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The Open Organization
Leaders Manual
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The Open Organization
Leaders Manual
Instructions for building the workplace of the future

Second Edition

Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Red Hat, Inc. All written content, as
well as the cover image, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.1
INDIVIDUAL COPYRIGHT DECLARATIONS GO HERE

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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LibreOffice. Cover design by Jenna Slawson.

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Additional reading
From Jim Whitehurst
The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance (Harvard Business Review Press)
Organize for Innovation: Rethinking How We Work (Opensource.com)

From the open organization community
The Open Organization Field Guide: Practical Tips for Igniting
Passion and Performance (Opensource.com)
The Open Organization Leaders Manual: Instructions for Building the Workplace of the Future (Opensource.com)
The Open Organization Guide to IT Culture Change: Open Principles and Practices for a More Innovative IT Department
(Opensource.com)
The Open Organization Workbook: How to build a culture of innovation in your organization (Opensource.com)

Contents
Preface to the second edition
Bryan Behrenshausen

Introduction to the second edition
Jen Kelchner

Introduction to the first edition
Dr. Philip A. Foster

Part 1: Planning & Goal Setting
Creating teams that aren't afraid to fail
Catherine Louis

Owning your career in an open organization
Laura Hilliger and Allison Matlack

Setting goals transparently and collaboratively
Michael Doyle

Developing a culture of experimentation on your team
Catherine Louis

Part 2: Organizational Design & Culture Building
Chapter title
Author McLastName

What it means to be an open leader
Jim Whitehurst

An open leader's guide to better meetings
Angela Robertson

To survive Industry 4.0, leaders should think beyond the
digital
Author McLastName
Chapter title
Author McLastName

97
105

Part 3: Motivation & Engagement
Let engagement lead the way

110

Chad Sansing
When empowering employee decision-making, intent is
everything
Ron McFarland

125

The Tao of project management
Allison Matlack

130

Leading through the power of "thank you"
Curtis A. Carver

138

More engaging meetings begin with trustful relationships 142
MaryJo Burchard
Chapter title
Author McLastName

148

Appendix A The Open Organization Definition
Learn More
Additional resources
Get involved

156
157

Preface to the second edition
Bryan Behrenshausen

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imperdiet. Pellentesque ultricies tellus in est gravida consectetur. Proin dignissim consequat porta. Nulla eget dapibus odio, in
blandit nunc. Donec eu nulla nec mi imperdiet gravida in id ipsum. Mauris dolor lorem, sollicitudin at consectetur non, mollis
vitae urna. Duis tempus augue consequat eros malesuada vehicula. Suspendisse potenti.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Nunc orci mi, pharetra nec quam at, blandit lobortis sem. Proin
interdum volutpat feugiat. Aenean a velit ac eros hendrerit imperdiet. Pellentesque ultricies tellus in est gravida consectetur.
Proin dignissim consequat porta. Nulla eget dapibus odio, in
blandit nunc. Donec eu nulla nec mi imperdiet gravida in id ipsum. Mauris dolor lorem, sollicitudin at consectetur non, mollis
vitae urna. Duis tempus augue consequat eros malesuada vehicula. Suspendisse potenti.
Pellentesque vestibulum, lacus a ornare lacinia, justo sem
pharetra metus, et ullamcorper nibh metus eu sem. Phasellus
sed nunc eget metus auctor aliquam. Vestibulum ante ipsum
primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
Duis vehicula fermentum sollicitudin. Vestibulum laoreet mo-

Organize for Innovation

lestie finibus. Sed eu leo massa. Donec justo felis, pulvinar sit
amet est et, luctus rutrum nibh.
Vestibulum vel mi dapibus, hendrerit urna ut, mattis orci.
Nam auctor neque nibh, sit amet bibendum sem finibus et.
Morbi egestas arcu nec lobortis efficitur. Nulla in orci libero. In
at tellus nisi. Quisque tempor metus eget felis porta, sit amet
dictum libero fermentum. Morbi pulvinar ultrices urna, at aliquet est pulvinar et. Suspendisse euismod urna ut lacus viverra
auctor.

Maecenas

interdum

erat.

Nunc

consectetur

scelerisque varius. Integer posuere turpis in felis aliquet,
dapibus efficitur enim venenatis. Praesent vehicula scelerisque
sem, nec lobortis nisl convallis sit amet. Donec at elit nibh.
Cras luctus, ligula et placerat imperdiet, sem nisi egestas
magna, ac aliquet odio tortor eu felis. Aenean feugiat est aliquet
sagittis porta. Suspendisse egestas efficitur dapibus. Pellentesque mauris elit, vehicula quis lorem a, sollicitudin mollis
augue. Vivamus scelerisque ligula ut urna tincidunt, nec pharetra leo tempor. Aliquam vestibulum, turpis non elementum
tristique, orci dolor efficitur velit, eget mollis nunc urna eget ipsum. Integer mattis tempus tortor, vel dapibus nisi efficitur id.
Integer ut dolor ullamcorper, bibendum neque ac, molestie ipsum. Aliquam efficitur eleifend tortor, sit amet molestie augue.
In quis dui in turpis vestibulum efficitur. Vivamus vitae turpis
quis magna finibus porta quis ac justo. Etiam eu tempor lorem.
Proin in quam sit amet nisl euismod volutpat at eget ligula. Ut
ut est urna. Cras sed vehicula lectus. Quisque accumsan lectus
sit amet lacus tristique lacinia. Fusce in enim arcu.

Introduction to the second edition
Jen Kelchner

orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Nunc orci mi, pharetra nec quam at, blandit lobortis sem.

Organize for Innovation

Vestibulum vel mi dapibus, hendrerit urna ut, mattis orci.
Nam auctor neque nibh, sit amet bibendum sem finibus et.
Morbi egestas arcu nec lobortis efficitur. Nulla in orci libero. In
at tellus nisi. Quisque tempor metus eget felis porta, sit amet
dictum libero fermentum. Morbi pulvinar ultrices urna, at aliquet est pulvinar et. Suspendisse euismod urna ut lacus viverra
auctor.

Maecenas

interdum

erat.

Nunc

consectetur

Introduction to the first edition
Dr. Philip A. Foster

eadership is power. More specifically, leadership is the
power to influence the actions of others. The mythology of

leadership can certainly conjure images of not only the romantic
but also the sinister side of the human condition. How we ultimately decide to engage in leadership determines its true
nature.
Many modern understandings of leadership are born out
of warfare, where leadership is the skillful execution of command-and-control thinking. For most of the modern era of
business, then, we engaged leadership as some great man or
woman arriving at the pinnacle of power and exerting this
power through position. Such traditional leadership relies heavily on formal lines of authority through hierarchies and
reporting relationships. Authority in these structures flows down
through the vertical hierarchy and exists along formal lines in
the chain of command.
However, in the late 20 th century, something began to
change. New technologies opened doors to globalism and thus
more dispersed teams. The way we engaged human capital began to shift, forever changing the way people communicate with
each other. People inside organizations began to feel empowered, and they demanded a sense of ownership of their
successes (and failures). Leaders were no longer the sole owners of power. The 21st century leader leading the 21st century

Organize for Innovation

organization began to understand empowerment, collaboration,
accountability, and clear communication were the essence of a
new kind of power. These new leaders began sharing that power
—and they implicitly trusted their followers.
As organizations continue becoming more open, even individuals without "leadership" titles feel empowered to drive
change. These organizations remove the chains of hierarchy and
untether workers to do their jobs in the ways they best see fit.
History has exposed 20th century leaders' tendencies to strangle
agility through unilateral decision-making and unidirectional information flows. But the new century's leader best defines an
organization by the number of individuals it empowers to get
something done. There's power in numbers—and, frankly, one
leader cannot be in all places at all times, making all the deci sions.
So leaders are becoming open, too.

Control
Where the leaders of old are focused on command-andcontrol positional power, an open leader cedes organizational
control to others via new forms of organizational governance,
new technologies, and other means of reducing friction, thereby
enabling collective action in a more efficient manner. These
leaders understand the power of trust, and believe followers will
always show initiative, engagement, and independence. And this
new brand of leadership requires a shift in tactics—from telling
people what to do to showing them what to do and coaching
them along the way. Open leaders quickly discover that leadership is not about the power we exert to influence progress, but
the power and confidence we distribute among the members of
the organization. The 21st century leader is focused on community and the edification of others. In the end, the open leader is
not focused on self but is selfless.
17

Organize for Innovation

Communication
The 20th century leader hordes and controls the flow of information

throughout

the

organization.

The

open

leader,

however, seeks to engage an organization by sharing information and context (as well as authority) with members of a team.
These leaders destroy fiefdoms, walk humbly, and share power
like never before. The collective empowerment and engaged collaboration they inspire create agility, shared responsibility,
ownership—and, above all, happiness. When members of an organization are empowered to do their jobs, they're happier (and
thus more productive) than their hierarchical counterparts.

Trust
Open leaders embrace uncertainty and trust their followers to do the right thing at the right time. They possess an
ability to engage human capital at a higher level of efficiency
than their traditional counterparts. Again: They don't operate as
command-and-control micromanagers. Elevating transparency,
they don't operate in hiding, and they do their best to keep decisions and actions out in the open, explaining the basis on which
decisions get made and assuming employees have a high level
grasp of situations within the organization. Open leaders operate from the premise that the organization's human capital is
more than capable of achieving success without their constant
intervention.

Autonomy
Where the powerful command-and-control 20 th century
leader is focused on some position of power, an open leader is
more interested in the actual role an individual plays within the
organization. When a leader is focused on an individual, they're
better able to coach and mentor members of a team. From this
perspective, an open leader is focused on modeling behaviors
18

Organize for Innovation

and actions that are congruent with the organization's vision
and mission. In the end, an open leader is very much seen as a
member of the team rather than the head of the team. This does
not mean the leader abdicates a position of authority, but rather
understates it in an effort to share power and empower individuals through autonomy to create results.

Empowerment
Open leaders are focused on granting authority to members of an organization. This process acknowledges the skills,
abilities, and trust the leader has in the organization's human
capital, and thereby creates positive motivation and willingness
for the entire team to take risks. Empowerment, in the end, is
about helping followers believe in their own abilities. Followers
who believe that they have personal power are more likely to
undertake initiatives, set and achieve higher goals, and persist
in the face of difficult circumstances. Ultimately the concept of
an open organization is about inclusivity, where everyone belongs and individuality and differing opinions are essential to
success. An open organization and its open leaders offer a sense
of community, and members are motivated by the organization's
mission or purpose. This creates a sense of belonging to something bigger than the individual. Individuality creates happiness
and job satisfaction among its members. In turn, higher degrees
of efficiency and success are achieved.
We should all strive for the openness the 21st century
leader requires. This requires self-examination, curiosity—and,
above all, it's ongoing process of change. Through new attitudes
and habits, we move toward the discovery of what an open
leader really is and does, and hopefully we begin to take on
those ideals as we adapt our leadership styles to the 21 st century.

