Collegial leadership and self-organization – how we learn from our customers
As a hybrid of consulting organization and network, Como Consult has developed over the last almost 30 years with a very unique organizational model. Our offices function with five employees and a managing director, and from a purely formal point of view, they tend to be hierarchical. In practice, however, they are characterized by a high degree of self-organization. In addition, there is the system of partners and a network of 16 freelance consultants who connect with each other through the Como brand for joint assignments. Most consultants are also shareholders. For many years, the latter two systems functioned in an evolutionary, “self-organized” way, without a need for organizing self-organization. When there were different opinions on certain issues, the parties involved would sit down together (in a fairly small group), look deeply into each other’s eyes, and quickly agree on how to proceed. This went well for a long time without major difficulties, also because the number of members in the circle of partners and the network of consultants was quite manageable. However, with Como Consult’s first major growth in 2015, we gradually reached the limits of our previous models: strategic and operational decision-making processes slowed down, it became more difficult for new consultants to find their way in, and different positions were harder to reconcile.
In 2018, some of us began to look more closely at agile organizational development and received training in “Kollegiale Führung” (Bernd Oestereich and Claudia Schröder). There we immediately found first instruments to optimize cooperation in our two non-hierarchically organized subsystems. A short time later, I received a consulting mandate from the Department for Human Resources and Organizational Development (POE) at the Technical University TU Darmstadt to support the introduction of collegial leadership in the Department. I quickly discovered some similarities between the situation in the Department and ours at Como: (a) we wanted to work together in a team (albeit with different motives) without hierarchical leadership and were in need of appropriate formats and processes; (b) we could gain important first-hand experience as a model for our client (the POE as an internal service provider for the TU Darmstadt) in the sense of “walk the talk” and use this in our consulting work.
The POE’s consulting mandate is just one example of many other assignments, from which we always learn a lot for our own further development and our advisory work. One of the most important lessons learned here is definitely how much discipline, courage and humility it takes to leave the familiar paths and explore new ones. Thus, some parallels can be drawn between the challenging role change of the POE head of division (see excerpt from the article below) and Comos’ transition from the “first” to the “second generation” of shareholders (see excerpt below). In both cases, the clarification and localization of implicit and explicit decision-making autonomy (management tasks) is relevant. Another exciting parallel is the desire for a well-balanced commitment (individual contribution to the whole) of employees of the POE and of shareholders / network members of Como Consult. In both cases, there is no manager who ensures or organizes this balance. In both cases, work is being done jointly on how this balance can be organized under shared responsibility. And finally, a variety of instruments have been experimented with in both contexts. Some of the POE’s experiences have also been incorporated into our testing of “more organized self-organization”, especially in the application of sociocratic decision-making instruments.
In the following, I would like to share some of my experiences from the consulting mandate with the POE at the TU Darmstadt. It is an excerpt from the article “Hierarchie ade? Kollegiale Führung in der Hochschulverwaltung” (Goodbye Hierarchy? Collegial Leadership in University Administration), which I published together with Dr. Caprice Weißenrieder (former POE consultant at TU Darmstadt) in the journal “Personal in Hochschule und Wissenschaft entwickeln” (Developing Personnel in Higher Education and Research) (issue 02|2022) in April 2022.
Excerpt:
2. Background: The POE is getting ready for agile organizational consultation
For some time now, the POE has been noting an increasing demand for advice on agile issues. Above all, it is about developing solutions for better dealing with the increasing complexity and unpredictability of everyday work.
As the first point of contact for personnel and organizational development, POE plays a special role at the Technical University. It sees itself as a space for exploring and testing new methods and ways of working together. In order to fulfill this role, the POE team has decided to work with the peer leadership approach as part of an experiment, i.e., a trial exploration.
3. Collegial Leadership: a brief introduction
Oestereich and Schröder (2019, p. 8) describe collegial leadership as “… a dynamic and decentralized leadership distributed among many colleagues, instead of centralized leadership by a few exclusive leaders.” It should be emphasized that it is not a rigid predefined model, but rather an attitude (of agile organizational development) that is implemented, reflected upon and lived in a collegial way through tools, practices, methods, structures, processes and principles in everyday life. This translation into everyday work does not follow a static pattern, but is constantly adapted according to the needs of the team or organizational unit.
In agile organizational development, “… no change objectives are set, but rather the desired values and principles are clarified. Then (one or more largely independent) changes are simply tested on a trial basis. Here, trying out means that the decision is reversible and limited (in time, space, and organizational scope). It is an experiment and failure is possible. Afterwards, observations are made, hypotheses are formulated, and an evaluation is carried out of the changes that have been made and the benefits seen in them. Only then is a decision made on this basis as to whether the changes that have been tested should be retained, further developed or discarded”.
When the approach of peer leadership is introduced into an organization as part of agile organizational development, the best way to do this is to make the desired changes tangible for employees as early as possible. In an experimental phase, the implementation of certain attitudes, tools or processes is tested in short iterative cycles, thus making the desired differences directly tangible. In the context of regular reflection and dialogue formats, employees exchange their experiences and further adapt what has been tested to what is desired. This reflective approach is a prerequisite for an agile (leadership) culture.
The introduction of peer leadership means a gradual shift from the principle of the individual leadership to the principle of shared leadership work. Management tasks are no longer the sole responsibility of a hierarchical manager, but of the entire team.
5. Conclusion
Over a period of one and a half years, the co-author, in the role of an external agile coach, accompanied the POE team at TU Darmstadt in the introduction of peer leadership in the unit. At that time, the team consisted of seven members: one head of unit, four POE officers, one coordinator of internal training and one assistant.
