My current work lives here: Oddball Empire - Rock on.
You don’t need to tell people how they should interact. If they have an opportunity to self-organize, all will be fine.
Some say.
No. No. You need rules that describe how people should interact. Otherwise things will be a mess. If everyone is just doing what they please, we’ll get chaos.
Some say.
Is interaction in projects determined by context: an opportunity to self-organize, or by mechanism: rules for group interaction?
This for me is the hardest thing to describe or to explain in projects. It is easier to say “just use this set of rules” or “just let the people hang out and flow all naturally” then to provide the real answer: it depends.
Within projects, you have processes that are highly scripted. Like a formal audit. You also have elements that are very low on structure. Like a brainstorm session.
In reality, things will be a mix. In this post I provide an overview of how I think about this topic. It helps me to keep all elements in perspective when facilitating group interaction. This is a revised version of my post about an article by Trudy and Peter Johnson-Lenz: Rhythms, Boundaries, Containers. Elements Of Social Systems.
If you place context at one end of the scale and mechanism at the other, I consider the following elements:
- Empty Spaces (context)
- Stories
- Rhythms
- Boundaries
- Containers
- Procedures (mechanism)
Empty Spaces
You can view an “empty space” as structureless space or piece of time where something can emerge. An opportunity for anything creative to happen. There is no specific structure, just the opportunity for people to connect and self-organize.
Provide people the time, place and reason to get in each others vicinity.
Schedule “empty space” time for your team, so its easier for people to connect.
Put up a big screen in the hallway displaying your issue log. People will gather. People will talk.
Stories.
“Stories” provide you with a sense of place in time and space. It provides a sense of location.
The “what” of what could happen in the empty space is determined by stories. It provides you with an answer to “what am I doing here?”
Your project is part of a larger context. It is an episode in two stories. The story of “you”. And the story of “the organization”.
Knowing where the project fits in your story, and where you fit within the organizational story, provides you with a sense of location. A notion of “where you are right now” and where you might be heading.
Rhythms.
Life has a heartbeat. A pulse. 24hrs in day. 7 days in a week. Recurring periods. A daily standup in your project. A daily build in your software development process.
In the words of Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz: “The function of rhythms is to provide appropriate patterns for periodic contact and participation …”
It also helps us to identify with a group. If we seem to have the same rhythms, same patterns in meeting each other, that can signal we share a group. We might show up at the same meetings. Share a room. Hang out at the coffee corner at the same time. Stuff like that.
Boundaries.
In the meaning of Johnson-Lenz: “The functions of boundaries include defining group membership; delineating group identity; and marking group rhythms, beginnings, and endings.”
“Boundaries” help you to define if you are part of a group, or not. They help you to answer questions like this: How do yo know you are part of a group? And how do you know who are the other group members?
Boundaries have multiple sides. In-Out. Here-There. Now-Later. Me-You. Two specific boundaries we experience in projects are: You-Project and Project-Organization.
“Boundary awareness concerns our interfaces with other systems,” says Charles M. Johnston.
Containers.
Your project is a temporary system within the host organization. Think about it as a hospital tent set up in a field. It allows the doctors to perform surgery isolated from what happens around them. It provides focus and shelter. Johnson-Lenz: “The function of containers is to hold the energy, life, identity, or “presence” of the group.”
The container will hold the empty spaces and the procedures.
To use a “tent” analogy: a tent is what we need to hold our culture. Or, if you like, we fill the tent with our culture like a hot air balloon.
Procedures.
The procedures make up the rule set the group members have to follow. They make up the rules of engagement during group interactions. Procedures can help us make interaction more efficient, as everyone is using the same set of rules. Procedures can also embed knowledge to minimize potential problems.
Procedures influence the container. A clear choice between an agile or a plan-driven project approach is a choice in culture. It sets the ground rules for “how we do things around here”.
