Empowerment and Decentralized Decision Making

In recent years there has been a significant shift in the development model from a centralized command and control structure with a strict hierarchy to a more fluid decentralized model.  This change has come in many different models and flavors: Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP, Spotify-Model, to name a few.  However, the goal of all of these models is to empower teams to make decisions and rapidly respond to a changing environment.  This goal can be achieved by leveraging lots of different mechanisms: continuous deployment, a/b testing, continuous feedback loops, etc.

As more and more companies attempt to adopt these methodologies they are becoming mainstream.  However, the transformation process is not as simple or as straightforward as it looks and I have rarely seen a company do it successfully.  Yes, most can make the change to the process.  They can adopt the ceremonies or change the layout of the teams.  They even flatten the organization in some cases.  These are all steps in the right direction, however, all of these surface actions do not get to the spirit of the change and are more cosmetic in nature.  The whole movement is literally a paradigm shift that requires all levels to buy into it, from the individual contributor to the C-Suite.  This challenge is often a difficult one to overcome.

So why are the changes so difficult to make?  It requires a change to the core way most people think and even more importantly, it requires relinquishing control.  Giving up control and promoting a "servant leadership" mentality is often something that people are not interested or able to do.  Actively taking responsibility while delegating decisions to someone else is an extremely difficult proposition for most people, but this approach requires exactly that, relinquishing control and maintaining responsibility.  When this type of change is made, it sets the stage for empowering the team.

When teams are moving fast and are empowered to make decisions, they will also make mistakes. This is a good thing, but lessons must be gained.  This also means that adopting a culture of learning is extremely important.  When things go wrong, it cannot be about who did what.  If you are looking to place blame on someone, you haven't successfully made the mental shift.  The blame game is a top down model, empowerment and decentralizing decision making is a bottom up model.

When things do go wrong, and they should if you are doing things right.  The goal must be to first rapidly respond, if needed.  When the team has ownership, they will be able to do just that.  Secondly and most importantly, we need to understand "why" the problem occurred and learn from it.  This introspection and learning is imperative.  Without, the analysis and understanding we are very likely to repeat the mistakes again in the future.  When the same mistakes happen over and over again, a rut is formed.  It is never good to be in a rut.  Instead, a constant learning cycle is needed.  This learning cycle is what drives efficiency.  In fact, if you look at the Spotify-model, they talk about maintaining a balance between chaos and bureaucracy (View Here).  I love their idea of a "Minimal Viable Bureaucracy", which I interpret as:

The need for growth and the ability to deliver is difficult and can lead to problems. These problems are commonly corrected with increased process and additional controls.   Too much process and too many controls leads to an inability to deliver which is worse than the original problems.

By decentralizing the control and minimizing the process, you increase your ability to scale. Different teams are operating and learning independently enabling the organization to learn more lessons in less time.  Lessons lead to improved efficiency which is key for being able to grow organizations.

However, we are not out of the woods yet.  When you have a bunch of teams all operating independently things can quickly do awry.  Duplication of effort, lack of coordination, competing ideas, etc. are all real possibilities can lead to chaos and confusion.  This is when leadership is truly needed.  Netflix uses the term "Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled".  The idea is quite simple and truly shows the role of leadership is to set the course for the teams and achieve a high level of alignment.  It is critical to ensure that the message is consistent and expectations are set clearly.  Once that is done, it is best to get out of the way of the teams and let them do what they need to do to achieve the goal.  Leadership will often need to be measuring throughout in order to gain insights to how the teams are working, both independently and together.  When needed course corrections and inputs can be changed in order to increase alignment between teams.

Empowering teams and decentralizing decision making is a powerful way to increase productivity and move faster.  Agile methodologies attempt to make the changes easier to manage, but without adopting the right frame of thinking and strong servant leadership at all levels, these concepts become more difficult or even impossible to implement successfully.