Decision Making

This feature only applies to episodes with transcripts, which is a small number at this time.

Alanna Irving on leadership, decisions and money in bossless organisations

...it up, making it visible and talking about it. So that it's explicit. And I guess connected too, because I know you've also written a lot a lot about decision-making. And that comes up a lot in self-organising or self managing teams and organisations. Where are you currently in your thinking around decision-making...more
...decision-making. And that comes up a lot in self-organising or self managing teams and organisations. Where are you currently in your thinking around decision-making? Have you come across or developed any models for that which you think are useful? Alanna Irving: Decision-making is another one of those things that...more
...u currently in your thinking around decision-making? Have you come across or developed any models for that which you think are useful? Alanna Irving: Decision-making is another one of those things that you never fully figure out. It's a constant ongoing learning journey. I think one thing I've realised more and mo...more
...p of people that you're working with. For example when I was working with a Lumio team for about five years, it was a fantastic team. And Lumio is a decision-making tool, obviously. So it was a bunch of decision-making nerds being in a company together. And we were all facilitators, activists and technologists wh...more
...n I was working with a Lumio team for about five years, it was a fantastic team. And Lumio is a decision-making tool, obviously. So it was a bunch of decision-making nerds being in a company together. And we were all facilitators, activists and technologists who were very interested in these same questions. So, of...more
...ther. And we were all facilitators, activists and technologists who were very interested in these same questions. So, of course we talked a lot about decision-making and it was a big focus for us. We had a lot of very sophisticated decision-making protocols and group practices that we would undergo to get us to a ...more
...rested in these same questions. So, of course we talked a lot about decision-making and it was a big focus for us. We had a lot of very sophisticated decision-making protocols and group practices that we would undergo to get us to a good place and strategy day facilitation run sheets and all this kind of stuff - a...more
...re emergent and less explicit on how decisions are made. But it works. And it's great learning for me to be much more comfortable with very emergent decision-making or less explicit processes. And just trust it. It's more the approach of 'ok, hire people that have good skills and are good communicators, and then ...more
...h other and figure stuff out'. I think there may be times in the future for Open Collective where we do want to roll out some of those more explicit decision-making protocols. And I'm really glad I have those in my toolbox. Because when the day comes, I know that I can pull them out and say 'why don't we try this...more
...te team to really converge on. Especially when communication is disjointed and we're in so many different time zones. Anyway, I think the point with decision making is that there is no one answer. There's only a tool belt that you can develop. It's really useful to know the names of many different decision-making...more
...decision making is that there is no one answer. There's only a tool belt that you can develop. It's really useful to know the names of many different decision-making protocols and to know that there are decision-making protocols. And probably you're using certain ones. Whether you intended to use a protocol or no...more
...'s only a tool belt that you can develop. It's really useful to know the names of many different decision-making protocols and to know that there are decision-making protocols. And probably you're using certain ones. Whether you intended to use a protocol or not, you'll find that if you don't make a different cho...more
...ou're using certain ones. Whether you intended to use a protocol or not, you'll find that if you don't make a different choice you'll default to this decision-making protocol. And I just think it is really useful to have a bit of a vocabulary and a toolbox around that so that you can step back and go, 'oh, is this...more
...ocol. And I just think it is really useful to have a bit of a vocabulary and a toolbox around that so that you can step back and go, 'oh, is this the decision-making protocol that is most suited to what we want to do here?' Are we defaulting to listening to the most charismatic communicator every time who makes th...more