Thanks for this excellent synthesis of self-organisation, Bas. I am giving a new course in Agile project management next week at University of Montreal. I will give them a list of references including the most relevant bloggers. I will put you at the top of the list; I hope they will become regular readers and commentors, for they will have plenty to think and ponder about when reading you
Cheers from Montreal
Hey Claude, thanks for the kind words and for putting me on top of the list. I hope your students will enjoy it here! Let me know if I can be of any assistance for you are your students.
Cheers!
Bas,
One of the question that I have not answered satisfactorily to myself is mentioned indirectly above and I quote “The procedures make up the rule set the group members have to follow. They make up the rules of engagement during group interactions.”. Here is my dilemma: do we set the rules or we let the rules emerge by learning? Do birds, for example, determine that they will fly in V-formations or they learn from experience that is the optimal way of flying and these formations become the rule? I am talking about emerging rules Vs. preset rules. If you say emerging rules then I would reconsider some of the paragraphs above.
Bas, this is a great post that pushes all of us to learn by exchanging ideas. Thanks a lot
Hey Ali, great question (as usual
) I am talking here about preset rules. Corporate policies, methods in the profession, scripts that are dominant in a context. But also rules agreed upon by the group at the beginning. Does that make sense to you?
Yes, Bas that makes a lot of sense. However; this leaves the second part of my puzzle. Do preset rules lead to emerging rules within the context of self-organizing groups? Will preset rules be displaced by emerging rules? I do not have the answer.
It struck me that rules are at least in part evolutionary; a function of experience in a context, in an environment.
Without getting into the whole free will discussion, I think Ali’s bird example is spot on. Birds in their birdness, do not decide consciously to fly in v-formation. Experience in their environment over a very long time has led to this behavior pattern because it is efficient and effective.
When we work in projects, we are not flying in v-formation. OK, not implying we’re chaotic just yet – stay with me:)
We are carrying out deliberate activities otherwise known as ‘THE PLAN’. What we decide, what we learn, how we adapt these are all relatively conscious events. We impose our will on the environment by attempting to create a structure with explicit and implicit rules.
I’m wondering if it is the implicit rule part of the equation that takes us over in ‘bird land’. Our innate traits, personalities or whatever we call what and who we ‘are’ do play a role.
So this free-association (or rambling – you decide) leads me to think that there are two parts to answer:
- we can impose direct changes on the environment and see immediate results
- while some changes emerge more slowly as we live and empathize (or not) with what is taking place in our immediate working environment.
Maybe:)
Have to think about this some more.
Hello Preben,
I really enjoyed your deep response as it revealed in greater detail what prompted me to comment to start with. I am on the same boat when you concluded and I quote ” while some changes emerge more slowly as we live and empathize (or not) with what is taking place in our immediate working environment.
Maybe:)
Have to think about this some more”.
Hey Preben,
Thank you for your insightful comment. And yes, this is an important discussion.
To stay with the birds
The “procedures” in the post are about the International Bird Association that has determined that there are 25 successful patterns to use in flight. It is about the Aviation Authority that provides the birds clearance to fly over certain countries, etc. 
Put people in a group and “rules” will emerge. For me that’s culture and lives inside the “container” element. This is influenced by procedures, but also the individual stories of the group members and the host organization.
What you call “bird land” is all over the spectrum except procedures I think. “Procedures” are one specific way interactions are influenced that might be explicit to humans.
What you think?
Okay, so we’re talking projects and bird flocking, so I’m in.
This is a really interesting topic because it talks about emergence (collective behaviour emerges from the local rules of the birds, people, aka agents of the network) and evolution (selection).
To tackle the bird flocking, then hand it back to you to apply the same principle to humans:-). Just replace bird with human, and flock with team/group/organisation/etc. The flock is an emergent (dynamic in the case of a flock) structure that benefits the individual birds in numerous ways primarily by causing confusion to predators, and increasing chances of catching prey and finding a mate. Notice that when we observe a flock, what we are seeing a network responding. All the members of the network are of the same type, and (here it goes) operate on the same (simple – yes they are) rules, for example; cohesion – each bird flies towards the centre of its local flock mates; separation – each bird keeps a certain distance away from local flock mates to avoid collisions; and alignment – each bird align its speed and direction with that of its neighbour.