Organize for Innovation

Yes, leadership is power. How we use that power determines the success or failure of our organizations. Those who
abuse power don't last, but those who share power and celebrate others do. By reading this book, you are beginning to play
an important role in the ongoing conversation of the open organization and its leadership. And at the conclusion of this volume,
you'll find additional resources and opportunities to connect
with the open organization community, so that you too can chat,
think, and grow with us. Welcome to the conversation—welcome
to the journey!
September 2016
Dr. Philip A. Foster is the author of The Open Organization: A
New Era of Leadership and Organizational Development. He is a
business consultant, international speaker, and the host of Maximum Change TV.

Part 1:
Planning & Goal Setting

Creating teams that aren't afraid to fail
Catherine Louis

uccessfully executing on a business goal implies raising
questions about that goal—and it absolutely requires safe-

to-fail experimentation on the path to achieving that goal. When
business goals become inflexible mandates, experimentation
goes by the wayside and a failure-adverse culture will prevail.
This four-step process can help open leaders cultivate a
culture of experimentation in teams working toward a business
goal (rather than creating the kind of failure-adverse culture
that risks becoming less innovative).

Step one: Define your business goal
In general, there is no short of verbiage for defining business goals; however, as a starting point let's use Victor Basili's
definition5 of a conceptual goal:
A goal is defined for an object, for a variety of reasons, with respect to various models of quality, from
various points of view, relative to a particular environment.
I prefer this definition of a goal, because by analyzing its
dimensions you'll end up creating a more clear, more compelling
business goal:

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/handouts/gqm.pdf
24

Organize for Innovation

"A goal is defined for an object": What are we discussing here? Could it be our issue tracking system?
Could it be the relationship between the issue tracking
system and customers? Whiteboard this to visualize
where your scope is.

"For a variety of reasons": What's the problem that
needs to be addressed? When we state a goal, we include the purpose driving the goal!

"With respect to various models of quality": What's the
quality issue with which we need help, and why is it an
issue?

"From various points of view": From whose viewpoint
are we discussing this goal? Customer? Project Manager? Whose opinion matters?

"Relative to a particular environment": Where and
when is the issue being reported?
A business goal implies questions like these, and achiev-

ing it absolutely requires safe-to-fail experimentation. Providing
a business goal as a mandate without allowing teams to question
and fully understand the goal will shut a team down.
Take this poorly written business goal, for example:
"We want to stop people from abandoning their
shopping carts before purchasing."
Now, using Basili's definition, consider the following questions someone is likely to raise about this goal—and the kinds of
responses that person is likely to receive from a leader less
aware of the qualities that make a goal a good one:
•

"What

kind

shopping

being

abandoned?"—"Any cart that isn't purchased."
•

"Why?"—"Because I said so."

Organize for Innovation

•

"What's

the

quality

issue

need

address?"—"Just get the cart purchased faster."
•

"Who's 'we'?"—"Me, your Project Manager."

•

"Where and when is this being reported?"—"Everywhere. Anywhere."

How's your motivation now? Do you feel like experimenting towards achieving the goal?
When taking a question-focused approach to setting goals,
be sure to start with the goal! The ultimate test of effectiveness
for a business goal is whether it motivates a team. A well-written goal stirs the blood.
Let's try this again. See if you can find all five points in
this example of a goal:
"The CEO of our e-commerce site selling women's
apparel would like to see a significant improvement
on the 1,000 to 2,000 abandoned shopping carts we
see per day in the North American market to address this potential revenue gain. He is targeting at
least 70% fewer shopping carts being abandoned
per day."

Step 2: Ask questions about the goal
Next, encourage team members to ask questions about
the goal. You'll need to start digging into the goal so you can understand it better, and the best way to get started is to ask a
bunch of questions.
Some questions that come to mind are:
•

Have we interviewed any shoppers about their
shopping experience?

•

How many clicks must users make from when they
begin shopping to when a purchase is completed?

Organize for Innovation

•

Are non-NA markets not seeing these abandoned
carts? Why?

•

How long in duration is the average online shopping experience?

•

Are the products presented in a clustered, attractive way versus being presented as one product
per page?

•

Are we using any advanced or custom filters
which can improve onsite discovery and navigation?

•

Do we support a fully-automated visual search for
products?

•

Do we understand the customer journey for ordering women's apparel online, and how much time is
each step in this journey taking users?

Lots of questions are possible!
Prioritize these questions. Begin with the customer. In the
example above, if you haven't done any customer interviews to
hear and feel customer pains, then that's where I'd start.

Step 3: Decide how you're measuring progress
Data-driven improvements are possible. After you've analyzed your business goal, and then asked and prioritized the
necessary questions about it, you should work with your team to
establish baseline measurements of where you are today. This is
your starting point. Begin using these metrics to structure your
approach to answering your questions. For example, how many
clicks do users typically make between the moment they start
shopping and the time they've completed a purchase? Let realtime data guide your experimentation!
Using our example above, we might target:
•

Interview results of 80/100 customers with abandoned

shopping

cart
27

experiences:

Have

Organize for Innovation

interviewed any shoppers about their shopping experience?
•

Cycle time # clicks/purchase: How many clicks
are needed from when someone starts shopping to
when a purchase is completed?

•

Cycle time/client: How long is an average shopping experience on our platform?

•

# products/page/category: Are the products presented in a clustered, attractive way versus being
presented as one product per page?

Gather data so that you can develop a coherent baseline
measurement of your starting point. If the customer journey today is a seven-click experience—and you think that reducing the
number of clicks associated with this journey will lead to fewer
abandoned carts—then gather data on average times users
spend at each of these steps.

Step 4: Experiment
Innovation does not occur without experimentation. The
good news is that each one of the questions above can now become an experiment.
Let's take one of the questions above and form an experiment so you get the idea:
Are the products presented in a clustered, attractive way versus being presented as one product per
page?
Let's address this question in the context of experimentation.
•

RESTATING THE QUESTION AS A HYPOTHESIS. We
believe that if we cluster our products in an attractive way, rather than looking at one product
per page, more purchases will occur. (I recom28

Organize for Innovation

mend using the free Strategyzer test card 6 to help
you organize your thoughts around creating your
experiment once you have a hypothesis.)
•

KNOW YOUR RISKIEST ASSUMPTIONS. One critical,
risky assumption we're making is that more purchases will occur if different products are grouped
in an attractive way. But what is an "attractive
grouping," and to whom? Is it multi-colored
blouses with neutral shoes? Is it blue shoes with
white blouses? We'll need to experiment further to
begin to answer this!

We've now created a solid foundation for experimentation.
Next, we need to create a simple test experiment that we can
begin to work on today to test our critical assumptions. We
could attempt several kinds of experiments, including:
•

A/B TESTING, a method of comparing two versions
of a single variable—typically by testing a subject's response to variant A against variant B, then
determining which of the two variants is more effective.

•

CONCIERGE TESTING, or performing a service manually (just like a concierge at a hotel) with no
technology involved. The idea here is to learn as
much as you can via increased human interaction.
A classic example of a concierge service is the beginning of AirBnB, where two guys rented out air
mattresses in their home in San Francisco to validate what types of customers they might get with
this type of service.7

https://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2015/3/5/validate-your-ideas-withthe-test-card

https://blog.adioma.com/how-airbnb-started-infographic/
29

Organize for Innovation

•

LANDING PAGE, a web page on which someone
"lands" in response to some advertisement, or social media campaign. The goal of a landing page is
to convert site visitors into sales or leads. You can
analyze landing page activity to determine clickthrough or conversion rates and gauge the success of the advertisement. One classic example of
this method of experimentation comes from Buffer,
which launched with just two pages.8 The first was
a link to "plans and pricing," and if users that link,
they received a message saying "oops, caught us
before we were ready."

•

VIDEO, or some audio-visual artifact to explain
your product. Telling a story from a user-centric
point of view, including a call-to-action, is a wonderful way to test a hypothesis. Dropbox did this
in 2008 creating a 3 minute video posted to Digg,
which expanded their waiting list from 5,000 to
75,000 literally overnight.

•

WIZARD OF OZ, a method in which it looks like you
have a fully functioning product/feature, but
there's really someone "behind the curtain" doing
all the work. A classic example of this test is Zappos. Founder Nick Swinwarm reserved the domain
name and, without building any sort of inventory
system, walked down the street to the local shoe
store, took photographs of shoes, and posted them
on the website.9

https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weekshow-we-did-it

https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/the-leanentrepreneur/9781118331866/
30

Organize for Innovation

In our example, let's say it's the first day of summer, so we
decide to do a simple A/B test grouping summer shoes with summer blouses arranged by summer colors. Perhaps we create five
groupings of various colors of shoes and blouses in order to begin gathering data. For example, we might run five experiments
with the groupings of multi-colored blouses with neutral shoes,
blue shoes with white blouses, red shoes with multi-colored
blouses, green blouses with beige shoes, and yellow shoes with
yellow pattern blouses.
•

DECIDE WHAT TO MEASURE. Perhaps we decide to
measure click-through rates on products grouped
versus products displayed one at a time, as well as
the number of shoes sold versus the number abandoned in shopping carts.

•

NAME YOUR CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS. For example,
if 10% fewer shoes are abandoned in carts per
month when grouped with blouses by summer colors, we'd be happy with this experiment.

For this example, the resulting test card might end up
looking like this:
•

Hypothesis: We believe that if we cluster our products in an attractive way, rather than looking at
one product per page, more purchases will occur.

•

Test: To verify or refute this hypothesis, we will
run A/B tests grouping summer shoes with summer blouses arranged by summer colors versus
displaying blouses and shoes one product at a
time.

•

Metric: We will measure both click-through rates
and sales of both shoes and blouses displayed one
product at a time and those same products displayed in summer color groups.

Organize for Innovation

•

We are right if: 10% more shoes are sold per
month when grouped with blouses by summer colors

•

Follow up: To further refine attractive product
groupings, we will compare the results to learn
which product groupings are more appealing and
design our next experiment based on this.

Note that experimenting doesn't end here; it's just the beginning! Stated another way: Your team won't achieve its
business goal without cultivating and embracing a culture that
allows us to experiment, fail, adjust and learn.
Catherine Louis is a Certified Scrum Trainer, independent Agile
coach, founder of CLL-Group.com, PoDojo.com, and founding
member of Tech Ladies®.

Owning your career in an open
organization
Laura Hilliger and Allison Matlack

hen we were children and people asked us what we
wanted to be when we got older, we tended to choose

professions with fancy uniforms. We wanted to be a firefighter
or a police officer or an astronaut. In our teens, career aptitude
tests produced broad, unspecific results telling us to work in
healthcare or education. These insights also happened at a time
before digital technologies fundamentally changed our world.
Today, those archetypal career goals are changing—and
rapidly. As The Economist reports, we live in an era when
roughly half of jobs are vulnerable to automation, and "14% of
jobs across 32 countries are highly vulnerable, defined as having
at least a 70% chance of automation."10 Furthermore,

"32%

were slightly less imperiled, with a probability between 50% and
70%." As the magazine reports, "at current employment rates,
that puts 210 million jobs at risk."
Advances in automation and machine learning mean that
technologies can perform certain manual functions and tasks
much more efficiently than humans can. As these and other new
technologies begin freeing up some of the time we've historically spent on rote, manual work, many (if not most) of our
careers are veering toward "knowledge work."