Peter Koenig on source, money and consciousness

...s trying to be more equal, unconsciously, or unconscious processes, but doesn't like somebody else being in control of something else and it's making decision-making very long and costly, energetically as well as with money and everything else, time. And bumping up against that limitation all the time, until someb...more
...Lisa Gill: What would your advice be, or what would you share with listeners in terms of how the how the source work relates to decision making? Because I think there's a misconception sometimes that "Oh, right, okay. So if we acknowledge the source, then they need to be involved in every sin...more
...eresting to me to hear that you spent some time with some folks in the sociocracy world, and you applied the source work to the lens of consent-based decision making. So what would you say about decision making and how source work relates to that? Peter Koenig: Right. So if you understand that you've got a field w...more
...me with some folks in the sociocracy world, and you applied the source work to the lens of consent-based decision making. So what would you say about decision making and how source work relates to that? Peter Koenig: Right. So if you understand that you've got a field with the founder as the source of the whole fi...more
...e delegation), the intervention in the sub source's field will demotivate the source and the person would want to go off and create elsewhere. So the decision making; you're 100% responsible for what you have sourced so on the other side, you have this 100% decision making power. It's the other side of the same co...more
...nt to go off and create elsewhere. So the decision making; you're 100% responsible for what you have sourced so on the other side, you have this 100% decision making power. It's the other side of the same coin. Now, coming to sociocracy and so-called 'joint decision making', I have a different context of what's h...more
...so on the other side, you have this 100% decision making power. It's the other side of the same coin. Now, coming to sociocracy and so-called 'joint decision making', I have a different context of what's happening there and I have worked with people in sociocracy so I do know a little bit about what you're talkin...more
...lity in the inner field as a whole or in a sub source position and you have a circle of people who are helping that person. So, what is called 'joint decision making' is not really so in my view. What happens is that the person who is the source, took the initiative for that particular part of the operation is loo...more
...ke their own position as source then. And we're not all trying to make decisions. Let me add one more thing: Why do I think it can't work, this joint decision making? Because from all the evidence I've been getting, when you initiate something as a source you create this field of influence, you get a download of i...more
... able to take a decision. And I have so much evidence of that now, till the cows come home. So what it feels like is that somebody's trying to impose decision making on somebody else out of a need that we should all be equal in the circle, and we should all, have a say, and be able to say "No". Okay, say "No" if y...more

Ruth, Taryn and Philippa from Mayden, a health tech company that’s Made Without Managers

...I found, and I wonder as well, Ruth and I have often had conversations - so Ruth and I worked quite closely - we do still work closely on things like decision making, and helping the organisation to figure those side of things out - people often seek, like a framework or a structure or a process, what they think i...more
...d to evolve, as we grow and continue to grow? Philippa Kindon: I think an area we're really homing in on at the moment is - and I'll come back to the decision making piece of work - is to this point, we are a very collaborative organisation. We really hold that value very dear. And consulting and involving people ...more
...ece of work - is to this point, we are a very collaborative organisation. We really hold that value very dear. And consulting and involving people in decision making has always been a very important part of what we do and how we do it. We think that is what gets the best in terms of the best for employees, the bes...more
...best in terms of the best for employees, the best for customers, the best for developing new things, innovation. But we recognise that sometimes that decision making can be slow. And the bigger we are in terms of number of employees, the harder we are finding it to balance that efficient, effective decision making...more
...decision making can be slow. And the bigger we are in terms of number of employees, the harder we are finding it to balance that efficient, effective decision making with involving and collaborating. So I think for me, one of the things that we're really homing in on is the impact of scaling for collaborative deci...more
...king with involving and collaborating. So I think for me, one of the things that we're really homing in on is the impact of scaling for collaborative decision making, and how do we strike that balance as an organisation. Because we really want to get it right, we really want to still hold true to that value of col...more
...t, for me, it's kind of looking at all of our ways of working, the areas that we've looked at over the last six years, whether it's been progression, decision making, role of the director, feedback, management arrangements within the organisation. And we've put some processes in place that are working, or have wor...more

Edwin Jansen on how people adopt self-management at Fitzii

...ngs, group meetings?" Then as we started to help our parent company move towards self-management, we saw a need and opportunity to more formalise our decision-making process. We had also found a tool from my friend Samantha Slade, who just recently wrote a great book, (and she's been on your podcast, Lisa, so I'm ...more
... just recently wrote a great book, (and she's been on your podcast, Lisa, so I'm a big fan of Sam's), and she had written an article about generative decision-making, which I think she lifted from holacracy or someone did, but, wherever it came from, it's really great: it's a way for a group to make a consent-base...more
...all a 'Sensing Process', which would end up with getting a whole bunch of advice and stakeholder alignment and then it would end up with a generative decision-making session with those people who really care about it. If it doesn't impact a ton of people, then you go through a typical advice process. And so that f...more
...ing in this direction. And it's been such a fantastic success at Fitzii, that they decided a few months ago to actually do GDM: they did a Generative Decision Making the leadership team, and they decided to move towards adopting what they call a 'Teal Operating System', so they found that to be a useful analogy. A...more
...he company has ratified and to put into place, and then we have a number of other potential common practices that are being worked through, like this decision-making workflow, the feedback practice as a common practice, the role of vice processes as a common practice. So they're just working through the applicatio...more
...ort of amazing. And then the boring business stuff: the business strategy, the results that we've been able to get, the fun that we have, the quality decision-making that happens when you can harness collective intelligence. I really feel like the company is thriving in a way that it could never thrive in an Orang...more

