50В shades ofВ teal management: practical cases
Valera Razgulyaev
What is teal management? A complete rejection of managers. In the best-case scenario they can fulfill the roles of assistants: without forcing anything on anyone. Everyone takes responsibility for the fulfillment of those promises that they take on for themselves, which ideally suits companies in constantly changing situations that demand a flexible approach.Where to begin, what techniques will help employees adopt the new principles, and what difficulties will inevitably be encountered?
50В shades ofВ teal management: practical cases
Valera Razgulyaev
The author of the translation Andrew Freeburg
Translation Editor Ksenia Kutuzova
© Valera Razgulyaev, 2022
ISBNВ 978-5-0059-3450-5
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
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Foreword
Who is this bookВ for?
I’m not a guru, a prophet, a clairvoyant or a scientist. I’m a practitioner who has been following the path of teal management in a single specific company, VkusVill. I don’t have a goal of selling this approach to anyone, since I devote 100% of my time to our organization. But every day, I answer questions related to this new approach – both to myself and everyone else who asks me about it – and I’ve noticed that my answers seem to change sometime in the feelings and actions of those around me. That’s why I took it upon myself to write this book. Of course, I must admit that I hope you read this book to the end, and that it turns out to be useful for you! And if not? Oh well. Send it back to me: Valery Yuryevich Razgulyaev, ulitsa Tayninskaya, 12, apartment 93, Moscow, Russia, 129345. Make sure to leave your phone number or email address, and please tell me how much money you spent on it and the best way to return it to you.
In order to minimize the number of returns, I want to warn you right away: this book is by no means about "teal" organizations. I believe that "teal organizations," just like "teal people," can’t exist even in theory: these are just stupid labels that somebody pins on companies or their employees. Teal management tools are a different matter entirely: they have already been developed and can be applied in practice in any organization. My book’s goal is to answer key questions regarding teal management: "Why is it necessary?" "What is it?" "How can we transition to it?" "Why is it worth it?" It’s structured around answers to all of these.
InВ the first chapter, "Why bother?" IВ describe the problems ofВ traditional management systems, all ofВ which gave rise toВ the need toВ invent something new. These are the exact factors that led toВ the appearance ofВ teal management and continue toВ inspire more and more new followers toВ studyВ it.
In the second chapter, "What?" we will examine the main tools of teal management and break down their advantages. The situation is complicated by the fact that many definitions in this sphere have yet to become established. After all, it’s generally accepted to first agree on terminology, and only then begin discussing problems. But since a book does not presume the possibility for such a dialogue, I am forced to offer my own combinations of terms, which I will start to use in the hopes that you will accept them for at least as long as you read this book and we can exist in a single conceptual field. In order to make it easier for you to refer to them, I italicized all of the definitions in the text, and at the end of the book, I’ve included a glossary.
The third chapter, "How?" suggests approaches and mechanisms for transitioning to teal management that have proved themselves in practice to interested managers. To be fair, there’s no single algorithm for such a transition, but I will suggest several different options that each reader can use creatively in their own specific use cases – after all, every individual case is always unique.
In the fourth chapter, "Why?" I tried to put together a theoretical foundation for the problem, gathering scientific studies and explaining particular effects that make teal management not just possible, but as successful and even necessary in the modern world as it has become. This part might not seem to add anything from a practical perspective, but I’m sure that for some people, reading it will serve as an additional reason to get up and start the necessary transformations in their companies without delay, while allowing others to understand more deeply – and, therefore, use more effectively – what I describe in the first three chapters.
Throughout the entire book, I’ll be giving you tasks: they will always be in a separate frame, with the task number indicated. I know I can’t make you do anything, but I sincerely advise that you honestly complete all of them. This will give me more chances to get through to you with my message. If for any reason at all you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer: send them to my email, razgv@mail.ru.
