In his provocative new book, software industry veteran Matt K. Parker argues that organizations that practice radical collaboration are the fastest-growing and most competitive organizations in the world. Driven by self-managed employees who deliver without “coercion” from management, these organizations deliver innovative products and projects and lead the competition “on virtually every financial metric that makes sense.”
In this excerpt from A radical company (IT Revolution, 2022), Parker defines radical collaboration and outlines specific practices that radically collaborative organizations use to drive their success.
A radically collaborative practice is any practice that helps an organization achieve a state of radical collaboration – in which teams are autonomous, relationships are deficient (in which people mutually satisfy each other’s higher human needs), and collective learning is enabled through openness and vulnerability and management are no longer the purview of a static dominator hierarchy, but rather are the shared responsibility of a dynamic heterarchy.
We are still at the beginning of a radical collaboration. Pioneer organizations are constantly innovating and inventing new practices and structures. Neither the following list nor the practices themselves are final. Therefore, think of these practices not as a blueprint, but as a starter kit for radical collaborative transformation and experimentation.
Contents
Radically collaborative software practices
Outcome team paradigm: Outcome teams are cross-functional and focused on delivering user value while being radically decoupled from codebases. To create value for the user, a results team can directly modify and deploy all codebases within the organization, regardless of who created or normally maintains them.
Blow: A process of organically forming or “bubbling” short-lived deliverable teams centered around a specific initiative. These bubbles will automatically dissolve or pop once the initiative is completed.
Human-centered design: A radically collaborative approach to designing and testing software solutions that involves users directly in the software creation process.
Pair programming: A practice in which two engineers radically collaborate on programming by simultaneously sharing the exact same computer and developing the software together, passing the keyboard back and forth.
Decentralized management practices
Consulting process: Anyone in the organization is allowed to make any decision, as long as the decision maker opens their thought process to scrutiny, criticism, and invalidation by anyone who might be affected by the decision.
Ad hoc leadership teams: Anyone in the organization can announce an initiative to change something in the organization, and anyone interested can join. The ad hoc team has full authority to make changes as long as they are transparent about the process they are going through.
Governance Driven by Holacracy: An extremely efficient process for collectively developing the structure and roles of an organization. [Holacracy] allows anyone in the organization to raise an organizational tension at any time and have it dealt with and resolved immediately.
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A radical company
by Matt K Parker.
Peer Pods: Self-managed groups of colleagues who provide each other with ad hoc coaching, mentoring and support in their careers.
Onboarding buddies/“sponsors”: A radical employee takes on the sponsorship of a new colleague and works with him for several days or weeks in order to help the new colleague to find his way around a non-hierarchical environment and to find his place in it.
Career fair: New and potential projects are presented to the organization so that radical employees can consider freely joining.
Decentralized compensation practices
Deming payment system: Everyone in the organization receives a predetermined, transparent salary, which is then automatically increased each year through predetermined, transparent annual increases. The profit sharing is also distributed equally among all members.
Fractal organizational model: Where everyone in the organization is a virtual sole proprietorship, complete with a balance sheet and profit and loss statement. Salaries are the result of the negotiated commitments that people make to one another along the value stream and the resulting individual surpluses.
Self-managed salary: Individuals transparently set their own salary and determine their own salary increases at any time.
Deficit-satisfying/apparent vulnerability practices
Balance sheet values: Radical employees begin each day by giving each other a score between one and ten indicating how balanced they feel between work life, home life, and spiritual life. It is a tool to increase transparency, vulnerability and empathy while helping participants align at the beginning of a collaboration.
Check-ins: Radical collaborators create a sacred space at the beginning of a meeting in which they can vulnerably name to each other what distracts them or prevents them from being fully present in the moment.
Two-column “Think versus Say” exercises: After a challenging conversation, sit down with a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle to divide it into two columns. In the right column, transcribe the conversation from memory. In the left column, write down the thoughts you had but couldn’t express. The delta between the two typically reveals a high level of defensive thinking within yourself, as opposed to open vulnerability.
Biggest failure of the week: The team members take turns discussing accidents, mistakes and complete professional or personal failures. The process creates an environment of collective support and promotes personal growth by normalizing imperfections.
Coin ceremony: A ceremony in which radical collaborators voluntarily recognize each other, not for their daily work, but for their “being” – for who they are and what they contribute to the people around them and to the world.