Some points to note here which is applicable to other complex adaptive systems too, is that
a) The rules for the emergent structure (the flock) are formed out of, or a product of, the rules of the individual birds flying together. To put this another way, you cannot find the rules of the flock behaviour in any one of the birds, as the rule (how to respond) is distributed across the network of birds, and I say network of birds because they are all exchanging information (via vision, sound, air pressure…so on).
b) The emergent structure (the flock in this case) is a device or tool (because creating it does something for the individual birds) that grows or evolves because of an arms race with other birds of the same type. And this device (how it performs) undergoes selection and therefore evolves.
So to continue with point b); imagine two populations of bird, each living on separate parts of the island. (Come on you’ve got to start to see parallels with Projectistan here) They originally started out as one population, but some (just randomly) developed bigger beaks, and could therefore feast on the harder nuts on the one side of the island. So both populations flock, but along with the bigger beak comes (same genes cause it) a slightly bigger wing, and when these birds flock these physical differences make the flock behave slightly differently. So lets call the ones with bigger beaks and wings flock A, and there others flock B. Now, there’s a small population of bird of prey on the island too. And they love to eat the birds from flock A or B – they taste the same. But because flock B has a tighter formation they are harder to catch. The birds of prey don’t recognise this, but over time more of flock A will be eaten, perhaps eventually die out, but flock B will be given time to reproduce in large numbers. This is how structures like flock B are preserves in the parameters of the individual birds and can also evolve. Emergent structures will be selected (and these emergent structures vary because their component parts, agents (birds in this case) will vary slightly) and by one structure being selected over another, so the components will live on, the product of their individual rules creating the emergent property.
Over to you
[...] Group Interaction: Using Rules and Self-Organization – This one started the small grey cells going for me. I’ll be thinking about the insights for awhile. Free association: the idea of rhythm is similar to the ‘takt’ idea in production systems (e.g., Toyota Production System, lean, theory of constraints and others.) [...]
[...] Bas de Baar explores group interaction, based on insights gained from an article by Trudy and Peter Johnson-Lenz, “Rhythms, Boundaries, Containers. Elements of Social Systems.” [...]
Dear Jon,
If I am allowed I would write tour surname this way: Witty because this is the quality of your response.
I like to start by quoting you from above comment “Just replace bird with human, and flock with team/group/organisation/etc”. Great as you show by example the validity of this approach. This is what prompted me initially to make my first comment above. Flock is an emergent behavior and networks are flock of people. Some networks grow fast while others grow at much lower pace. People join or disjoin a group. People may join more than one group as if they flock with more than one flock. May be this is a key differentiating point from birds.
Jon, you apply the prey-predator approach to two flocks of birds. This is a sound approach as this leads to emerging behaviors. Networks of people may do the same and show predating behaviors leading to emerging behaviors/
Your response is a great feed of thought, Jon
I think you’ve got a few questions in here. We often apply the term network to people or the internet, but networks are everywhere. The flock is a network of birds, a shoal a network of fish, a tree a network of tree cell, a human, a network of human cells, a rugby team a network of humans, and the internet a network of humans. You need to think about each of these from the individual (cell, bird, fish, human) point of view, as each one of them are exchanging information with each other and producing an emergent structure (shoal, tree, body etc) that provides the individuals with the ability to compete for survival. When we talk about predation, what we’re really talking about is ‘not being selected’ (by the predator – or anything else we want to avoid). I’ll put on my running shoes not because I can outrun the tiger, but because I can outrun you!
The emergent behaviour of the flock that has been selected is the ability to (and I’m guessing the specifics here) dart and weave, and switch direction, and clump and burst apart, but still stay tight. The emergent behaviour of the tree cells is what we call the tree (the trunk, branches, etc) its features are the trunk and branches (competes with other trees in an arms race for sunlight), toxins, thorns etc to repel predators, but flowers etc to attract birds, insects to help with reproduction. You can consider the body on the same way. All networks, all emergent structures, the rules for building are inherent in their component parts.