There’s one more important element. I write about things that differ sharply from your current management practice. For that matter, I’m sure that your practices are successful! That’s why your mind will, more likely than not, desperately resist any attempts to interpret what’s written here. What’s more, the more useful that a given bit of text would be for you, the greater inner resistance you will experience. Your consciousness will start helpfully explaining why everything written in this book isn’t even worth reading further. I beg you: as soon as you feel something like this, stop and try to figure out what’s making you freak out. In order to do this, you have to imagine what would personally happen to you if what you had just read were to turn out to be true. That way, you can understand something important about yourself. Only after you change can you achieve any of the other results of your work.
Finally, I’m not pushing for anyone to move toward teal management. Moreover, this book won’t even come close to working for everybody who thought they’d be interested in it! You can understand whether it will work for you by working through the following color system of management styles.
Color scheme ofВ management styles
There are various approaches toВ management. They can be conveniently divided into eight main types which completely describe all possible variations and are differentiated byВ the following colors.
Blue
A group of top-notch experts (we’ll call them experts) who are forced to work together because they sequentially participate in the process of creating value for the client, all while constantly arguing (openly or not) whose functions are more important. Everyone sticks to their narrowly specialized field and takes responsibility for what they know best, but they insistently do not want to leave that comfort zone; therefore, shared tasks are accomplished only with difficulty. This system of management works excellently for associations of experts in various industries.
Green
A family where people are the most important element. Many of them are forgiven their imperfections. A family business where everyone is appreciated for their personal qualities: this means that relationships between employees are good, but results sometimes fail to measure up – since everyone is responsible for everything, nobody is specifically responsible for anything. For companies based in the family model (just like an actual family – they need to be managed, too), this system is irreplaceable.
Red
One person single-handedly manages everybody else – and they, figuratively speaking, are that person’s legs, arms, eyes… Even when a hierarchy technically exists among their subordinates, this person gives everybody orders and personally demands results from them. The "monarch" takes full responsibility for what takes place in their "kingdom" and directly controls all of their "subjects," criticizing their loyalty and becoming a bottleneck for everything. However, this system can be useful for doing dirty work that demands the joint efforts of a group of people.
Yellow
A classic bureaucracy, with all the respective pluses and minuses of predictability for every employee. Everything by the rules, plain and clear, and everyone takes responsibility for whatever processes take place within their respective job descriptions. Unfortunately, this leads to formalism ("when you do your job, fill out the paperwork; when you don’t, fill out more"), but this can be useful in situations where limited resources need to be distributed, and fairness must take precedence.
Purple
A classic corporation where internal wars are constantly being fought, seemingly for the benefit of the corporation itself; however, the losses are also considerable. A constant race for perfection, cutthroat competition and the embodiment of the inhumane principle of "the end justifies the means" – when anything goes, so long as you get results.
Teal
AВ complete rejection ofВ managers. InВ the best-case scenario, they can fulfill the roles ofВ assistants: without forcing anything on anyone, they limit themselves toВ merely training self-management skills inВ their team. Here, everyone takes responsibility for the fulfillment ofВ those promises that they take on for themselves, which ideally suits companies inВ constantly changing situations that demand aВ flexible approach. (The teal management strategy will be described inВ more detail inВ the second chapter.)
White
The ideal management system of the future, where subordinates voluntarily obey managers that they personally choose in the name of unlocking as much of their potential as possible, when everyone takes responsibility for the decisions that they make within the framework of such obedience. This contains all of the advantages of the other forms of management, without any of their downsides. Unfortunately, at the current stage of our social development, this is an unachievable dream – we can only strive towards this model for now.
These colors aren’t usually found in their pure form. What’s more, in any company, they are all always present – the only question is which of them takes priority. If it’s still hard for you to figure out which of the colors is dominant in your organization after taking into account the above information, then you can take a test online at http://biryuzovie.ru. The only thing is that practice has shown that in order to get the right answer, you have to answer honestly, without passing off what you want as what you have.
Is this book right forВ you?
Based on the aforementioned color scheme, it stands to reason that companies that want to transition to teal management might currently use blue, green, red, yellow or purple management styles. Currently, the most widespread styles are purple corporations, yellow bureaucracies and green family businesses. For them, there are already well-trodden paths that allow them to make a successful transition to teal management. In fact, the second chapter of this book will focus specifically on managers in organizations that primarily use purple corporate management. Of course, others are by no means forbidden from reading; what’s more, it might even turn out to be useful for them. But in order to realize the practical side of the matter, I advise using different approaches, which I’ll outline for each of the colors below.
