This Only Works If We Work Together

"Look around, figure out the most valuable thing to do, and then do that thing."

That was my director from my first manager at my first job out of college. His entire management method falls out of this single directive. "Self-organization" he calls it.

There are a few sub-directives that support it.

If you can't figure out what valuable thing to do, ask around.

If you need help or support to do the thing, ask around.

If someone thinks you're not doing the most valuable thing, they can try to convince you of that by providing additional context. But they can't force you to do the other thing.

Otherwise, he trusted that whatever it was that our team chose to do was, in our minds, the most valuable thing we could do at that moment, including switching teams if we felt we weren't a good fit for our project.

We played a lot of Starcraft.

We also shipped a lot. Who's to say that wasn't because of the Starcraft? Our manager never said anything about it — he even joined us sometimes.

Because he knew that if he put the hammer down, it completely destroyed his reputation. Our trust would be shattered. He became just another boss decreeing orders from on high and not giving us the freedom and autonomy to do our job the way. Morale would suffer.

At that moment, our team was among the most effective in the entire org. I remember one moment when the CEO brought our product manager up in an all-hands meeting to demonstrate the feature that we had completed ahead of schedule. I'm particularly proud that, when she demonstrated a little interaction I had worked hard on and the room erupted into applause.

Naturally, Self-organization only works if

People understand the mission of the organization.

People can recognize what a valuable contribution looks like.

People have the capacity and capability to do valuable things.

Otherwise, those people might need a little bit more direction and training. It's not quite the self organized ideal.

Naturally, bad actors that are obviously taking advantage of the system and not doing valuable things should be addressed too. What we did playing Starcraft several times a week toed the line, but we also had high-quality output to show for our work. We knew our goals and purpose as a team and we delivered.

We worked well as a team because we all chose to support the mission of our team. It only worked because we worked together.

I'm using this as an analogy for just about any place where two humans come together. Marriages, families, clubs, churches, partnerships, businesses, cities, states, countries. Much has been written recently about how American pluralistic democracy only works because enough people agree to work together, follow the unwritten rules of society, and obey the laws that we all agree to. One bad actor with enough support from the right people can topple the whole institution down. A foolish notion that we can isolate ourselves and shun the rest of the world ignores the fact that we're all part of interconnected systems that nobody fully understands. We're all part of one big human family — yes, with different values and interests, but one common goal of perpetuating humanity.

This only works if we work together.