Case Study Presentation
Coached by Sally Gritten
One of the Adaptive Action Processes found in Human Dynamic Systems is called Simple Rules. The idea behind this tool is to help agents within the system make decisions about what they will do. The rules are not values. They do not tell anyone what to think or feel. The rules depend on individual freedom to interpret and apply in unique situations.
I was asked by the Managing Director of a major publishing house to assist her in moving the company towards a new way of working. Over the years, success has meant growth and changes in leadership and an increased number of staff. The Managing Director has a strong vision for the company and wanted to ensure that the people in the company understood the vision and took decisions to move the company toward its goals.
As part of the team process I decided to use the tool of Simple Rules. I had already worked with one condition of self-organising systems by helping the Managing Director and her deputy create a new reporting structure for the company. Predictably, the change in the structure also changed the significant differences and transactions within the company. During the earlier part of an away day I used some open-ended questions to help the team articulate who they were, how they believed they were seen by others and how they wanted to be seen.
I told the team that we were about to identify the their DNA as it now looks after the organisational change and that I would be asking them to create a short list of simple rules for the company. However, there were some rules for the rules that they needed to follow:
Five simple rules for the Rules
- The rules should be designed to amplify and reward what is desired behaviour across the organisation.
- The rules should be brief and powerful and they must be transferable across the organisation.
- The list should be short. There should ideally be five (plus or minus two) rules as a maximum.
- One rule should address how people come together and how they are as a group, one rule should address differences that exist in the group and one rule should be about how those in the organisation exchange information and other resources.
- Each rule must begin with an action verb.
I also told them a story of how complexity scientists use the concept of simple rules to explain things in nature, such as how flocks of birds or schools of fish move in their formations.
Then the 20 people in the room were divided into five groups of four and asked to observe the following process to create simple rules:
- Brainstorm list.
- Ask:
- What’s missing?
- What’s overlapping?
- What’s assumed?
The teams worked well and after about 15 minutes each team posted the rules they had devised. Then it was the chance of the whole team to repeat the process as a large group.
Finally the entire group agreed on four rules for the whole company. They are:
- Ask, don’t assume
- Acknowledge excellent performance
- Respond to all enquiries from co-workers, customers, authors and suppliers
- Listen without interrupting
The next steps were meetings with the Managing Director and various leaders to embed the rules into the company through performance appraisals, continued discussions, opportunities to review the rules over time and even to include the rules in the recruiting process.
Three months on, the Managing Director and the deputy MD reported back that their objectives were starting to be realised. The rules were apparent in many places, especially in meetings, and the Managing Director and Deputy Managing Director often cited them as a reminder to employees and themselves.