10 https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/24/a-study-findsnearly-half-of-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-automation
33

Organize for Innovation

The knowledge industry is the invisible corpus that lies
behind the financial industry, the technology industry, the
healthcare industry, and every other industry that designs,
builds, and manages our social world. It develops at pace with
the technologies we invent. And it's much less prone to obsolescence. Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot perform knowledge
work, for example, because AI lacks a fundamental human ability to be imaginative and creative.
Building organizations that can effectively utilize the creativity at the heart of knowledge work means following new
blueprints. Organizations designed to foster efficient manual
work take a shape familiar to all of us: They are logical, hierarchical,

and

structured

around

clearly

delineated

career

pathways. Finding your way in them—evolving your abilities, locating new possibilities for challenge and advancement, and
continuing to make yourself relevant to them—is fairly easy to
do. Just follow the organizational chart, practice the prescribed
skills, and take advantage of the training courses neatly curated
by the HR department.
In the 21st century, your ability to be truly innovative
means AI can't easily replace you. But it also means you'll be
working in an organization designed around new principles:
agility, flexibility, and ambiguity. Organizations built on these
principles don't look like the organizations built decades ago.
They're more adaptable, more fluid, more transparent—that is,
more open. And jobs in the knowledge economy aren't always
predefined (if they're defined at all). So how can you take responsibility for your career in environments so full of ambiguity?
How can you assume ownership of your career in an open
organization?

Organize for Innovation

Know thyself
The best place to start is by becoming familiar with your
own goals, aspirations, and learning style. Then you're more
likely to find the support you need because you'll know what
kind of mentorship to seek out.
New organizational models—especially those built on
open principles—are becoming common across industries for a
variety of reasons. One is that knowledge is something that develops through input, and an open organization provides fertile
ground for copious input. Your mentors and experiences in the
workplace, from networking (including the late night drink with
a colleague!) to failed projects, successful initiatives, email
threads, or confusing meetings—all of these experiences provide
your brain with useful input. Your brain forms (and distorts)
memories from this input and you learn. Open organizations
keep that input flowing.
Another reason career paths are much more flexible and
fluid in open organizations is because the organizational structures themselves tend to be more flexible and fluid. Nowadays,
you need to carve your own path through a networked organization, not just "move up" some predefined corporate ladder. This
is where that input becomes even more useful.
Reflecting upon what and how you learn in your working
life is a fundamental part of succeeding in an open organization.
In order to "own" your career, you have to "own" yourself—that
is, understand the inputs you're receiving and recognizing ways
those inputs can be combined and reordered to create new
knowledge. New knowledge is the currency of the knowledge
economy.
So how do you think?
Are you someone who needs to have a complete picture of
a situation or process in order to perform a task, or are you the

Organize for Innovation

kind of person who can focus purely on a specific area and still
get the job done? Knowing how your brain works is fundamental
to career goal setting and planning. And it helps you identify the
gaps in your organization that you are uniquely suited to fill.
The more we reflect, the more clearly we can see how
we'll each need to work as we set off on our individual career
paths. Continuing our example from above: If you're a person
who cannot operate without full context, your ambitions might
be best set on leadership types of roles. But if you perform better with laser-like focus, you might be better setting career
goals in functional applications. The important thing to remember is that each of us defines our own measure of success—but
those measures only become apparent when we've done the
work of understanding our learning styles.
This type of reflection will prevent you from making the
same mistake twice, which means that as you advance in your
career, you'll develop a reputation for constant improvement.
Constant improvement of your skills and active learning about
yourself are integral to success. Even with regard to functional
applications, there's always a new framework or trend to explore. In short, those who stop bettering themselves get left
behind no matter where they are on the corporate ladder.
What do you want to learn? Creating a balance between
understanding yourself and learning specific skills and competencies that support your overarching career goals will help you
lay out a path that makes you happy. And your happiness in any
organization should be your top priority.

Find support
The good news is that you're a continual work in progress.
You have permission to keep exploring different options through
the various phases in your career. The bad news is that it's not
always easy to figure out how to find a lucrative career path that
36

Organize for Innovation

makes you happy, especially when career paths in open organizations aren't always well defined. Sometimes we have to chart
new territory together in the constantly changing knowledge industry.
It's simple to say you should "own your career"—to use
your unique set of skills, experiences, and knowledge to solve
complex problems that excite you. But it's not always so simple
to do for a number of reasons:
•

What if you're just starting out and are so exhausted from trying to answer the question of
what you want to be when you grow up (assuming
that astronaut thing didn't work out) that you
don't have any energy left for this kind of of selfreflection?

•

What if you aren't sure what you want to learn
more about?

•

What if you have no idea what career possibilities
are available to you, even in your own company?

•

What if your dream job hasn't even been invented
yet?

You're in luck if you find yourself with a supportive manager who invests time in helping you navigate your professional
and personal development. But all is not lost if you're on your
own. Maybe you're an entrepreneur or freelancer working for
yourself, or maybe your manager's strengths are in areas other
than people development (like strategy). You'll just need to rely
more heavily on your network: your mentors, coaches, and advocates—the people you look up to who can be compassionate
mirrors to help you identify where you need to focus your development efforts. You'll be surprised at the kind of insights your
colleagues and peers will have! Don't be afraid to ask people
what they think.

Organize for Innovation

Here's one easy, step-by-step method for starting the conversation:
1.

Arrange a video conference with a few people you
respect and trust.

Let them know you want to have a candid conversation

about

your

strengths

and

areas

opportunity as part of your work on your personal
development plan.
3.

Introduce everyone and give each person a few
minutes to talk about their work (maybe you'll find
similarities and connections between these folks).

Introduce the concept of "Yes, and…"11

Ask each person the simple question, "What do
you think my strengths are?" (and take notes).

Thank everyone for their time!

There are several variations of this suggestion, depending
on your preferred communication style and comfort having
these types of conversations. For example, if you're more comfortable talking

with others one-on-one,

schedule several

individual meetings rather than one group session. Or do it in
written form; you can ask outright in an email, or do it anonymously via surveys.
This strategy might feel uncomfortable, but your trusted
colleagues will happily point out what you're good at, and you
might learn something you didn't realize. You can also ask questions like, "What's one thing that would make me more efficient
at my job?" and "What are my blind spots?" And then be open to
the answers you receive.
And managers: Don't be afraid to take risks (calculated
ones!) to allow your team members to experiment with different

11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes%2C_and...
38

Organize for Innovation

roles that bring them joy. The creative people—the inventors—
need freedom and support so they can explore the ways they
can be of most value to your organization, which requires trust
from all parties involved. The most important things you can do
are to clearly articulate your vision so your team knows which
direction to go and then purposefully create a culture of feedback and continuous improvement so your team feels safe being
vulnerable with you and each other. After all, it's difficult to
grow without being vulnerable.
Here are some different techniques you can use to create
a culture of feedback and continuous improvement:
SCHEDULE A WEEKLY TEAM MEETING and include standing
agenda items that allow for retrospectives. What did we do well
last week? What was frustrating last week? What you want to
learn this week?
HAVE CANDID ONE-ON-ONE MEETINGS with your team
members. Tell them how their work makes you feel. Showing
vulnerability will help others be vulnerable.
HAVE YOUR TEAM USE "STOPLIGHT FEEDBACK" when presenting ideas or plans. Ask a team member to introduce an idea,
then write "red," "yellow," "green," and "blue" on a whiteboard
or in a collaborative document. These colors mean the following:
•

Red: "I disagree with this piece of the idea/plan
because…"

•

Yellow: "I have concerns because…"

•

Green: "I love this because…"

•

Blue: "This is missing!"

Next, facilitate a discussion to gather feedback. As team
members share, have them categorize the type of feedback by
writing it under one of the colors. For example: "I'm not sure
about how stakeholders will react to that logo placement." Write
that under yellow. "The integration won't work that way be-

Organize for Innovation

cause…" Put that under red. Or, "The DIY manual you sent is
great for onboarding too!" That goes under green.
DEVELOP A FAIL-FORWARD MENTALITY and help your team
have one too. View mistakes as learning opportunities—because
that's exactly what they are. Making a mistake on your team
should be acceptable, as long as everyone learns from it.
VIEW MISTAKES AS A COLLECTIVE PHENOMENON. Individuals don't set out to make mistakes; mistakes just happen. You
can dissect a mistake and try to find a root cause and learn
about different perspectives. Use a "why" strategy to discover
them ("Why did the Titanic sink? Because it hit an iceberg."
"Why did it hit an iceberg? Because it was going too fast at
night." "Why was it going too fast at night? Because the timeline
to get to New York was too short.").
TAKE TIME TO RECOGNIZE ACCOMPLISHMENTS, even the
ones that seem small in comparison to all the work that's left to
be done.
LEARN CONSTANTLY. Encourage your peers and your team
to do the same. There are several ways to make learning engaging:
•

Start a book club on your team and read an appropriate text, then discuss it in a monthly or
quarterly meeting. Fridays can be good for book
club meetings.

•

Ask people about their personal learning and hobbies and check in on them ("So Laura, did you get
your dry-suit diving certification yet?").

•

Invite external speakers to do Q&A sessions about
their work with your team.

•

Ask another department to run a workshop for
your team.

•

And ask your team for more ideas!

Organize for Innovation

As you try some of these strategies with your team, don't
be afraid to have open conversations about professional and personal skill development. And remember that the most valuable
work comes from people who are happy and in roles that allow
them the flexibility and freedom to do what they love to do.

Machines we are not
As automation becomes more prevalent and knowledge
work more ubiquitous, we have more opportunity than ever to
marry our passion and imagination in addressing problems of
global scale. We can choose what we want to learn and what we
want to work on. And most incredibly, we can change our minds
at any time and still have impact in the world.
What's most important is that we take the time to reflect
on what success and happiness mean to us personally, so we can
confidently step into ambiguous problem spaces knowing we'll
be okay. People aren't machines. They're complex beings with an
immense aptitude for development and change. Creating an environment where that kind of change is supported

and

celebrated is critical for open leaders hoping to support knowledge workers and empower them to own their careers.
Laura Hilliger is a writer, educator and technologist. She's a
multimedia designer and developer, a technical liaison, a project
manager, an open web advocate who is happiest in collaborative
environments. She's a co-founder of the We Are Open Co-op, an
Ambassador for Opensource.com, is working to help open up
Greenpeace, and a Mozilla alum.

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Allison Matlack is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer turned
Principal Product Communications Strategist at Red Hat who is
known for her enthusiastic speaking style and passion for helping leaders inspire their teams. She's an experienced Agile
practitioner and coach of software engineering teams in various
stages of maturity, as well as a communications specialist with a
change-management style steeped in the tradition of the Open
Decision Framework.

Setting goals transparently and
collaboratively
Michael Doyle

n any organization, everyone is ultimately working together
to realize a vision. We can often lose sight of this fact when

we get stuck in the day-to-day. Instead of working seamlessly together, we can often create friction as we bump against each
other. We might not instantly understand how our work and the
work of others are contributing together to a unified picture.
But if we pull back for a moment and reflect on how our
work serves others in the broader context of the organization's
vision, then we can begin to realize the importance of inviting
others into our personal goal-setting processes. By doing so, we
help others not only understand how our work contributes to a
vision but also see their place within it.
The Open Organization includes an entire chapter on making inclusive decisions, and it outlines the benefits of doing so.
Goal setting is just another form of decision making, one that involves determining where you intend to focus your energy to
achieve anticipated results over a defined period of time.
Whether you're an individual contributor, a manager of a team,
or a director of multiple teams, the benefits of setting goals
transparently and collaboratively are equally applicable.
Using the aforementioned chapter from The Open Organization as a guide, this chapter will explore the benefits of
collaborative goal-setting, then outline some steps for taking

Organize for Innovation

transparent and collaborative action. If you're an individual contributor, then use this chapter to begin identifying actions you
can take to be more transparent and collaborative in your goal
setting. If you're a manager of a team (or director of multiple
teams), use the information presented here to develop your
teams' transparent and collaborative goal setting practices by
helping them understand the tangible benefits of being open.