Beetroot’s founders on purpose, self-management, and shocking people with trust

...g, strategy workshops with the whole team to make sure that comes from within, that's a good starting point. Then also we've been talking a lot about decision-making and get everyone into the world of decision-making in terms of the different ways of making decisions; what are the different kinds of decisions, lik...more
...ure that comes from within, that's a good starting point. Then also we've been talking a lot about decision-making and get everyone into the world of decision-making in terms of the different ways of making decisions; what are the different kinds of decisions, like big, small? Who do you need to involve? When is i...more
...ting everyone in to think about being aware of these things, and all that's under development I would say, like the whole constant evolution there in decision-making. We've been defining a group of coordinators like a little parliament; one coordinator from each functional team, where we bring up global questions ...more
...n; we are 380 people now in total, and we plan to be more than 1000 people in around four years from now, while still being this decentralised, teams decision-making and so on, which I actually think on the other end, that approach gives that opportunity as well because growing in this way means that you don't gro...more

Michael Y. Lee on lessons from researching self-managing organisations

... team level, but not really throughout the entire organisation. And then you also had research like studies of empowerment, studies of participatory decision-making, that were at an organisational level, but they weren't quite as radical in their efforts to decentralise authority as these 'self-managing organisat...more
... authority to go about and do their work. So just as some examples: organisations could give employees a vote in various types of organisational-wide decision-making, they could give employees the flexibility and discretion to choose where do you work - maybe you don't have to work from the office, or what hours y...more
...an organisational level. And so, the models of self-management that I had experienced with were more your traditional, consensus-based team models of decision making, which I think have a place and can be incredibly powerful, but don't really work at scale. And so I think when I learned about holacracy, what reall...more

Miki Kashtan on the three shifts needed for self-managing organisations to thrive

...ess them and look about look at them in a more mindful way? Miki Kashtan: Yeah. So one of them I already addressed, which is the idea that unilateral decision making or or using power in this kind of way is fundamentally bad, which blocks things from being able to happen in the circumstances that we already talked...more
... are more systems. Most of them are specific to this or that group and the things that it needs to do. The five core systems are... the first one is: decision making system, which addresses questions of who makes which decisions, who else is included, who finds out about it, and what processes are used, etc. And s...more
...those are the five systems. And those systems can be set up, to be collaborative, to be supportive of 'power with', to be supportive of collaborative decision making, to be supportive of empowerment, to be supportive of support for everyone, to be supportive of attending to issues of power and privilege that come ...more

Pasteur Byabeza on transitioning to self-management at Davis College

...n, consistency and centralisation with our academics and curriculum. That means only a small handful of people at the top of the organisation had any decision making rights. So this resulted in frustration, lack of trust and disempowerment for so many people on our team. This was reflected in regular feedback in s...more
...ifference is that before we transitioned into self management, standardisation and centralisation with our academics and curriculum were the norm. So decision making and access to information were a privilege of only a handful of individuals at the top. So there was too much bureaucracy which resulted in disempowe...more

Lisa Gill and Mark Eddleston celebrate 50 episodes of Leadermorphosis

...anager, or someone who has hasn't had power before then stepping up. And that's scary and risky and I'm not used to doing that I'm not used to having decision-making authority. So that heart stage I think, is the real test. And then Edwin describes, if you can get through that stage, then you get to this third sta...more
...ounder or a leader around: what's your personal purpose? Why is this interesting and important to you? And I also think if you aren't someone who has decision-making power, if you're in the middle of an organisation, I still think that you have some power and agency to do some trojan mice experiments, and that's w...more

Nand Kishore Chaudhary from Jaipur Rugs on love, collective consciousness and self-management

...e mix them together, it makes things more complicated. And when we are driven by losing our identity, we are driven by fear. So it really impacts our decision-making and then we are not able to take the right decisions....more

Bill Fischer and Simone Cicero on Haier and the entrepreneurial organisation

...o putting all of yourself into making something happen. And I know that for those that are, for example, into collective management and collaborative decision-making, all the stories they have been telling us for decades, and some of them are true for sure, but some of them can be designed, for example. But I thin...more