Looking back on a year and a half of collegial leadership in the POE team, one thing is clear: this form of cooperation is not a sure-fire success. It requires continuous adaptation and regular balancing of tensions. This became all the more apparent when the team members were asked about the biggest challenges in the context of writing this article. One of the most frequently mentioned challenges in the course of the transition to collegial leadership was the additional time and resource commitment required alongside day-to-day business. In particular, testing the roles and using various decision-making tools took a lot of time at the beginning. In this context, the development of new processes, structures and communication channels also requires additional resources. Furthermore, it required a rethinking of proven approaches and patterns. This was particularly evident with regard to new decision-making structures and the question of when the entire team should be involved in decisions and in which case each person can decide for themselves. The adoption of new roles and management tasks continues to be challenging and resource-intensive. Some team members complain of a feeling of social pressure when roles and tasks are redistributed, but they are not (yet) willing or able to take them on. This requires continuous attention and occasional support from an external coach to help deal with these tensions.
From the point of view of those involved, the change of role from former head of unit to team member as “par inter pares” has been successful. On the one hand, the willingness of the manager to hand over management tasks was important, and on the other hand, the sense of responsibility of the remaining team members to take on these tasks and to address the former manager less and less in her old role.
The change of role for the former manager is a process that is still ongoing: Even today, there is sometimes still a desire to get the classic manager back, “who just makes a decision”. From a systemic point of view, the legitimation of hierarchy is the relief of teams when it comes to resolving decision-making dilemmas. This shows that the team seems to lack this relief function to some extent. The relatively high degree of self-organization in the team before the transition to cooperative leadership was very supportive in the process. Additional coaching for the manager to help with the role change was also perceived as helpful.
Regardless of the challenges that the introduction of cooperative leadership can bring, many positive changes have taken place since the beginning of the process. In the summer of 2021, after a one-year experimental phase, the POE team decided together to continue working together as a self-organized and collegially led team. The clear support of the department head, who rated the experiment as very successful, contributed significantly to this decision. Overall, the fact that the collegial leadership allows employees to choose new tasks and activities themselves and to try out more is seen as positive. This offers employees great potential for continuously developing their professional and social skills. Thanks to the different perspectives and the use of “swarm intelligence”, many of the decisions made appear more balanced and sustainable than before, which is reflected in the quality of the results. Decisions are now made at exactly the point where the greatest expertise lies in the team. Nowadays, managers can no longer be experts on all issues. Many, but not all, are aware of this. In addition, decisions can be made more quickly because they no longer depend on a single manager.
The distribution of clear roles and tasks, regardless of position in the team, according to the pull principle, has contributed to greater speed. Decisions are made jointly or by a knowledgeable team member alone. They are therefore no longer dependent solely on the manager. In the context of peer leadership, it is explicitly desired that all team members contribute according to their abilities and that the different perspectives help to consider a wide range of aspects. In addition, more topics can be tackled and processed at the same time because the system has become faster and more independent.
The task board and delegation matrix have proven to be helpful tools for supporting the process and making tasks and work organization visible to everyone. This has helped to ensure that previously expressed concerns, such as chaos scenarios or the effects of diffused responsibility, have not materialized because there is a clear division of tasks, roles and thus responsibility, especially in self-organization.
In conclusion, it can be said that the new way of working has completely turned the previous system upside down. This required a high level of willingness to take risks and a great deal of openness on the part of everyone involved (including the regular hierarchy, in which the department continues to be embedded), to get involved in the process and to recognize, name and use emerging tensions for further development in the sense of organizational learning. However, it seems that peer leadership is not suitable for every organization (unit) or every individual and it should be carefully considered in advance whether this form of cooperation is the right approach. One main reason for this could be that peer leadership requires changes in three areas: attitude, tools, and knowledge. And as with all change projects, there are areas and people who find it more difficult than others. At the same time, teaching, research and administration each have their own organizational form and work culture. And even with regard to administration alone, relevant differences can be observed. In human resources and organizational development, for example, people often work who have a background in psychology and sociology and an affinity for new things and trends in organizational development. By virtue of their office, they have an adaptive basic attitude. If you look at areas such as law or finance, the focus there is more on data, facts, processes and structures. So the question here is how the specific context and experience of POE can be transferred to other areas of university administration that have a whole range of normative, legal and other regulatory/control tasks and whose fulfillment may require different types of decision-making processes and routines. To explore this question, we refer to the approach of agile organizational development described above: determine the need for action, experiment with more agile approaches, reflect on their impact, and integrate effective approaches step by step.
We would like to end this article with a quote from the Jewish religious philosopher Martin Buber, whose reflections on human interaction never lose their relevance. In addition, very helpful maxims for developing attitudes in (agile) organizational development can be derived from them. For example, the following: “What is significant is not uncertainty itself, but the answer to it: the willingness to face it with openness and trust and to respond with one’s own life, in contrast to all attempts to protect oneself from it and to reduce it to manageable proportions.” (Friedmann 1999, p 99)
Bibliography
Friedman, Maurice S. (1999): Encounter on the Narrow Ridge. Martin Buber – a Life. Münster: Agenda-Verl.
Oestereich, Bernd; Schröder, Claudia (2017): The Company with Collegial Leadership. Ideas and Practices for the Agile Organization of Tomorrow. Munich: Vahlen.
Oestereich, Bernd; Schröder, Claudia (2019): Agile Organizational Development. A guide to building adaptable organizations. Munich: Verlag Franz Vahlen GmbH.