Why set goals in the open?
The Open Organization notes that inclusive decision making "gives you a moment to look at the bigger picture and how
your role fits into the overall business plan. It allows you to step
back and look at the forest, not just the tree in front of you."
In today's always-on, constantly connected world, this opportunity for thinking is a gift—a luxury, really, because it
affords us a moment to pause and understand how our work
contributes to a greater sense of purpose beyond ourselves, our
team, or our department.
With that bigger picture more firmly in our minds, we can
look around and see how other individuals, teams, or departments can help us achieve our goals, or how they will be
impacted by the goals we decide to set.
IT BUILDS NETWORKS. As The Open Organization puts it,
"The more transparent you make the decision-making process,
the more effectively you can turn those decisions into real action
that everyone will engage in." By thinking in this way, we've just
created for ourselves a massive opportunity to turn our goal setting into a networking and relationship building exercise, which
benefits both us and the organization. Sharing our goals is the
perfect excuse to bolster existing working relationships and
reach out into the organization to create new ones. We'll not
only be strengthening our corporate networks and creating potential future opportunities for ourselves, but also be increasing
44

Organize for Innovation

our understanding of others' roles and the ways they also connect to the company's vision—creating alignment for us and our
team. It may even make the people we engage pause for a moment to reflect on the bigger picture, so this gift we've given
ourselves by taking a moment to reflect is now paid forward to
others.
IT LEADS TO BETTER RESULTS. When it comes to open goal
setting, The Open Organization says that, "Opening up leads to
better decisions, better engagement, better execution, and ultimately

better

results."

can't

know

everything.

Acknowledging that fact is a great strength, not a weakness, because it fosters your learning mindset, opening you up to other
perspectives and ideas. It's called being resourceful, and it's the
first step towards being able to influence those around you to
help your cause. Eric Raymond's summation of Linus' Law (in
his essay and book The Cathedral and the Bazaar) applies
equally well to software development and goal setting: "Given
enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Inviting others into the
process enables us to find the limitations and gaps in our thinking more quickly.
IT STRENGTHENS CULTURE. By including others in our goal
setting, we not only gain their perspectives (leading to a better
outcome) but also model the behaviors of an open culture for
them to experience. This modeling of behavior is important. As
The Open Organization says, "Collaboration builds understanding, trust, and buy-in." But I believe that's not the entire story;
how we behave when we collaborate is what really helps us
achieve success and buy-in. People see what we are doing (collaborating)

but

they

experience

how

are

doing

(transparently). Our behavior becomes our message.
IT CREATES NEW OPPORTUNITIES. Transparent collaboration around setting goals has great benefits to the organization,

Organize for Innovation

no doubt, but it can also be the differentiator that sets us apart
in the organization and opens up new opportunities for us.
We're more likely to achieve our goals when we open them
up, because others understand how they can support us in
achieving them. But we're also establishing a verifiable track
record of being able to set goals and achieve them, while also
demonstrating that we are the type of person that can work with
others to achieve the company's vision.
If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then execution is
setting the table and cleaning up afterwards. Fortunately, taking
action to set goals transparently and collaboratively can be very
simple. As The Open Organization puts it, "The good news about
inclusive decision making is that it's easy to start. You can simply ask a few others for their thoughts on a decision you are
making."

Approaching transparent and collaborative goal
setting
The Open Decision Framework12 provides a useful process
for setting goals transparently and collaboratively. Applying it to
goal setting means identifying people that will be impacted by
your goals or those who could help you make them better. Invite
these people to hear you articulate your goals, and allow them
to share their feedback on those goals with you. At the heart of
the Open Decision Framework is constant communication: The
framework guides you on what things to consider communicating, who to communicate them to, and when to communicate
them.
Whatever goal setting methodology you choose (be it
SMART, OKRs, or something else), approach the process as its

12 https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-decisionframework
46

Organize for Innovation

own project in a transparent and collaborative way. In other
words, treat the goal setting process as its own project, just like
you would the work toward the goals themselves.
START WITH WHERE YOU ARE. Before stating your wild
goals for the future, first build an understanding of where you
are now. This way you'll be able to chart a clear path from here
to your ideal future state—that is, once you've identified your
goals.
First, begin building that understanding. Look around you
and see what information and resources you already have at
your disposal: Corporate vision and mission statements, departmental goals and objectives, team SWOT analysis, your own
development plan—these are all good examples of existing internal sources of information that can help you build your
understanding of your current working landscape and align with
others in the business.
Next, add more depth to that landscape. Look for current
topics and trends inside the organization. Look externally to
your customers' focus, then examine industry trends. This can
be as simple as taking note of what senior leaders in your organization are talking about, what your customers are posting on
their websites, and what industry news feeds are promoting to
get a greater sense of what's happening around you.
This added layer of information can help you start seeing
ways you, your team, or your department could set goals that
contribute to serving your customers and achieving your company's vision. This creates alignment.
Information that feeds into your understanding of the current landscape doesn't just have to come in the form of artifacts,
however. Think about who you might speak with to add to the
written information you have: managers, peers, direct reports,
customers. In every conversation is an an opportunity to spend a

Organize for Innovation

couple of minutes building a greater understanding of the environment you work in.
ARTICULATE WHERE YOU WANT TO BE. Now that you've
started assessing some areas in which you, your team, or your
department could invest to begin solving a customer problem
and align to the company's vision, you can identify more specifi cally who you are serving and what the business need is by
creating some goals to guide that investment.
The Open Decision Framework poses some useful questions to identify stakeholders and alignment to the business. For
example:
•

Whose problem am I trying to solve?

•

What are the people I serve looking for from me?

•

What's the business need?

•

Who will I need or want help from?

•

Who could be impacted from my work?

•

Who has set a similar goal before?

•

Who is likely to disagree, dissent, reject, or opt
out?

•

Who else may care?

By answering these types of questions you'll be able to
start articulating your goals as objectives that solve a business
need for a stakeholder in alignment with the company's vision.
This articulation is what you can take to stakeholders to ask for
their feedback; the act of doing this underscores your transparent and collaborative engagement.
ENGAGE WITH YOUR STAKEHOLDERS. Now you have an understanding of where you are and you can articulate your goals
to your stakeholders. Great! Now it's time to meet with them
and gather their feedback and input.
You could use your own venues for this. Remember that as
a manager of a team or a director of multiple teams, The Open

Organize for Innovation

Organization says, "you have the power to create venues for
bringing people together, and you have the power to set the
agenda."
In that meeting, share your problem statement, goals, and
intended approach to help your stakeholders understand your
thinking behind the goal setting process. Then leverage this opportunity to gather rich feedback by going beyond the generic,
"Any questions?" and asking specific questions to elicit more
useful feedback:
•

Where do you disagree with our definition of the
problem statement?

•

From your experience, what gaps do you see in
our approach?

•

Given how you see our team's strengths, where
could we be bolder in our action?

•

Who else do you think could help us improve our
goals?

Getting started with this could be as simple as inviting
your stakeholders to one of your regularly scheduled meetings.
Or your could get more creative: host a panel discussion, give a
series of lightning talks, or establish some other platform altogether. The point is that it doesn't have to be difficult and it
doesn't have to be boring—just keep your focus on the end
game, share your goals, and get some feedback.
If you can't get the people to come to you, then go to
where the people are. Use existing venues such as asking for a
few minutes to present your goals in another team's meeting.
Look to the virtual world; The Open Organization reminds us
that, "By using technology as an ally, you can reach out to far
more people in the organization than can fit in a meeting room."
Look for existing communications vehicles that you could hitch

Organize for Innovation

your wagon to, such as newsletters, intranet landing pages, or
local and regional office communications.
Of course, whatever means you use to engage with your
stakeholders, as The Open Organization tells us, "When you do,
be open, honest, and frank." Acknowledging that you don't have
all the information is a great way to allow others to step in and
help fill the gaps.
REMAIN TRANSPARENT. Transparent and collaborative goal
setting is not a one time activity. Just as glass needs regular
cleaning to avoid becoming opaque, your goals and collaboration

with

stakeholders

need

regular

review.

Keeping

stakeholders informed about progress in achieving your goals is
as important as informing them about the goal setting process in
the first place. Your biggest obstacle to achieving this is your
willingness to create the time and space for it to happen. There
are two ways to get around this problem, and you can use them
both:
1.

Go guerrilla. As circumstances change with the passage
of time and people move in, out, and around the organization use these moments as opportunities to reconnect
with your stakeholders to update them on progress, celebrate successes, and solicit feedback.

Get programmatic. Dedicate a segment of your regular
All Hands meeting to reconnect your team and stakeholders to your goals, progress, and remind them how
their roles connect to the company's vision.
Meetings and events are ephemeral, so make sure you

generate artifacts from them that others can consume asynchronously. Slide decks, video recordings, podcasts, and blogs
are all good examples of content you can extract from a meeting
and make available for others to consume when they have the
time. Creating and promoting these artifacts are the perfect

Organize for Innovation

tasks for anyone in your team looking to develop their communication skills.
Ongoing communication is the key to being an open organization. By communicating regularly you are establishing a
habit that builds an open culture: "Setting goals transparently
and collaboratively? Oh that's just how we do it here."
Michael Doyle supports growth in others through executive
coaching and leadership development—inspiring them to turn
knowledge into action one step at a time by openly sharing his
development journey.

Developing a culture of experimentation
on your team
Catherine Louis

ost companies support the idea of incorporating innovation into their business strategies, as it can help

increase market share and generate additional profits through
new products or service offerings.
But too often, these same companies fail to realize that innovation doesn't occur without experimentation. To successfully
innovate, you need to conduct experiments—lots of experiments.
Some will succeed, and lots more will fail. By definition, experimentation is "the process of performing a scientific procedure,
especially in a laboratory, to determine something" as well as
"the action or process of trying out new ideas, methods, or activities." Innovative organizations don't isolate such innovation
practices to certain segments of the business; they cultivate an
attitude of experimentation throughout, weaving it into the very
fabric of the entire organization.
So the question for your innovative organization becomes
"How do we create a culture that allows us to be comfortable
with trying out new ideas, methods, and activities using a scientific procedure?" Having a healthy culture of experimentation is
the only option if teams wish to innovate. And organizational
leaders can play a significant role in fostering that kind of culture.

Organize for Innovation

Before teams can even begin operating in an experimenting mode, leaders must shift their mindset to operate not like a
know-it-all, but as if the world is truly a complex space, that we
don't know it all, and that we can't know something unless we
try it out.
When I visit companies and hear leaders say things like
the following, I quietly take them around back for coaching:
•

"Your demo failed." (This is usually accompanied by a
scolding face.)

