50 shades of teal management: practical cases. Valera Razgulyaev

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Название 50 shades of teal management: practical cases
Автор произведения Valera Razgulyaev
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isbn 9785005934505



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the principles here have already been explained above. First of all, everyone is always busy. Second of all, a project usually demands the cooperation of several divisions – but how can you make that happen if people don’t want to interact? For that matter, absolutely everyone who wants to push through any changes at all runs into resistance from their colleagues who, first of all, are busy up to their eyeballs, and second of all, who are principally opposed to doing anything together. Besides, it’s often the case that instead of working on the project, all members of the working group spend their time and energy on passing the buck off to one another – a necessary precaution in the event of failure. This leads to projects being done slowly, for a lot of money, and with results that, to put it lightly, are nothing to write home about…

      What are you managing, anyway?

      If none of the aforementioned points sounds familiar to you, then you can stop reading here: no matter what, you won’t get anything useful out of my book, and will just be wasting your time reading it instead! However, more likely than not, these examples illustrate the state of things (in whole or part) within your company. For that matter, we must note that you know about all of these existing problems and you don’t like them, but you can’t do anything about them. If we return to the analogy of driving a car, then this means that you’ve lost control. At the core of things, you were never in control in the first place; the situation had merely yet to become critical, and you were being carried in the direction where you wanted to go anyway. Now, however, everything has changed, and that means that you need to change, too!

      Generally speaking, the "teal" alternative arose specifically to solve these essential problems that accumulated under all previous systems of management and create a new one where such problems cannot exist a priori. We have to note that this has worked in practice, and many managers in many companies have already been able to start using teal tools! That means that if people have the desire, the will, the right creative approach, and the knowledge that you’re about to gain, you’ll be able to do so, too!

      But first of all, we have to stop and figure out exactly what it is that you’re managing. One person might say that it’s a company. Another will say that it’s people. A third will say resources. As strange as it is, all of these answers are incorrect. The only thing that anyone actually manages is their influence on other people. Nothing else. Period.

      It will probably seem to you that this isn’t much at all, compared to what was listed above. But let’s be realists here. In reality, all we can manage is our influence on the people around us. That has always been the case. Well, if that was enough to let the greatest leaders of the past accomplish those great feats for which we remember them, that means it will be enough for you, especially if you approach the management of your influence on others conscientiously.

      For starts, learn to notice the specific kind of influence you have on people and what you get as a result. I have often encountered situations when a manager seems to say, "Full speed ahead!" but it’s nothing but empty words. Instead, all of their actions seem to "pull up the handbrake," so to speak, and then they are surprised that the company is stuck in place and not moving anywhere! It’s worth remembering that this influence comes from every word and behavior, from any gesture or facial expression, and even from silence, inaction or a lack of reaction.

      Under no circumstances am I pushing you towards insincerity. That is a worthless endeavor since everyone around you will sense those signals that we cannot consciously manage. I’m asking you to comprehend the results of your influence on your subordinates, to take responsibility for it, and to search inside yourself for those deeper reasons that force us to behave in a certain way. Finally, I am asking you to change your interpretation of the situation. As a result, you will transform your own actions, and thanks to that, new results will follow.

      Chapter Two.

      What?

      The spread of teal tools has already become a trend in transforming management systems, but to this day there remains much confusion about the most elementary questions – both for those who have only just encountered the basic terms and for those who have already studied them in some depth. Around some of these terms, heated arguments have even begun. To be fair, it’s worth noting that it’s primarily theorists who butt heads on such matters. Practitioners simply start realizing the necessary changes in their companies, either overall or within individual departments, insofar as they understand those changes themselves. As luck would have it, they often achieve excellent results, even though they might not have understood everything perfectly to begin with. However, forward movement straightens out these misunderstandings and results in the necessary course corrections on the whole. By the way, some people value teal management for these qualities in particular: its flexibility, speed and efficiency which, aside from all of its other qualities, allow it to easily prevail in a competitive fight with antiquated management systems.

      “Teal”

      Theoretical arguments begin at the most elemental level, around the name itself: the term “teal.” The thing is that in his book “Reinventing Organizations”, 3 Frederic Laloux based his color scheme on the one in Don Beck’s “Spiral Dynamics”. 4 However, he changed the colors around a little in order to make the development dynamics of a company’s organizational system from one level of his theory to the next fit into the spectrum of visible light: from infrared, which corresponds to the most primitive forms of organization for him, to ultraviolet, which he incidentally doesn’t even mention in his work. The thing is that he stops at teal, which he discovered in the course of his studies in the most contemporary forms of companies at the time. For that matter, classical spiral dynamics has a “teal” of its own, not described in “Reinventing Organizations”. Frederic Laloux’s teal corresponds to “yellow” in spiral dynamics, while “amber” (a shade of yellow) fits in with Don Beck’s deep blue. Besides this, there are other color schemes of management systems as well: in the fourth chapter, you will find a comparison table that I put together specifically to help my readers. To put it simply, before you call out a color, you have to clearly define which color scheme you’re talking about.

      In reality, this doesn’t have any influence whatsoever, but such arguments only serve to confuse the situation further. In order to slice through this Gordian knot, we will note that all such discussions boil down to the definition of terms that will be used in our further discussions. That means that proof of the correctness of one version or another doesn’t exist, and cannot exist in principle. In any branch of science, there exists a moment when specialists stop arguing and start negotiating as to what they will begin to call by a particular name or other, because without such an agreement, any further debates are essentially impossible. We have to note that many arguments simply would never have happened if the arguing parties had simply started by defining those words that they planned on using over the course of the argument. That’s why I propose agreeing on the use of "teal" within the framework of this book in terms of management styles as it is understood in "Reinventing Organizations." After all, it is Frederic Laloux to whom we owe the popularization of this term. The aforementioned "Spiral Dynamics" even though it was published significantly earlier, is far less well-known, and often our fellow countrymen find out about it only after getting acquainted with "Reinventing Organizations" and in an attempt to read something further on the subject.

      As far as specialized literature that describes the practices of transitioning to the teal system of management is concerned, I recommend that you get acquainted with the bibliography at the end of this book – or visit http://biryuzovie.ru/category/poleznye-knigi/. There you can find a specially assembled list of publications, along with my comments, which I’m constantly augmenting and updating.

      There’s one other important aspect. I already spoke about this in the foreword, but I will