Holacracy is an approach toВ organizing aВ company based on organizing holons, aВ kind ofВ circle for solving every kind ofВ recurring task: within these circles, there are roles which various employees can fulfill, who receive these roles fully and independently make decisions within them.
For a yellow bureaucracy, a formalistic method works best, and the holacracy is the clearest example of such an approach. This is an approach to organizing a company based on organizing holons, a kind of circle for solving every kind of recurring task: within these circles, there are roles which various employees can fulfill, who receive these roles fully and independently make decisions within them. Brian Robertson’s book
outlines all the protocols for meetings toВ move aВ company into teal management. There is also aВ "lighter" version, sociocracy, which welcomes the consolidation or alteration ofВ work protocols byВ employees themselves, through aВ single required element ofВ every meeting: aВ reflection on any process and its final results.
Sociocracy – a “lighter” version of holacracy, which welcomes the consolidation or alteration of work protocols by employees themselves, through a single required element of every meeting: reflection on any process and its final results.
A green family business is best helped by a psychological method, in which professional psychologists work with the team, both as a whole and with each individual member, over the course of two or three years. The goal is to achieve such integrity in each unit of the company as to make any other management style (save for teal management) can hardly be possible. For that matter, all of the employees voluntarily take on additional responsibilities connected with this management style – or voluntarily leave, having understood that they are driven by something else and they don’t want to continue doing their current job if they can’t find another suitable task within the organization. Of course, it’s far faster to simply divide everyone into those who are simply out of their league and those who pull double the weight, but companies aren’t organized in this way by accident. For that reason, these post-flight analyses will depend on the people who are willing to take part in them and support them – with specific examples from specific employees rather than generalizations.
For blue and red organizations, there are no established successful paths ofВ transitioning toВ teal management, since such aВ transition happens extremely rarely. But based on the logic ofВ the color scheme, we can suggest the following.
• Blue: it might seem that in order to get a teal company, all you need to do is add some green, but it’s not that simple, as each of the experts in such an organization has successfully protected their position many times. As a result, a separation of competencies and spheres has occurred: nobody gets in their neighbor’s way, but simultaneously doesn’t let anyone get close to themselves, either. In order to change the situation for the better, you have to start doubling your responsible parties (there will be more about this technique in the second chapter). Additionally, you need to start finding a common goal and establish shared responsibility for its achievement. This will be constantly disputed, since each person in the company will habitually begin to demonstrate that work is going just fine on their own individual front, but the point of this initiative is to make all of these top-flight specialists, with their widely varying specializations, understand that the most important front is a shared one.
• Red: since everything in such an organization is tied up in its leading figure, that’s the person that you have to work with – specifically, through a professional business trainer and psychologist who will help the boss to gradually understand themselves and restructure the company’s management to allow more delegation of power and less worry over potential theft. You can start by getting acquainted with Dennis Bakke’s “The Decision Maker.”
Unfortunately, you can’t get away with just reading a book, since you’ll have to prove to the “monarch” over and over again the advantage that they’ll receive from passing their work off to other people – even if they do it worse – over and over again, using specific examples.
ChapterВ One. Why bother?
The majority ofВ the definitions will be given inВ the following chapter, but at the beginning ofВ the book, we still have toВ agree on what we understand as "management." We often use this word inВ everyday life, while hardly even thinking about how we might explain the concept clearly.
вњЋTaskВ 1
InВ your opinion, what is management? Try toВ come up with aВ definition for this concept.
Stop! Don’t skip this first task, or any of the ones that follow it. I’m certain that you don’t like theoretical work all that much, and you might even complain about how much hot air and how little practical material is in most management and leadership books. But here’s the practice you wanted, and it will allow you to make sense of your own management. Please don’t ignore this task; stop and do it honestly, and only then go on reading. Believe me, I’m insisting on this for your own good.
Management —a meaningful action that leads to a necessary and expected result.