•

"You need to run everything by me before conducting a
test with the customer." Screeching brakes are heard as
innovation comes grinding to a halt.

•

"Let's do a dress rehearsal showing the customer how
this operates before giving them the feature to manipulate." No, no, no—put the software in your customer's
hands as early as possible. You'll learn what's wrong
with your user interface. You'll reduce risk, increase
quality, and build a relationship with the customers.

•

"Well, obviously they need [insert feature X that will get
me my bonus if released within the year]." Carefully
think about how your compensation program may hinder
creating an experimentation culture.
Taking a deeper look at the first three points, fear of fail-

ure is overwhelmingly the operating model. The last point is a
desire for monetary success over doing what's right for the customer, regardless of where the idea comes from.
Instead, we want leaders involved in conversations to encourage experimentation. Those conversations sound like this:
•

"What is the customer's problem? Have you observed
this?"

•

"What is your hypothesis?"

Organize for Innovation

•

"What are your critical assumptions that must be true
for your idea to work?"

•

"Do you need help designing an experiment to test if
your hypothesis is true or false?"

•

"What can you test to (in)validate your hypothesis?"
So how can you move from the first kind of conversation

to the second? Here's my advice: Don't wait for the perfect moment—just start!
Here are nine pointers to help get you start experimenting
as a team:
1.

Don't jump into the solution space. First, define your problem. State it as a hypothesis.

List all of your assumptions.

On a 2x2 matrix, rank each assumption in
terms of uncertainty versus risk. Identify the
highest-risk, most uncertain assumptions before moving on to step 4.

Create a simple test experiment that you can
begin to work on today. Action is key; however,
think low-fidelity, rapid prototyping to be able
to run this test. (For ideas on how to start prototyping, try the exercise at the end of this
article.) In other words, be able to collect as
much information with as little effort as possible. The key is to run your experiment with
real people to get real results. The free test
cards from Strategyzer are wonderful to help
get teams thinking with a test mindset. Each
card begins by stating the hypothesis, then the
test, an accompanied metric, and criteria for
success.

Organize for Innovation

Gather the data and record everything: The
data you collect and record will guide you further.

Review results as a team. If you use the test
card, you will have thought about criteria for
judging whether your test was a good one. Ask
questions! What did you learn? Do you need to
change your hypothesis based on what you
learned? Do you need to do a new experiment?
Do you need more data?

Share the results with the rest of the organization—especially the failed experiments.

Celebrate the learnings. You don't need to
copy Spotify's Failure Wall (described in Henrick Kneiberg's Engineering Culture, Part II),
but the point is to celebrate what you learned,
and how you want to conduct the next experiment to incorporate what you want to change.

Rinse and repeat!

Steps 7-9 are crucial for leaders to help make this culture
change stick. Leaders must hold the space where anyone can experiment. Anyone can run a failed experiment because these
failed experiments mean we learn. You need to make it safe to
take risks and to remove impediments. Start today with your
own new mentality that will sweep across the entire organization: Instead of "no failure is allowed here," adopt the mindset of
"We won't know until we run an experiment." It's your only option if you wish for innovation to happen.

A brief example: Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club's hypothesis was that men don't need
fancy razors with lots of fancy features, nor do they want to
spend time shopping for them. Their experiment involved creat55

Organize for Innovation

ing a one-minute video13 sharing the problem and offering a solution by inviting viewers to link to a landing page where they
could place an order. Within 48 hours, they knew the experiment
worked: They had received more than 12,000 orders.14
Catherine Louis is a Certified Scrum Trainer, independent Agile
coach, founder of CLL-Group.com, PoDojo.com, and founding
member of Tech Ladies®.

13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI
14 https://www.inc.com/magazine/201707/lindsay-blakely/how-i-did-itmichael-dubin-dollar-shave-club.html
56

Part 2:
Organizational Design &
Culture Building

Chapter title
Author McLastName

n The Open Organization, Jim Whitehurst defines an open
organization as one that "engages participative communities

both inside and out." For Whitehurst, the success of future organizations depends on their ability to successfully interact with,
learn from, and support the broader communities surrounding
their work and their products.
But working this way doesn't come naturally to all leaders.
In this chapter, I'll not only explain the important role community plays in an open organization's existence but also explore
why an organization would want to build a community in the
first place. I'll share with open leaders the lessons I've learned
leading my own open organization for several years—because I
really do believe it's the best way to generate new innovations
today.

The crazy idea
When we launched Nethesis in 2003, we were just system
integrators. We only used existing open source projects. Our
business model was clear: Add multiple forms of value to those
projects: know-how, documentation for the Italian market, extra
modules, professional support, and training courses. We gave
back to upstream projects as well, through upstream code contributions and by participating in their communities.

Organize for Innovation

Times were different then. We couldn't use the term "open
source" too loudly. People associated it with words like: "nerdy,"
"no value" and, worst of all, "free." Not too good for a business.
On a Saturday in 2010, with pasties and espresso in hand,
the Nethesis staff were discussing how to move things forward
(hey, we like to eat and drink while we innovate!). In spite of the
momentum working against us, we decided not to change
course. In fact, we decided to push harder—to make open
source, and an open way of working, a successful model for running a business.
Over the years, we've proven that model's potential. And
one thing has been key to our success: community.
Together with the Nethesis guys, we decided to build our
own open source project: our own operating system, built on top
of CentOS (because we didn't want to reinvent the wheel). We
assumed that we had the experience, know-how, and workforce
to achieve it. We felt brave.
And we very much wanted to build an operating system
called NethServer with one mission: making a sysadmin's life
easier with open source. We knew we could create a Linux distribution for a server that would be more accessible, easier to
adopt, and simpler to understand than anything currently offered.
Above all, though, we decided to create a real, 100% open
project with three primary rules:
•

completely free to download,

•

openly developed, and

•

community-driven

That last one is important. We were a company; we were
able to develop it by ourselves. We would have been more effective (and made quicker decisions) if we'd done the work inhouse. It would be so simple, like any other company in Italy.

Organize for Innovation

But we were so deeply into open source culture culture
that we chose a different path.
We really wanted as many people as possible around us,
around the product, and around the company. We wanted as
many perspectives on the work as possible. We realized: Alone,
you can go fast—but if you want to go far, you need to go together.
So we decided to build a community instead.
We realized that creating a community has so many benefits. For example, if the people who use your product are really
involved in the project, they will provide feedback and use
cases, write documentation, catch bugs, compare with other
products, suggest features, and contribute to development. All
of this generates innovations, attracts contributors and customers, and expands a product's user base.
But quickly the question arose: How can we build a community?
We didn't know how to achieve that. We'd participated in
many communities, but we'd never built one.
We were good at code—not with people. And we were a
company, an organization with very specific priorities. So how
were we going to build a community and foster good relationships between the company and the community itself?
We did the first thing one must do: study. We learned from
experts, blogs, and lots of books. We experimented. We failed
many times, collected data from the outcomes, and tested them
again.
Eventually we learned the golden rule of the community
management: There is no golden rule of community management People are too complex and communities are too different
to have one rule "to rule them all."

Organize for Innovation

One thing I can say, however, is that an healthy relationship between a community and a company is always a process of
give and take. In the rest of this chapter, I'll explain what that
means.

Giving
When we launched the NethServer community, we realized early that to play the open source game we needed to
follow the open source rules. No shortcuts. We realized we had
to convert the company into an open organization and start
working in the open.
We are aware that for many companies, introducing open
innovation involves a significant cultural shift. We at Nethesis
are always struggling with that, even if being open is our mission. But I have to be honest: It's not at all easy.
If your company expects to benefit from a relationship
with a strong community, it has to give first in order to build a
solid relationships based on reciprocal trust and transparency.
And giving code is not enough. Releasing an entire open
source project isn't enough.
The truth is that you have to invest in people. You have to
put people first, and put people before code. As a company, you
have to devote your time to building relationships—and giving
first.
Building community is not an efficient short-term strategy.
And even if it gets you some quick returns in three to six
months, those returns will be a very small representation of the
full potential value you could be reaping. It's a long journey and
it takes time. Results can take months or years of work.
But it pays off! Trust me. If you're a leader hoping to
leverage the power of community, remember the following.
A COMMUNITY ISN'T STRICTLY A MARKETING CHANNEL. It's
an entirely different animal. Your community doesn't exist for
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you to engage in direct sales (I keep my community at a safe distance from my salespeople). You can't even use the same types
of communication; in marketing, the message is from the company to the audience. In the community, the communication is
primarily member to member, and you exist to make that easier.
CLARIFY THE RELATIONSHIP AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Why
has the organization decided to build a community and support
the project? What does it hope to gain? Conversely, what will the
community gain? A company should understand a community's
needs and expectations in order to earn its trust. You can't ask
people to devote their time if they think that you're making
money from their volunteer efforts. Don't leave space for grey
areas here. In our case, we stated that NethServer is a community effort, founded and sponsored by a company (Nethesis).
Nethesis' business model is to sell software, professional support, and services to other companies, customers, and resellers.
We use a portion of our revenue to fund the development of
NethServer (official site hosting, community initiatives, sponsoring, and so on). Community and company have the same target:
making NethServer better and more successful. And NethServer
benefits enormously from the resources that the company invests into it. The company pays NethServer coders to write
features that the customers and users need and works with the
community to make NethServer a better product. Because the
company works in the open and as part of the community, and
because the code is released under the GPLv3, NethServer itself
will continue to be free. That's a virtuous circle—everyone wins.
COMMUNITY MANAGERS AREN'T SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR
THE COMMUNITY.

Great leaders ensure that the entire company

is responsible for working with the community. Community-centric companies involve participation from as many employees as
possible, so they involve other staff members in community dis-

Organize for Innovation

cussions and initiatives. Yes, you should hire a community manager if you're serious about building community. It should be a
full-time role—someone in charge of facilitating the relationships between these entities, especially in the early stages. But
the entire organization needs to support the community and its
mission. For example, I personally am both the voice of the community inside company and the voice of the company inside the
community. Actually, to succeed at the job, I must participate at
a level that can appear to be disloyal to my employer and in favor of the community; I'm a kind of diplomat and translator
between the community and the company. I'm really the middleman.
Next, let's discuss what your organization should expect
to give if it wants to cultivate community. I'll explore five key requirements.

1. Be welcoming
You should be aware that someone's first experience of
and in the community is critical, so be sure people feel acknowledged when they encounter you. They have to know what to do
first after they've joined you. Follow their first posts or activities
with a prompt response. Receiving a response after a few days
is a bad welcome for newcomers.
In my community, for example, I create a welcoming post,
in which I offer my warm welcome to the new people and ask
them to feel safe and to introduce themselves: What are you
working on? Why are you here?15
You would be amazed at how these simple sentences unleash positive behaviors from newcomers. You show not only
that you've have noticed they're here, but also that you care

15 https://community.nethserver.org/t/weekly-welcome-to-newmembers-25-jul-16/3999
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about them, their lives, and their aims. Suddenly, they feel at
home and compelled to participate, if only to give back and
thank you for the attention.
You can't set the proper cultural tone alone. Creating an
ambassador group might help. 16 This group should be the community's engine, a group that's able to set a high bar, nurture a
culture, and share your community vision, mission, and values. 17
Our Ambassadors have a set of social norms and rules that they
undertakes to respect: lead by example, be humble, be inclusive,
be full of gratitude, show your passion, be playful.
The don't just live those rules; they live them every single
day.