All the rugby teams in the recent world cup went through a selection process (rounds of games). The emergent structure is the team on the field, the dynamics of which is characterised by the interplay of the individual players (the network of players) in that particular environment. When you watch the team play you can see and hear the network functioning as visual and sound information flows between players. Doesn’t take much of a leap to apply this to projects from here.
Hey Jon, thanks for your great comments. Appreciated.
My main problem (well the thing I have difficulty with placing
) is this
“All the rugby teams in the recent world cup went through a selection process (rounds of games). The emergent structure is the team on the field, the dynamics of which is characterised by the interplay of the individual players (the network of players) in that particular environment.”
How do the rules of the rugby game come into play? How does the rugby association that sets these rules act in this network? And the referee? Is he part of the network or is it just the players? And the coach? Is it just a matter of defining where the boundaries of the system are?
These questions are the ones I have trouble with.
And oh yeah… I can see the parallel with Projectistan very clear!
BTW Loved your recent video. Excellent.
Bas, this is a great question and the answer is an easy one….but you have to keep thinking “complexity”. What I mean by that is that we are easily drawn (it’s the world as we’ve evolved to see it) to thinking cause and effect, whereas a complexity mindset (and it can be hard to stay in that thinking space) reveals that nothing causes anything, but that things amplify and attenuate, in short influence other things.
I spoke out against the concept of a new category of projects called “complex projects” which needs (as the argument went) a completely new approach and set of tools. My argument was (and still is) that all projects are a manifestation of a complex adaptive system – us humans! It’s not about new tools, it’s about a new mindset.
I’ll get to the rugby team in a minute, but need to make a few points first, and then the rugby comment will make better sense (hopefully). A way to think about complexity is in terms of information. If something is pretty simple in the way it responds to the environment (say a spanner) then it doesn’t take much information to explain why it responds the way it does. The spanner is therefore low on the complexity scale. Alternatively, if you’re working on a $100k project and progress is suddenly slipping behind, you might get the team in the room and thrash out an explanation, but the explanation would go something like this “well there’s a few factors affecting this….if that was on schedule, then that would have had an impact….and if we’d considered….and come to think of it….and” Oh the information to explain the slippage, to truly explain the slippage (if it could real be explained) would be large. Now this unwanted behaviour of project slippage would be high on the complexity scale.
So let’s apply this thinking to a hurricane. Edward Lorenz was a guru in complexity thinking. Basically, he was a meteorologist who back in the 60’s was trying to create better computer weather models. Cutting to the chase, what he realised was wrong with his old way of thinking was that when he studied the hurricane, he was only looking at the hurricane, and creating math models to mimic them (and poorly done too). But he realised that the gentle breezes that were blowing on another part of the globe were influencing the hurricane, and that you can’t talk about the hurricane without talking about all the winds on the earth (this is the thinking that underpins the concept of the butterfly effect). The hurricane hitting Florida is coupled to the gentle warm breeze hitting the beach in Sri Lanka. So the point is, the phenomena you’re observing, is brought about by a whole bunch of other things (the flock behaviour is brought about by the birds, and the bird is brought about by the cell, and the cell is brought about by the….) nested within each other.
So on to the rugby. The phenomena we call a rugby game is brought about by the behaviour of individuals, the players, the ref, the people behind the scenes, the crowd. All have an influence, the players and the ref make a big impact on what you see, but then the crowd influence the players….and so on. The behaviour called ‘the game’ is brought about by the individuals interacting, exchanging and processing information (shouting, watching, colliding, thinking etc) and ALL FOLLOWING (remember all those in the network are of the same type – you can’t have some on the field following the rules of rugby and other following the rules of football – well you could, but we wouldn’t be observing a game of rugby then would we). The rules that the individual follows are formed around their physical characteristics (big, beefy, high pain tolerance, high stamina….etc) and the rules of the game (which undergo selection – see comments shortly), but at these are not naturally occurring rules then the individuals can and do break them, hence the need for the ref.
