris (49:40.874)

expect. No, absolutely. it's, yeah, it's something that comes from building a culture, I guess, that is systems orientated, know, where you kind of prioritize seeing the whole seeing the big picture, you know, kind of emphasizing the whole system, if you like.

Colin (50:04.94)

Yeah, it could almost take it for granted rev space because it's kind of what we do. But I guess even from just personal experience, can have been in the position where I guess my motivation is affected by not really seeing the why in a kind of holistic way and maybe being sort of.

cut off from really understanding the whole system. And that's been the case in sort of medium sized organizations, but especially when you've been in a more corporate role, I think, as well.

Chris (50:44.396)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. We are, as always, running out of time, so should we start?

Colin (50:50.069)

Yeah, I know there's so many things I think we want to talk about here, but I guess it's a good time to kind of pull it all together and wrap it up.

Chris (50:58.776)

Sounds good to me. So are we doing some outtakes?

Colin (51:03.082)

Yeah, yeah, think for me...

I, what was really interesting in the research for this was really getting into some of the, you know, I the theory side, thinking about structure as dynamic as a sort of evolving ecosystem. It's not an org chart. It's not a one-time blueprint. Yeah. And I think, you know, some of the stuff you've been talking about, about mission-based squads and accountability and things like that really kind of bring that to life. I thought that was a particular.

of particular interest to me certainly as we went through the the episode.

Chris (51:43.038)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that that's such a key thing, building a kind of adaptable organization. Oh, we didn't talk about like anti fragility, we should do a whole other episode on that. think that's a really interesting kind of

Colin (51:54.54)

Yes, indeed. This is why I'm saying there's so much that I guess I hadn't even really been thinking in terms of anti-fragility. Now everyone's going to be Google. Hopefully we'll be Googling anti-fragility. But there are so many things from a systems thinking perspective that I think have come up while thinking about structure that we essentially probably do have to do an episode on that, which is essentially

Chris (52:05.326)

Thank

Colin (52:22.941)

Is it too reductive to say it's about gaining strength from volatility?

Chris (52:29.014)

I think that's a smarter way of putting it than I would have said.

Colin (52:33.836)

So I guess typically conventional org design would be about seeking robustness and resistance to disruption, but a more sophisticated, truly anti-fragile organization would actually strengthen when exposed to volatility.

Chris (52:51.758)

Yeah, absolutely. it's the interconnections are a bit bendy. I think that's that's the sort of, know, 20 to six. Yeah.

Colin (52:53.462)

And that's why we need a whole episode about it, folks.

Colin (53:01.098)

Is that what you were actually going to say instead of my piece?

Chris (53:07.374)

But yes, on that after that great trail probably in the next season.

Colin (53:17.33)

Yeah, indeed, that's definitely an area that we sort of should be looking into.

Chris (53:26.638)

And I tell you, this is not really an out, this is not really a sort of like pulling it all together, but maybe just a parting idea. There's perhaps a smaller one than talking about anti-fragility is like watching out. I think maybe this is a good parting thought from my perspective is keeping an eye on cultural health as a feedback loop.

within the organization. really like the idea of kind of like, we've talked about everything being perfect and like how we build stuff up. But actually, in real life, there is conflict, there is tension, you know, there is burnout, there is confusion that our power struggles. And this, these are things that obviously, if you have a lot of them, well, that's a massive feedback loop that you've got structural problems, so you've got cultural problems. So that's a fairly obvious view.

But again, coming back to a point we made lots of times before, if you've got big loud signals of those things, you've got big problems that need big solutions. But watch for the quiet signals. Watch for the little power struggles. Watch for the individual contributor that's clearly, you know, that is burning out because either there's a system effect thing going on there. They've got other stuff happening in their life which needs to be, you know, they need to be supported and nurtured through.

or you've actually got a structural issue, you know, too much of the sort of flow.

is going into one part of the system and there may just be one or two individuals in that little, you know, sub team or whatever that's having to bear the brunt of that. So, you know, looking at those kind of like health warnings as feedback on the efficacy of your structure and using that as a mechanism for that sort of dynamic reevaluation refinement that you mentioned is perhaps my sort of parting thought.

Colin (55:22.956)

It's a good one. You pulled it back from whatever it was you were going to say about anti-fragility. I'm going to call it a day before before you come up with another one. And also because we, as you said, we are sort of rapidly approaching kind of dinner time on a Wednesday evening. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember.

Chris (55:26.281)

You

Chris (55:37.078)

you

Colin (55:51.66)

to follow and rate the podcast. It's really helpful to bring the content to a wider audience, which is, I mean, at the moment, Chris, our audience is fairly wide, would say, fairly worldwide or certainly a little bit somewhat biased.

Chris (56:07.192)

Who would have thought that many people would want to listen to us this many times? But yeah, thank you so much.

Colin (56:10.252)

Somewhat dispersed across the Northern Hemisphere, have to say. We need more of Australia, New Zealand in there, but certainly in the North of the world, the audience is very widely spread. And we would like that to be even wider. And of course, as always, we'd really appreciate a moment of your time to tell us what you think. does actually have an impact on how we put these episodes together and what we talk about.

All this life to see is the growth system. That's this podcast is brought to you by us. We rev space a growth systems consultancy. We connect B2B organizations with the future of growth. We consultancy education and even apply delivery services. But as I say, that's all we've got time for this. I'm going to say sunny Wednesday evening. Thanks very much. We'll see you next week.

Chris (57:06.478)

See you next week, thanks for listening.