2. Be inclusive
You have to create an environment in which people feel
safe. It doesn't matter how fun and amazing your project is. If
people don't feel safe, then they won't contribute. That's a big
problem in many technical communities.
You can avoid this by creating rules that help structure a
safe environment and help people lead by example. Writing your
rules somewhere is not enough to create a welcoming and inclusive culture in a technical community—you have to live these
rules.
In our NethServer community,for instance, we have a simple rule and invitation for new people: "Don't be afraid to ask
stupid questions. Someone else will learn from every stupid
question that you ask."18 It's a very powerful rule, and it helps us

16 https://community.nethserver.org/t/nethserver-ambassadors-group/
4782
17 https://community.nethserver.org/t/thoughts-about-nethservermission-vision-and-values/4080
18 https://community.nethserver.org/faq
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Here's another (related) rule: The phrase "RTFM" is
banned. "Read the F****** Manual" is not an answer. It's not inclusive. It actually excludes people, and doesn't help people feel
like they can safely ask questions. Instead we point newcomers
to documentation for simple solutions and give them links to
specific information. Sure, that takes more time—but it is much
friendlier.

3. Listen to your community first, then speak
This is very difficult. Truly listening is hard. You will be
tempted to steer the discussion too much and not listen. Don't
do this. Be open-minded and be ready to change your mind. Be
ready to have genuine discussions and make sure your community leaders are ready to do the same.
Listening alone is not enough. You should teach your community how to successfully hold discussions and how to
effectively explain their needs to one another. Show them that
you're inclined to listen if they are ready to discuss everything.
For instance, members should be aware that suggesting a
new feature is not enough to get that feature implemented. They
have to convince the whole community that such a feature is essential for the project. They have to fight for that. Then, you
have to be ready to chime in the discussion, actively listen, and
distill good ideas.
As a reminder of what it means to truly listen, I always return to this quote from Simon Sinek:
When we're close to ideas, what we hear is criticism. When we're open to criticism what we get is
advice.19
Remember that every time you need to reply to someone.

19 https://twitter.com/simonsinek/status/199260848663969793
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4. Be transparent
You'll be tempted to keep your discussions private. You
should tell anyone accustomed to working in secret to stop doing that and to become more transparent. Otherwise, no
contributors can actually understand what is going on, and no
one will feel like they can get involved.
Put another way: Try to work out loud. Show what you are
working on, and keep people updated on your last achievements. Ask all community members to do the same.
Here's a concrete way to practice transparency. I could
give some common pieces of advice, like:
•

Have all your bugs completely public and visible
to everybody

•

Have all features requested exposed

•

Maintain a public development planning document
and a clear roadmap

•

Make sure all code changes are done in the form
of pull request

. . . and all of them would be perfectly applicable. But
they're not enough.
Traditionally, much of the development that occurs in
open source space happens in code repositories and bug trackers, and those are not places that users of the software tend to
hang out. This separation between developers and users means
users don't really see development discussions happening, and
contributors may not always get feedback or well-deserved acknowledgments from users.
We use our community platform on Discourse for everything: support requests, bugs, testing processes, development
discussions, community organization—really everything!20 We

20 https://community.nethserver.org/categories
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use GitHub just to keep track of issues, code changes, pull requests, and technical stuff. This means developers can help
people with support questions, for example, or they can help
with the community discussions. They could be pretty involved
everywhere.
Everything is public. Everything is clear. We have a unique
place to congregate as we bring everyone together.

5. Lead the support, at least at the beginning
As a company, you must take over the support requests,
since asking a question and waiting for an answer for days is a
frustrating feeling. That's a bad first experience for new contributors and customers alike.
But answering all the support questions is not enough,
and it doesn't scale. Train your community to answer instead.
It's way more sustainable in the long run.
You can't be always the only one who helps. Involving others in this process becomes essential. Here's a simple tip: Call
upon specific people to help other specific people. Doing that,
you'll obtain three outcomes:
•

Called into question, people will be more inclined
to participate and lend a hand

•

People feel like experts in the field, and that helps
them realize their own strengths

•

Newcomers will feel like they've truly helped, and
they'll often be thanked for their efforts, which is
very satisfying

So far, we've seen that open organizations can benefit
from relationships with strong communities only if they're ready
to give first. And giving code is not enough.
Open organizations (and open leaders) have to provide
what communities really need: a genuine and transparent rela-

Organize for Innovation

tionship with the organization and other members. Put people
first and you won't regret it.

Taking
As I've already mentioned, our product wouldn't be what
it is today without the vibrant community that surrounds and
supports it. So let's discuss how that happened by exploring
what your organization should expect to receive from its investment in people. You'll be able to see the kinds of benefits that
will take your business to the next level—and beyond.
Let's review six benefits.

1. Innovation
"Open innovation" occurs when a company sharing information also listens to the feedback and suggestions from outside
the company. As a company, we don't just look at the crowd for
ideas. We innovate in, with, and through communities.
You may know that "the best way to have a good idea is to
have a lot of ideas."21 You can't always expect to have the right
idea on your own, so having different point of views on your
product is essential. How many truly disruptive ideas can a
small company (like Nethesis) create? We're all young, caucasian, and European—while in our community, we can pick up a
set of inspirations from a variety of people, with different genders, backgrounds, skills, and ethnicities.
So the ability to invite the entire world to continuously improve the product is no longer a dream; it's happening before
our eyes. Your community could be the idea factory for innovation. With the community, you can really leverage the power of
the collective.

21 https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/52938.Linus_Pauling
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2. Research
A community can be your strongest source of valuable
product research.
First, it can help you avoid "ivory tower development." As
Stack Exchange co-founder Jeff Atwood has said, creating an environment where developers have no idea who the users are is
dangerous. Isolated developers, who have worked for years in
their high towers, often encounter bad results because they
don't have any clue about how users actually use their software.
Developing in an ivory tower keeps you away from your users
and can only lead to bad decisions. A community brings developers back to reality and helps them stay grounded. Gone are the
days of developers working in isolation with limited resources.
In this day and age, thanks to the advent of open source communities research department is opening up to the entire world.
No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work
for someone else. And community is the way to reach those
smart people and work with them.
Second, a community can be an obvious source of product
feedback—always necessary as you're researching potential
paths forward. If someone gives you feedback, it means that person cares about you. It's a big gift. The community is a good
place to acquire such invaluable feedback. Receiving early feedback is super important, because it reduces the cost of
developing something that doesn't work in your target market.
You can safely fail early, fail fast, and fail often.
And third, communities help you generate comparisons
with other projects. You can't know all the features, pros, and
cons of your competitors' offerings. The community, however,
can.22 Ask your community.

22 https://community.nethserver.org/tags/comparison
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3. Perspective
Communities enable companies to look at themselves and
their products from the outside,23 letting them catch strengths
and weaknesses, and mostly realize who their products' audiences really are.
Let me offer an example. When we launched the NethServer, we chose a catchy tagline for it. We were all convinced
the following sentence was perfect:
NethServer is an operating system for Linux enthusiasts, designed for small offices and medium
enterprises.
Two years have passed since then. And we've learned that
sentence was an epic fail.
We failed to realize who our audience was. Now we know:
NethServer is not just for Linux enthusiasts; actually, Windows
users are the majority. It's not just for small offices and medium
enterprises; actually, several home users install NethServer for
personal use. Our community helps us to fully understand our
product and look at it from our users' eyes.

4. Development
In open source communities especially, communities can
be a welcome source of product development.
They can, first of all, provide testing and bug reporting. In
fact, if I ask my developers about the most important community
benefit, they'd answer "testing and bug reporting." Definitely.
But because your code is freely available to the whole world,
practically anyone with a good working knowledge of it (even

23 https://community.nethserver.org/t/improve-our-communication/
2569
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hobbyists and other companies) has the opportunity to play with
it, tweak it, and constantly improve it (even develop additional
modules, as in our case). People can do more than just report
bugs; they can fix those bugs, too, if they have the time and
knowledge.
But the community doesn't just create code. It can also
generate resources like how-to guides, 24 FAQs, support documents, and case studies. How much would it cost to fully
translate your product in seven different languages? At NethServer, we got that for free—thanks to our community members.

5. Marketing
Communities can help your company go global. Our small
Italian company, for example, wasn't prepared for a global market. The community got us prepared. For example, we needed to
study and improve our English so we could read and write correctly or speak in public without looking foolish for an audience.
The community gently forced us to organize our first NethServer Conference, too—only in English.25
A strong community can also help your organization attain
the holy grail of marketers everywhere: word of mouth marketing (or what Seth Godin calls "tribal marketing").26
Communities ensure that your company's messaging travels not only from company to tribe but also "sideways," from
tribe member to potential tribe member. The community will become your street team, spreading word of your organization and
its projects to anyone who will listen.

24 https://community.nethserver.org/c/howto
25 https://community.nethserver.org/t/nethserver-conference-in-italysept-29-30-2017/6404
26 https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead
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In addition, communities help organizations satisfy one of
the most fundamental members needs: the desire to belong, to
be involved in something bigger than themselves, and to change
the world together.

6. Loyalty
Attracting new users costs a business five times as much
as keeping an existing one. So loyalty can have a huge impact on
your bottom line.
Quite simply, community helps us build brand loyalty. It's
much more difficult to leave a group of people you're connected
to than a faceless product or company. In a community, you're
building connections with people, which is way more powerful
than features or money (trust me!).

Conclusion
Open leaders should never forget that working with communities is always a matter of giving and taking—striking a
delicate balance between the company and the community.
And I wouldn't be honest with you if I didn't admit that the
approach has some drawbacks. Doing everything in the open
means moderating, evaluating, and processing of all the data
you're receiving. Supporting your members and leading the discussions definitely takes time and resources. But, if you look at
what a community enables, you'll see that all this is totally worth
the effort.
As my friend and mentor David Spinks keeps saying over
and over again, "Companies fail their communities when when
they treat community as a tactic instead of making it a core part
of their business philosophy."27 And as I've said: Communities
aren't simply extensions of your marketing teams; "community"

27 http://cmxhub.com/article/community-business-philosophy-tactic/
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isn't an efficient short-term strategy.28 When community is a
core part of your business philosophy, it can do so much more
than give you short-term returns.
At Nethesis we experience that every single day. As a
small company, we could never have achieved the results we
have without our community. Never.
Community can completely set your business apart from
every other company in the field. It can redefine markets. It can
inspire millions of people, give them a sense of belonging, and
make them feel an incredible bond with your company.
And it can make you a whole lot of money.
Community-driven companies will always win. Remember
that.
Alessio Fattorini is a certified community strategist focused on
product-based communities. He works closely with developers
and users leveraging his strong technical background as Linux
sysadmin and support specialist. For more than 10 years, he has
been Communications and Community Manager at Nethesis.

28 https://opensource.com/open-organization/18/2/why-buildcommunity-2
74

What it means to be an open leader
Jim Whitehurst

eing an open leader means creating the context others
need to do their best work.
That's a relatively short sentence, but for anyone wishing

to lead a group in the 21st century, its implications are enormous. And if you're hoping to be one of those people—if you're
hoping to have a career leading an open organization—then you
must not only understand what it means, but also recognize
ways you can put it into practice, so you can build a culture that
creates a strategic, competitive advantage for your organization.