The rules that each player takes on board has gone through a selection process too, that is they have evolved to create ‘the game’ we observe today. Here’s an example of how we are even now tinkering with the rules http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/irb-plans-to-revolutionise-rules-of-rugby-469253.html What this does is change how the phenomena responds to certain conditions.
What about boundaries? Well think about the hurricane. The answer is, if you really want to describe what’s going on (I mean really) then there are no boundaries. So for example, if after a game you asked a player why he was so brutal in the way he took the legs out from another player (which caused a fight on the field and an uproar in the crowd that people are still talking about), then he might confess that he’s going through a tough divorce at the moment, and the guy he took out looked just like the guy his wife is having a relationship with. The funny thing is that if his wife hadn’t of gone to a rugby gala dinner 2 yrs ago then she wouldn’t have met this guy. In the heat of the moment, with his hormones the way they were because of something that’s going on in his body that he doesn’t even know about, he thought, well felt, like taking it out on this other player. Now consider the information that would be required to explain the movements of the whole game and create a computer program that would play out the game in the same way. Couldn’t do it – TOO COMPLEX! Too much information required.
Okay so apply the same thinking to projects. Notice what procedures and cultural practices are. They are ways in which we alter the rules by which individuals operate. The big difference is…..where is the ref? As the rules are imposed upon individuals then they will necessarily be broken…..who is there to stop the game, form a scrum (like the Agile terms here – you knew it was coming) and start again?
Hey Jon,
Thanks for the comment. These to sentences did the trick for me
“reveals that nothing causes anything, but that things amplify and attenuate, in short influence other things.”
and ..
“Notice what procedures and cultural practices are. They are ways in which we alter the rules by which individuals operate. The big difference is…..where is the ref? As the rules are imposed upon individuals then they will necessarily be broken…..”
The boundaries are clear to me. As I am looking to networks from the individual perspective that walks trough a network, they function as something like a “cognitive horizon” if that makes any sense
And yes, evolution theory can have the appearance of a brutal game … which is at sometimes for me personally creating a barrier for accepting explanations, even if they make sense to me. As I think that a harsh mental model can influence harsh behavior … But my own opinion is not entirely formed around this matter
Jon,
I wish I had your fluency of English to say what you said. I agree with you in full and I am writing just to say I agree.
Having mentioned survival, may I suggest to you to read my presentation on Crafting the Raft. It adds support to your analysis. Here is the link if interested
http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/crafting-the-raft-lessons-for-managers
Okay…so I’d take issue with slides 6,7 as this is not how evolution works. Simple rules are enough, there is no “greater good of the species” or “grand goal” function required to create the natural world. That’s just a human cultural idea that we’ve been dragging along since the middle ages
Ants don’t realise anything, they just exchange information (mostly chemical). In fact, the ant is not the thing that’s generating the behaviour it’s the ant’s genes (sections of its DNA molecule that code for proteins which form the ant structurally and behaviourally). As in the discussion on this page, the overall structure (collective behaviour of ants) will undergo selection by their environment. The ant communities that survive (because of their collective behaviour which is coded in their DNA) get to pass on their survival behaviours to future generations. As with slide 12, birds don’t realise anything about flight theory. The structure (the v-formation, there are many others that works too) is constantly tinkered with over vast amounts of time (by tinkering with the structure/behaviour of the birds) and the most optimum are selected (based on lots of other factors as well as riding in a slipstream).
When looking at natural systems for enlightenment on human behaviours, we must be careful not to impose our notions of what’s going on. Take a look at evolutionary theory for what it is, and you’ll see it can explain the complexity of natural phenomena, but you don’t necessarily have to like what it has to say. Evolution is enlightening yet brutal, and not necessarily for the faint or kind hearted
Jon,
Allow me to quote you from the last paragraph on one of your earlier comments. “This is how structures like flock B are preserves in the parameters of the individual birds and can also evolve. Emergent structures will be selected (and these emergent structures vary because their component parts, agents (birds in this case) will vary slightly) and by one structure being selected over another, so the components will live on, the product of their individual rules creating the emergent property”.
