Nature is a great example of self-organized teams at work on a scale we could never imagine. Yea, this post deals with a non-technology topic. It’s about self-organized teams. What is a self-organized team?. What do they solve?. Why are we stuck in the traditional leadership style of teams?. How can we build self-organized teams?. And most importantly, why do I firmly believe a self-organized team is a cure for the existing malady of traditional teams? Why is not anarchy?

Definition of Self-Organization

“Self-organization is also called as spontaneous order, an externally unforced rhythm, communication, networking, movement, understanding, order of interactions which evolves and refines over time between different moving parts replacing chaos with order, disarray with structure and arrangement, that yields meaningful positive results…a close to perfect real-world example would be the evolution of life on earth, World Wide Web(WWW), the free market economy, etc,”

How to build self-organized/self-directed (software) teams?

Companies are made up of departments, departments are made up of teams, and teams are made of individuals. It’s the individuals that define the fine characteristics of a team. So, let’s list down some of the traits of an individual:

• Exceptional engineering(this is given) and business skills — Has a clear vision of the product and yet practically rooted about thoroughly understanding the user needs. In short an exceptional engineer who is the voice of the customer.
• Patient listener & effective collaborator through cogent communication.
• Never hesitate to get hands dirty at the drop of a hat.
• Story-telling teacher, motivator and public speaker.
• Candor yet shows empathy and kindness with emotional quotient.
• Soft skills that seek to understand rather than being understood.
• Strong intuition yet guided by facts.
• Calculated risk-taker. etc,

Weighing on a scale

There are some concerns here with self-organization at a large scale. But, we can make it to work at a small scale to the benefit of the company. 

We have always been trained to see and look up to leadership right from early days on. It doesn’t surprise me that teams without a leader or manager are bound to become disorganized and chaotic. And the buck has to stop somewhere right. Is it possible to treat a company as self-organization or apply it selectively? Yes, I believe anarchy is possible without strong leadership but I also believe that chaos is the path to orderliness. 

Leadership which walks a fine line and gives leeway for the self-organized teams to reinvent, discover, experiment, test, etc, the order that we laid out in the definition, benefits the company over the long run. I understand the companies are wary of the failure part in the experiment when you have a looming deadline and associated cost factor. The idea is to have a traditional leadership style at a very high level and also have self-organized styled teams at midlevel to grassroots. This is what agile methodology espouses too for teams. 

It’s never about individual intelligence but, about tapping into collective intelligence seamlessly playing and working together.