If you read our Experiment 1 for the merit increase, you would know that the system, even though it brought a lot of good things to the group, it had some room for improvement. With a little bit more time … Continue reading Merit Increase in a self-managed group. Experiment 2: Most Complete Employee
We did it, we removed hierarchy and managers, we are now all equal. Great. However, as you may already know, most content in this blog refers to a self-managed office within the context of a bigger, hierarchical organisation, our self-management can only get so far, but still, pretty fun. Before we realise, is that time of the year when the “bigger company” asks us to submit our proposals for promotions and salary increases. There used to be a clear step-by-step process for this, centralised through the managers. With no managers, what do we do now? To be honest, we didn’t … Continue reading Merit Increase in a self-managed group. Experiment 1: Best Employee
Mauna Kea – Work Mauna Kea in Hawaii is probably less popular and touristy than Mount Fuji and it’s already 4000 meters high, so we’ll start feeling the lack of oxygen. When a self-organized team climbs up here we can expect they’ll have to deal with work-related decisions, so we call this one this the “work mountain”. Execution decisions While in Mount Fuji we saw how a team could decide among them who would do what, in this step we find how a team performs their tasks, meaning what solution to choose and apply to a given problem. Our experience … Continue reading Peak 2: Mauna Kea – Climbing the Self Management Mountain Range
Mount Fuji – Coordination The first peak in this model is Mount Fuji, with its 3776 meters. If you’ve been there you may have noticed that it’s a pretty touristy place. In fact you can find experienced climbers but also totally inexperienced people who get there by bus. We associate this mount with coordination, the first stage of self organisation in this model. This is when a team starts to self organize, which usually in our experience comes in the following forms. Task distribution Teams that are new to self organization usually follow Scrum or Kanban rules and visualize their work … Continue reading Peak 1: Mount Fuji – Climbing the Self Management Mountain Range
Self management may mean different things to different teams depending, among other things, on the scope in which they are being self managed. I’ll give you an example. In Scrum we say that teams are self organised, but what does that mean? Does it mean that they can distribute tasks among team members as they find appropriate? Sure. Does it mean they can decide on how to take days off? Maybe. Does it mean they can decide how to increase the salary of someone within the team? Eeeeh, What? This model is a simplification of this very complex topic and … Continue reading Climbing the Self Management Mountain Range
For us, is very important to get better and better at what we do. Mastering a field is a big motivation driver, and learning is one of the fundamental pillars in our Barcelona office. This is what we do: We make sure there is … Continue reading Self-Managed Training Experiment
Like everything else we do in our office, we keep looking for ways to make recognition and salary increases as engaging as possible. On previous attempts (experiments 1 and experiment 2), the approach was more democratic, people would vote for … Continue reading Merit Increase in a self-managed group. Experiment 3: Salary Distribution