Context shapes culture
Culture is something management gurus are increasingly
taking more seriously. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast 29,"
I've heard people say. But I'm not sure that all of those folks
truly understand why this is the case.
Despite depictions in popular media, a great company culture isn't simply the result of workplace perks and ping pong
tables. Culture is the result of sufficient context—a shared set of
values, a shared purpose, and shared meanings.
Being a leader in an open organization, then, means making connections: It involves doing the work of linking people
both to each other and to some larger, shared picture. It's help-

29 http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/12/culture-eats-strategy-forbreakfast/
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ing people understand how they can contribute to a collective
effort in meaningful ways.
As a leader, you create context when you help everyone in
the organization understand its whole mission: the vision, the
values—all the elements that define your very reason for existing. An open leader also helps people recognize the vast sum of
interactions taking place that make an organization what it is—
the aims, goals, and passions that push individuals to work together.
So when we talk about "creating context," we're really
talking about bringing these two facets of organizational life together in exciting and productive ways. An open leader aligns
passion with purpose, action with vision. And that creates a culture where people feel inspired, motivated, and empowered to
do their very best work.
Shaping that culture begins with an emphasis on sharing.

Learn to share
In conventional organizations, "knowledge is power." But
in open organizations, that well-worn adage can be a destructive
and downright disastrous guiding principle.
Some leaders believe that extending trust and operating
transparently will somehow diminish their power. In reality,
however, leaders should be sharing as much as they can with
their organizations. Sharing information is how leaders begin to
build the context that people in an organization need to forge
connections between their passions and the organization's mission. Open leaders are honest about the problems they face, the
worries they carry, and the limits they possess—because, in the
end, the problems leaders face are the problems everyone faces.
Shared knowledge is power.
The problems leaders hear about from customers—the
things that keep them up at night—that's the information we
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need to share with our entire organization. Because when we
provide that context and share those problems, we inspire and
empower people to help us overcome them. In The Open Organization, for instance, I describe how sharing my priority of
making Red Hat more customer-focused—and thereby inviting
others to help me achieve it—generated unique, creative, and
valuable insights from people across the organization.
I've met people who believe "sharing more" actually
means "delegating more." But that's not necessarily the case. In
the traditional sense, "delegation" involves sharing responsibility for implementing a solution the leader has already dreamed
up and settled on. What I'm talking about is different: sharing
the work of actually developing those solutions, so associates
have genuine influence over both the course their work will take
and the purpose it will serve.
If this sounds hard, that's because it is. At Red Hat, we
put a lot of effort behind hiring for and developing these kinds of
leadership capabilities. We take the time to explain them to people, to coach people on what it takes to connect, to be
transparent, and to extend trust.
We even talk about what overuse and underuse of these
capabilities looks like. For example, we've found that it's important to explain that transparency isn't an excuse for rude
behavior, nor does it mean you disclose confidential information
about associates or our business. Trust doesn't mean you give
people assignments without any direction or context, or that you
fail to verify that work they've completed.

Develop your EQ
In an open organization, leaders must be sensitive to nuances—knowing how to share and how to invite collaboration in
ways that keep an organization from dissolving into chaos. A
leader's mandate to help people do their best work involves not
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just an understanding of leadership capabilities like connection,
trust, and transparency, but also a certain familiarity with—and
sensitivity to—the feelings, emotions, and passions of the people
that leader is trying to help.
In The Open Organization, for example, I discuss the need
for leaders to share half-baked ideas with their organizations, to
bring plans or concepts to the table before they're fully developed, in order to receive productive feedback sooner. The best
leaders can pinpoint precisely when to present a half-baked idea
—not so early as to distract people with an idea that may not
play out, but not so late as to preclude any opportunity for productive discussion.
Spotting those opportune moments—really sensing them—
requires leaders to be in tune with their organizations' emotional atmospheres.
Think about it this way: Great leaders give people enough
structure to know they're marching up the right hill, but those
leaders don't want to prescribe a single road north, because
they need the people making the journey to feel empowered to
control that journey. This way, they don't exhaust themselves
trying to climb over a massive rock in their way, and instead devise a smarter method for getting around it.
The trick for leaders is providing enough clarity of purpose—enough

context—that

people

are

able

help

organization accomplish its goals, but not so much that they're
impeded from exercising their creativity and initiative in the
process.
Information overload doesn't create context. Distraction
doesn't create context. Strong emotional intelligence helps leaders avoid both.

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Be a catalyst, not a commander
Deciding to share (and determining how to share) drives
open leaders to an important conclusion: a group is always going to produce a better solution than an individual.
Leaders of conventional organizations are commanders.
They dictate and prescribe both means and ends, then monitor
people to make sure they use the former to achieve the latter.
Leaders of open organizations are catalysts.
Chemistry tells us that a catalyst is an agent that, when
added to a mixture, sparks a productive change. This is pre cisely the role leaders play in open organizations. They create
context that invites people into relationships with new (even surprising) results. And they do this because they believe, truly and
deeply, that the groups they help form will develop better solutions than the leader could alone.
I won't deny it: Being a leader means constantly being
tempted to step in, to force decisions, to command. Commanders generally consider collaborative dialogue a grueling waste
of time ("I just need to tell people what to do," they say). Sure,
they may go so far as to hold meetings about, invite comments
on, and ask for feedback regarding their ideas. But in the end,
those are empty gestures, because they've already decided that
they know what's best.
Catalysts, on the other hand, believe that if they get the
right conversations going—if they spark the right kinds of collaboration—then their organizations will realize better results.
Leaders can only become catalysts when they let go of the assumption that, categorically, they know best.
Without a doubt, being a catalyst is actually more difficult
than being a commander. Since open organizations tend to be
meritocracies, in which reputation and a long history of concrete contributions trump job titles as markers of organizational

Organize for Innovation

power and influence, leaders must be constantly balancing the
skills, personalities, and cultural capital they see in their colleagues. Far from dictating, they need to master the art of
making appropriate connections—producing the proper combinations—that ignite the most influential innovations.
Yet being a catalyst is also more rewarding than being a
commander. Parents, consider this: Did you feel more proud
when you graduated from college, or when your kids graduated
from college? If you're like me, the answer is: your kids. Catalysts experience that same sense of pride parents do when they
watch those they've helped succeed.

A checklist
So here's a checklist for those hoping to make a career
leading an open organization. Being an open leader requires:
•

WILLINGNESS to extend trust and share information

•

APPRECIATION for transparency and collaboration
whenever possible

•

SENSITIVITY to the moods, emotions, and passions
of the people that make up an organization

•

KNOWLEDGE of not only what to share, but how to
share it

•

BELIEF that groups will consistently outperform
individuals working in isolation

•

TRUST in those groups to drive necessary change

Master all this, and you're well on your way to creating
the most important thing a leader can provide: the context for
people to do their best work.
Jim Whitehurst is President and CEO of Red Hat, the world's
leading provider of open source enterprise IT products and services, and author of The Open Organization.
80

An open leader's guide to better
meetings
Angela Robertson

everal years ago I heard an anecdote about meetings that
I'll never forget: A company once kept a scoreboard calcu-

lating the cost of a meeting by multiplying the number of people
in the meeting by the number of minutes in the room—then displaying the result. The question everyone needed to consider:
Was the impact of the meeting worth the cost?
Often branded as unnecessary, poorly led meetings can be
a tax on time and distract from core priorities. For that (and
many other) reasons, meetings are controversial.
Nevertheless, developing relationships with employees,
peers, stakeholders, customers, senior leaders, and others has
tremendous value. And we develop these relationships through
meaningful interactions. Led well, meetings force us to develop
these critical relationships and serve as accountability tools.
So what's the difference between an unnecessary meeting
and a valuable one? In this chapter, I'll explain how we can we
leverage open principles to experience more of the latter and
fewer of the former.

Successful meeting basics
Hosting and leading meetings is a skill. I forget that regularly, usually expecting everyone to be effective at hosting
meetings. So let's start with the basics for effective meetings.

Organize for Innovation

Meetings need a clear goal. You can identify a meeting's
goal by answering a simple question: "Why are we meeting?"
After you've articulated the goal of a meeting, you'll need
to identify who needs to attend the meeting. Invite those people
to attend at a time that fits their schedules. If you're meeting
when people are distracted (for example, asking people to call in
for a meeting at 7:30 a.m. when they are driving to work), then
pick another time. You want attendees engaged because you
need people to have a sense of accountability for meeting outcomes and next steps.
Along these same lines, keep a record (minutes) for meetings, so you have a log of what everyone at the meeting
discussed, decisions you still need to make, etc.
Again, the first step to leading a successful meeting is deciding the goal of the meeting. In general, meetings fall into one
of the following categories: administrative, tactical, strategic,
developmental, and personnel. But the specific type of meeting
you host depends on the goal of the meeting. Common types include:
•

Daily standup (administrative)

•

Team meeting (tactical)

•

Decision-making (strategic)

•

Learning (developmental)

•

Brainstorming (strategic)

•

One-on-ones (tactical)

•

Delegations (tactical)

•

Performance reviews (personnel)

•

Skip level (strategic)

•

Off site (developmental)

•

All hands (administrative)

Organize for Innovation

In this chapter, I'll briefly discuss each of these meeting
types. Articulating a meeting goal helps you determine your
meeting type—and determining your meeting type in turn helps
you determine the meetings mechanics (how you'll run it, where
you'll run it, who you'll invite, and so on). Some meetings also
combine some of these types into a single event. For example,
team meetings can combine learning, brainstorming, and decision making.
After you've identified the type of meeting you're leading,
set the agenda and send it in the meeting invitation. Also state
your expectations for participation. If you're hosting a meeting
online, for instance, do attendees know if video is required? Will
the meeting be recorded? Make sure these expectations are
clearly positioned in the invitation.
At the end of the meeting, then, recap the action items
people have taken and the time frame (or date for a date) for following up on them. Share expectations both verbally and in
writing.
As a leader, you can infuse open principles into every type
of meeting you'd like to hold. Let's examine how.

Daily standups
Daily standups are familiar to anyone practicing the Agile
development model. They're brief meetings where everyone collaborating on a project reports three facts:
1.

Work completed since last stand-up

Work in the queue

Risks/blockers

The group can also opt to add a post-meeting discussion.
Given this meeting's tight scope, the post-meeting discussion is
time devoted to questions and answers sparked during the
standup. For example, in the standup, a team member might
identify work completed and work in the queue (items 1 and 2)
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as bugs (defects). Likewise, the risk (item 3) might also be bugrelated. The person speaking can request a post-meeting discussion to review the risk and not exceed the scope of the standup.
The stand-up meeting is an excellent example of meetings
done well: Tightly scoped and reliably brief with accountability
for all involved. These meetings truly drive accountability. With
just 10 minutes every day, project leads quickly assemble the
team to hear three things from each attendee.
If you're a project lead, then these meetings are an indispensable tool for you. They afford a degree of transparency that
allows leads to know exactly where team members are spending
their time. Everyone is invited to contribute in the same way, so
it's an inclusive gathering that gives equal opportunity to contribute and listen. I find that listening leads to collaboration, too,
as I can build on the work others outline in a standup. I've led
standups, and I love that the short meeting focuses the team on
achieving the sprint goals so we have impactful work to share in
the end-of-sprint demo.

