"the result of human actions, not of human design"

 

The goal of this Doctrine is to provide simple guidance to modern organizations in establishing a culture of agility, flexibility and responsiveness. The target audience of this doctrine is the C-Suite, Executives, Senior Leaders, or anyone that can impact real cultural change in the organization.  Three major requirements for leadership to impact cultural change and allow for Spontaneous Order to flourish are:

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Organizational Structure- There are no project based teams within Spontaneous Order.  Teams must be small (no more than 7 team members), cross functional, and value-focused teams.  Failure to adhere to this will not allow agility within the organization.

Funding- There are no funded projects.  Funding is to ensure long lasting, value focused teams. Fund teams, not projects.  Failure to adhere to this will not allow agility within the organization.

Metrics- Business and customer outcomes is the focus and what should be measured.  Velocity, hard dates of delivery of a project (time/budget) are useless metrics if we are not delivering business and customer outcomes incrementally (even daily). Are the teams happy?  Are the customers happy? A pulse check should be conducted to ensure happy clients and happy teams, failure to adhere to this will not allow agility within the organization.

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Other than the 3 major requirements above for leadership, Gemba Walks are required by Senior leaders.  Senior leaders should "go see, ask why, and show respect" during Gemba Walks.  In addition the senior leaders should ask "what do you need from me to improve?" The goal is to provide resources and support to teams by seeing what they need so they can be the most effective teams and organization.​

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Other than the items mentioned above, this doctrine is to assist in establishing true intent and main purpose in culture, mindset, and frameworks by being intentional and implicit in it's requirements (no ambiguity is left in this doctrine).  Failure from leadership to implement and adhere to the above will result in failure of Spontaneous Order, and the ability to achieve true agility. To ensure proper implementation of Spontaneous Order, a TruAgile Consultant should be hired.

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There are 4 requirements organizations must adhere to in order for Spontaneous Order to flourish:

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Remove Siloes in favor of Collaboration & Cross-Functionality

Remove Hierarchy in favor of Self-Organization & Empowerment

Remove Bureaucracy in favor of Flexibility

Remove Waste in favor of Efficiency (Lean)

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We only favor the things on the right and favor nothing on the left. Organizations should constantly be striving to achieve and improve the things on the right.

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At the team level, there are implicit and intentional requirements the team(s) must follow:

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Group Creation- The best way of working in a creation of a "thing/product/service/etc" is that everyone (Customer, Stakeholders, etc) that is required in building the "thing" (from start to finish) is to be in the same room (same video call), collaborating together. Group Creation encourages and enables spontaneous order. This includes innovation, "customer collaboration" and instant customer feedback in the building process of a "thing". Instant feedback, real time, immediately from amongst team members and clients is necessary to succeed in maximizing customer value delivered.  In addition, Group Creation ensures quality products, immediate customer satisfaction, and no bugs/defects to be resolved at a later time.  The Andon Cord is highly recommended for real-time improvements (no delayed retrospectives are needed).  Group Creation eliminates a need for useless, boring events or redundant meetings that provide little value in favor of authentic efficiency, innovation, and spontaneous order. It also assists in removing extraneous roles/responsibilities that are not necessary (Lean).

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Boss Centric versus Customer Centric-  More than anything else, value delivery to the client is the most important thing within Spontaneous Order. Everything must be done in favor to satisfy customers and customer value; continuously seeking to improve the customer experience. If the customer is not the center of the organization (Customer Centric), the organization seizes to exist and will fall into Orwellian bureaucratic dystopia only servicing itself with little regard to gaining new customers or customer retention (Boss Centric). Customers will leave for a better product/service offered by the competitor. Employees will leave because they have no purpose.  Practice integrity and ethics for the customer and for the organization to attract and retain customers and workers. Do what is right!

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"Fearless Organization"- Leaders, listen to the teams; the people actually doing the work! Leaders of any sort must establish a Psychological Safe environment. Servant leadership and empowerment of self-organization. There is NO micromanaging, command/control within Spontaneous Order. A great visual aid of a Spontenous Order is that the traditional hierarchy triangle is inverted. This means that those doing the work are at the top and the middle managers and senior leaders are supporting/assisting the teams. Leaders must listen and implement what the team thinks. This is known as the "institutional yes" (made famous by Amazon).

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Take breaks! Celebrate!- (decided by the team the frequency and intervals). Celebrate wins! The frequent breaks should also include ideas for innovating and should occur spontaneously (as mentioned earlier with the Andon Cord). No artificial or inauthentic event is necessary for improvements as the team(s) decides when it is time to innovate spontaneously. Proper breaks are highly effective in rejuvenating a individual, team or organization.  Taking a  walk is highly encouraged (as a team or organization). The 10 min rule (made famous by Steve Jobs).​

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Strive to eliminate dependencies and impediments- Do not "manage" dependencies and impediments. The removal of dependencies and impediments allows more agility and flexibility and reduces delays.  The more overlap of work, and the less hand-offs; the more an organization can achieve spontaneous order and efficiency.  This should reduce delays and increase efficiency (Lean).

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Culture of Experimenting and Refining- We should be making a commitment to continuous improvement, the more frequent we can improve, the better. We are not perfect, because of this we must experiment, experiment, experiment with everything. Then refine!  Evolution, experimentation, failure, risk taking, inspecting and adapting along the way with a goal of flexibility. Then Refine again!  Continuous learning is paramount to a Spontaneous Order; we are never "done" in improving and evolving. We are always striving for improvement, there is no end state of Agility. Again, the Andon Cord is highly recommended for teams.

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Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)- the more frequent/shorter releases, deliveries, and integration the better (e.g. multiple times a day).  Large, big bang integrations and releases should be avoided as they lead to bugs, defects, and unnecessary rework.  Delivery, integrations, releases should be done incrementally daily, and at most, weekly.  This ensures for less things to go wrong as we are working with smaller batches. 

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Everything must be smaller to allow flexibility/Simplify to remove waste- Smaller teams, smaller bodies of work, incremental delivery, etc. "Smaller is better!" is the mantra of Spontaneous Order. In addition, always strive for simplifying, removing waste. The simplest approach is always the best approach.

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The only Metrics that matters- If employees/teams are not happy and passionate about their work (de-moralized), Spontaneous Order was not properly implemented (they must feel their work is purposeful). If clients are not happy and passionate about the product (valuable), Spontaneous Order was not properly implemented. Re-evaluate the above criteria for missed opportunities and improvements.​​

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In addition to this Spontaneous Order Doctrine, please reconsider everything put forth in the Agile Manifesto https://agilemanifesto.org/

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**This Doctrine is an ongoing evolutionary document that must be updated from time to time as new information is learned.**

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Please provide feedback as this document should NOT be created in a silo, but with a experienced Community robust with new ideas and perspectives.

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Contact TruAgile for ideas, suggestions, edits, comments, questions, etc. so we may discuss adding them here! Stay curious!

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What is Spontaneous Order? Learn about it's rich history here....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order

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