May 12 2015
(Updated August 2017 with link to live Handbook)
We see our company's purpose as being to facilitate smart people in getting great things done - not telling them exactly how to do it.
Nothing limits people's motivation and productivity more than jumping through irrelevant hoops.
As we've grown we've realised that it has become more and more important to decentralise decision making and share information effectively.
Over the past six months we’ve been experimenting with some big changes to enable a more empowered and self-directed approach.
We have some beliefs backing the changes:
There are strong commercial drivers:
There are strong commercial drivers:
We realised that we needed to change the way that the agency was managed.
Simon and I worked to understand which the things we both did were leadership driven and which were management that could be shared.
Through continuing review we enabled team members to take on responsibility and control as much as possible. We were confident this would increase team engagement.
The role of the leadership team rapidly changed, and our focus became to facilitate and coach our teams, rather than to manage and direct.
Our focus has been on getting out of the way of our increasingly self-organised teams delivering digital projects.
The challenge has been as much to change our own individual people management habits as it has been to evolve the company's processes.
Old habits die hard!
We realised that we needed to change the way that the agency was managed.
Simon and I worked to understand which the things we both did were leadership driven and which were management that could be shared.
Through continuing review we enabled team members to take on responsibility and control as much as possible. We were confident this would increase team engagement.
The role of the leadership team rapidly changed, and our focus became to facilitate and coach our teams, rather than to manage and direct.
Our focus has been on getting out of the way of our increasingly self-organised teams delivering digital projects.
The challenge has been as much to change our own individual people management habits as it has been to evolve the company's processes.
Old habits die hard!
,We’d seen, heard and read a lot about organisational culture, leadership and change in other companies.
Having better information helps team members make the best decisions on how to deliver their part of a project.
We’ve strengthened our specification, delivery and testing practices so that project delivery is standardised across the agency and easy to monittor.
We’ve also deployed communications tools that work seamlessly, so we don’t think about whether colleagues are on a different floor or on site in a different country. This has included adding softphones on our laptops and embracing collaboration tools such as Slack and Google Hangouts.
We put together a draft Google Doc 'Deeson Handbook' that everyone could contribute to and had a dedicated Slack channel for discussion. (Updated - link to our live agency team handbook)
We spent most of January at a discussion stage. There was very little debate about the principles behind the approach but through collaboration we made some pretty big changes on the details, for example:
The handbook is perpetually in beta as we’re always reviewing our approach. It is the single document that explains our new approach, acts as a reference for new joiners and a guide to how things work in practice at Deeson.
Some examples of thinking that really resonated included Ricardo Semler’s Maverick and 37Signal’s Rework.
Aaron Dignan of Undercurrent also has an interesting roundup of different organisational models including Holacracy, Agile Squads and Self Organising.
We invested a lot of time in well configured and well used project and management information systems such as Xero, Harvest and Forecast, which means everyone can now see what’s going live across the agency.
,Having better information helps team members make the best decisions on how to deliver their part of a project.
We’ve strengthened our specification, delivery and testing practices so that project delivery is standardised across the agency and easy to monittor.
We’ve also deployed communications tools that work seamlessly, so we don’t think about whether colleagues are on a different floor or on site in a different country. This has included adding softphones on our laptops and embracing collaboration tools such as Slack and Google Hangouts.
Having better information helps team members make the best decisions on how to deliver their part of a project.
We’ve strengthened our specification, delivery and testing practices so that project delivery is standardised across the agency and easy to monittor.
We’ve also deployed communications tools that work seamlessly, so we don’t think about whether colleagues are on a different floor or on site in a different country. This has included adding softphones on our laptops and embracing collaboration tools such as Slack and Google Hangouts.
We put together a draft Google Doc 'Deeson Handbook' that everyone could contribute to and had a dedicated Slack channel for discussion. (Updated - link to our live agency team handbook)
We spent most of January at a discussion stage. There was very little debate about the principles behind the approach but through collaboration we made some pretty big changes on the details, for example:
The handbook is perpetually in beta as we’re always reviewing our approach. It is the single document that explains our new approach, acts as a reference for new joiners and a guide to how things work in practice at Deeson.
We put together a draft Google Doc 'Deeson Handbook' that everyone could contribute to and had a dedicated Slack channel for discussion. (Updated - link to our live agency team handbook)
We spent most of January at a discussion stage. There was very little debate about the principles behind the approach but through collaboration we made some pretty big changes on the details, for example:
The handbook is perpetually in beta as we’re always reviewing our approach. It is the single document that explains our new approach, acts as a reference for new joiners and a guide to how things work in practice at Deeson.
,Three months in and we’re really pleased with the results of the changes so far.
We were expecting at least one major problem and we haven't had it (yet!)
Team engagement and satisfaction has improved and we’re seeing increased ownership and autonomy among project teams.
Most importantly we’re confident that this is leading to better digital products and services for our clients - which is something we’re very proud of.
If you’re interested in the details then feel free to ask questions or request a copy of our Handbook document. (Update - live handbook link)
About the author
Tim's focus at the agency is culture and growth, including new services and technologies. Recent work has centred on self-organising teams and how the digital sector can become more inclusive.