Is not the raft an emergent structure that leads to the survival of ants? If so, we are in agreement, especially in that the emergent structure allows for the survival of ants.
Over to you
Hi Bas, here’s my perspective. As individuals, we need rules to ease our fears about all the crap coming at us from all directions (chaos = bad). As small self-organizing groups, we create a bigger self (or bubble around ourselves), feel less fear, experience the universe as a more friendly place (at least this little part of it), so rules become far less important. As community, we take a step further. We experience abundance, and it’s as community that we become ok with many ways of being—within others and within ourselves. As long as we are all these things, all these things (from procedures to self-organization and beyond) are important.
Bas, I think your words are terrific. Maybe it’s simply your straight line with context on one end and mechanism on the other end that could be improved. What if it was an infinity symbol or circle or spiral? Or at lease a wiggly line? Oo, or in 3D. That’d be cool. What if it recognized that all of us move from needing mechanism and rules to preferring context and opportunity and back again. And again. And again.
Jon, so many terrific ideas! And for the most part your ideas are strikingly similar to what I find as a community member and self-organizing groups researcher. But then you had to go and say to my friend Ali “…as this is not how evolution works.” I may disagree with Ali on a point or two now and then (even on this same point), but to get all teachery on him like that is just not cool from my perspective. This man had his PhD long before I was born and I would fear that my own evolution was at an end if I stated things with that amount of certainty to anyone, let alone to him. I also don’t understand why you say “Evolution is enlightening yet brutal, and not necessarily for the faint or kind hearted” but then end that sentence with a smile. Are you suggesting that the discussion of evolution be left in the minds and hands of the brutal and the heard-hearted? With the deepest respect, this soft-hearted, kind, and gentle person disagrees.
Hey Lori,
Thanks for the suggestion. Such a cycle between context and mechanism is actually called the “Creative Cycle”
http://web.mac.com/icdhome/iWeb/CST/2-Overview.html
I think I have to take that one more seriously in my approaches
Originally I only took the elements from it. But I’ll look into its use in this area.
Hi Lori,
This is an engaging response. I agree fully with your comment for the following reasons
1- I only say I am sure if I’m 300% sure. When it comes to evolution I am not even 100% sure. There are a host of first minds who disagree with the evolution theory. I have many questions about its 100% validity. It is not a matter of brave hearts; it is a matter of beliefs. At this time when the survival is for the fastest and not the fittest my doubts compound.
2- Your ideas to Bas open many opportunities for expanding our knowledge. In fact each suggestion is a seed on its own. I quote you ” What if it was an infinity symbol or circle or spiral? Or at lease a wiggly line? Oo, or in 3D”. I am sure Bas has a lot to think about as I made a similar, but less comprehensive comment, to Bas sometime ago
3- I respect the ideas of Jon. To disagree is great as long as we build bridges to cover these differences. On a personal level, I’m much happier to be a soft-heart man. Emotional leadership is based on leading people with passion and not power and hard feelings. If we go by the evolution theory then soft leadership has no place, which is contrasting with the new leadership theories.
Lori, thank again for writing such an illuminating comment
Oops, Sorry Lori, Ali, didn’t mean to offend anybody. Just short on time and cutting to the chase. I type like I speak, and I can be a bit blunt at times, but there’s no ill intent.
Jon, you didn’t offend. I see zero ill intent in you. I also think you’re brilliant, btw. Just want there to be plenty of room in the discussion for the gentle and soft-hearted, like me, and for those who may be lurking but not speaking. We are made better by their presence and the wisest voices can sometimes be the hardest to hear.
Thank you for your deep, thoughtful comments. And as someone who is often the most long-winded person in the room, I’m thrilled when someone else who has a ton to say shows up, so I can shut up and learn.
Interesting learning experience for me. That I felt protective of my friend and felt a desire that respect be part of every interaction here tells me that, for me, my community here. That I said something to you tells me that I see you as part of my community already.
Jon, no bad feelings and to the contrary I have good feelings and respect to your advanced ideas
Take Care,
Ali