Team meetings
Daily standups are often run by leads. Team meetings are
hosted by managers. Managers use team meetings to keep their
teams (that is, the people reporting to them) focused on core
priorities.
In open organizations, teams need to be committed to
shared priorities. Team meetings are opportunities to reinforce
that commitment. They offer regular checkpoints for accountability. Managers with lingering questions or concerns about a
team's ability to understand or achieve core priorities after oneon-one meetings can raise those concerns during team meetings.
Team meetings (like all meetings) can be transparent. Unless there's some risk to an employee's privacy or some other
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legal concern, managers should consider sharing the meeting
agenda, meeting minutes, and resultant action items. New team
members can learn from these records. Absent team members
can catch up quickly. And you'll have the benefit of the written
record available when your memory doesn't recall all of the details.

Decision-making
The most important thing you need to do in a decisionmaking meeting is to ask for a decision. I state that fact first because it's easy to hold a meeting like this and not ask for a
decision.
Decision-making meetings occur in time set aside to share
updates on an assignment, and you should always begin the
meeting by stating that you wish to arrive at a decision by the
end of the meeting. For example, if you've been asked to lead a
vendor program, then, beginning with your proposal for work,
set aside time for an update and include the fact that you expect
a "proceed or pause" decision at the end of the meeting. In advance of the meeting, summarize why a vendor program is
necessary, what success looks like, and what you need to proceed. Share this information in a written document and allow
time for a review of the material at the start of the meeting. Always grant enough time for questions and propose that you have
enough information to proceed with the task. Then ask if anyone
has objections.
If no one objects to your proposals, state your next steps
and timeline. Then follow up after the meeting with a written
statement of how you'll proceed. You should also be clear about
whether a project isn't going to proceed. I share that observation to remind you that you don't need to be dogmatic in favor of
any particular meeting outcome.

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In these meetings, be transparent about your point of view
and be passionate. If you learn that the organization is not ready
to go in a particular direction, let it go. You're leading a community of people. You don't need consensus, but you need the team
motivated to go in the direction that you're leading with the decision. Adapting so you don't force a change on a group of
people when you lack adequate support is wise in situations
where you can take what you've learned and assess the best way
to move forward.

Learning
The idea behind the learning meeting is simple: Someone
has information that you want shared with a group of people, so
you hold a meeting to facilitate that sharing. People like to hold
them over lunch, which is why you'll often hear them called
"brown bag" meetings.
Always begin these meetings by stressing the fact that you
don't need a decision to result from the meeting. If you work in
an organization with a cultural bias for action, then setting aside
time to just learn can be challenge. One way to counter this
need to act is to give everyone a reason to act before the meeting.
For example, if you want to focus on why a specific support issue occurred, then ask every team to prepare for a root
cause analysis of their biggest support issue in the past week.
Explain that at the start of the meeting you'll randomly select a
team to share their analysis. The other teams in attendance can
learn from the selected team's experience. That way, in preparation for the learning-focused meeting, every team has acted to
prepare.
When structuring these meetings, think carefully. "Brown
bag" meetings are often optional meetings. If you want attendance to be mandatory, use something like "A deep dive into
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Organize for Innovation

topic name." In the description for the meeting, explain that a
presenter will be sharing information for the purposes of learning and that questions are welcomed. You want attendees to
learn more about the topic so you're taking the time to organize
the session. The meeting leader should introduce the speaker,
facilitate the discussion, and ensure someone attending the
meeting handles the minutes.
Learning meetings are a great time for people to voice
conflicting viewpoints and ask probing questions. If your organization tends to be conflict avoidant, you can ask people who you
know have different points of view to share their perspectives.
You want to draw out different ideas so your team can be more
creative. These meetings can also function as morale boosters
for a team. When a leader sets aside time for a team to to learn,
employees see an investment in their base of knowledge.
Depending on the discussion that occurs during the learning meeting, follow-up work varies. Often several team members
find the material something worth pursuing further, as it relates
to core priorities, and they take action items. If the discussion
yields learning but additional work is not helpful in meeting core
priorities, then team members have the information for future
reference.
Whenever possible, record and share all information with
the larger organization. Transparency develops trust and allows
open organizations to grow.

Brainstorming
Sometimes you have a problem to work through and you
need time to catalog options for solutions. Set aside time for a
working meeting to review ideas with co-workers.
Ideally, you'll have everyone physically present in the
same room when brainstorming. But even if everyone cannot be
in the same room, I find that you can still have an effective
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Organize for Innovation

brainstorming session as long as the team understands the rules
for communication. As a leader, you should be clear about questions like:
•

Who is leading and facilitating the discussion?

•

Who is taking notes?

•

How is the team going to share the ideas sketched
during the discussion?

Brainstorming meetings require some pre-work to ensure
the meeting time focuses on the work. You can ask people to
come prepared with specific pre-work completed. Depending on
the challenge and the time available, you might have people
come with specific examples ready to share to get the brainstorming session started. You can limit pre-work to reading a
problem statement.
In most cases, you'll want people to complete some kind of
pre-work to ensure that your attendees are the best group of
people to have in the meeting. Encourage questions so everyone
has clarity around why the brainstorming session is necessary.
When people have clarity, they feel motivated to act and you
want your team to come ready to engage transparently, leaving
ego at the door in the service of developing the best ideas.
At the start of the meeting, the lead kicks off the brain storming session and facilitates the discussion. The lead is
responsible for getting all team members involved in the discussion. Remember that people's personalities vary. Extroverts are
going to talk; you need to make sure the quieter meeting attendees are invited to participate in a meaningful way. You don't
want people thinking, "I'll talk to check the ‘I participated' box."
You want everyone to engage for the best outcome in the brainstorming session. Diversity of thoughts and ideas leads to the
best outcomes.

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Depending on the deadlines associated with the project,
after the brainstorming session you can plan next steps. Again,
share a summary of the meeting and include who took what action item. Your team will need specific deadlines if it can
continue making progress.

One-on-ones
One-on-one meetings help open leaders drive strategy,
and allow them to receive and deliver candid feedback at
quicker intervals—crucial for teams that are always working in
"release early, release often" mode. Employees are always making decisions that impact people who use whatever we're
working to deliver. So the one-on-one meeting naturally covers
the priorities we're setting, a discussion of the impacts those
priorities have, and the risks associated with those priorities.
These meetings tend to be tactical, lasting about 30 minutes and
occurring roughly once per week.
To ensure transparency during one-on-ones, open leaders
ask plenty of questions for clarity. Explain that what helps a
manager become a better manager is knowing what's blocking a
team's work or what questions are most pressing for them. By
asking questions and giving transparent answers as a manager,
you're finding space to learn more about your team members—
things like:
•

What are they working on beyond the work assigned?

•

What problems are they solving?

•

How are they deciding what work not to do?

•

What do they need to have unblocked in order to
make faster progress?

In the end, however, in one-on-one meetings leaders
should listen more than they talk.

Organize for Innovation

Everyone handles one-on-one meetings differently. But in
general, successful one-on-one meetings should address items
that fall into two categories:
•

PRIORITIES AND RISKS. For managers and team
members, it's easy to think that things are going
well, but there are often challenges. People want
to give off an "I've got it all together" vibe to insu late themselves from risk. The thing is: Work is
risky. Most jobs involve work that's ambiguous and
uncertain. So make sure you don't forget to discuss risks.

•

ROADBLOCKS AND LEARNING. Often, certain things
prevent us from moving our work forward—so
managers need to know about those things in a
precise and candid way. Even so, we can't always
until we have everything we need to proceed with
a project. We can work with a growth mindset so
we, as a collaborative team, can share what we
learn from mistakes and new information.

The more trust and credibility a manager has earned with
a team, the quicker team members can adapt to changes that
are necessary for the business. For example, while a manager
might not be able to answer every question that arises in a
meeting, she can encourage curiosity. When dealing with ambiguity, identify people who want to answer similar questions and
connect them. As you see people who don't know what success
looks like, use the meeting to bring clarity to goals as much as
you possibly can.

Delegations
Delegation meetings occur when leaders need help meeting all their strategic priorities. But open leaders understand
something additional: Delegation is also a way to empower those
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around you—to build, in other words, a culture of shared responsibility.30

Through

our

adaptability,

then,

delegation

becomes all the more possible—indeed, almost inherently essential—for the organization to thrive and grow. And the challenge
that often makes delegation difficult is trust. If you cannot think
of anything to delegate, perhaps you believe that you cannot
trust your team members to share your responsibilities.
When delegating work, you'll be helping team members
make decisions regarding their priorities and understand how
they might delegate work or stop work on a task altogether.
When you approach a prioritization discussion with someone on
your team, talk about the work the employee doesn't want to
stop doing. You want to begin here, because you need to know
what your teammate has difficulty letting go of as change occurs
during the delegation.
As a leader, you motivate people to change. If you need
the employee to stop doing the very thing that he or she loves
doing (and finds great value in delivering), you need to speak to
this concern. With some discussion, the team member adapts
and sees the strategy behind what's motivating you to push for
change.
1.

You might use these steps to structure this prioritization exercise:

State the work being delegating and seek confirmation that the delegation has been accepted.

Inventory the work that the employee is tasked to
complete.

Ask the employee to give each work item a priority
and deadline.

30 https://opensource.com/open-organization/18/7/guide-to-delegation
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Using your knowledge of the business strategy
and customer commitments, collaborate to establish priorities.

Put the priorities in writing, identify quality standards, and set deadlines.

Set expectations regarding status updates, and
confirm you both understand how the employee's
current workload adapts with the new work and
deadlines.

Always understand that your goal in these meetings is empowering another person to do the work. With any act of
delegation, you're letting go. In that act of letting go, you have
space to pick up whatever work requires your attention.

Performance reviews
Most organizations have a regular cadence for performance

reviews.

Ideally,

managers

leading

openly

are

communicating performance feedback as micro-feedback and
these meetings contain no surprises.
If performance is poor and an employee is in the wrong
role, employees often do not hear the constructive feedback
they require to start acting in a way that improves their performance. The performance review (which often includes a
discussion of compensation) is a time when employees who have
been in denial about poor performance finally hear the "things
need to change" message.
Performance reviews are communicated in writing, so a
performance review meeting is a discussion about the written
feedback. Before the meeting, give employees time to read your
written comments. Explain that after the meeting you intend to
submit the comments as part of the employee's record so you
need the meeting to be a productive discussion. If there's any

Organize for Innovation

dispute, the dispute needs to be surfaced succinctly so action
can be taken.
Employees need not agree with the performance review
feedback (given that the manager is responsible for assessing
the employee's performance). But if there's a disagreement
about the assessment, use fact-based written documentation to
work through the issues. The written documentation makes the
exchange more transparent and everyone has the opportunity to
provide input.

Skip level
Skip level meetings occur when an employee meets a
manager's manager. In these cases, the more senior manager
does not drive the conversation. Time allotted for the meeting is
time for the organization's leader to listen and learn. Employees
receive clarity as the senior leader provides context and asks
questions to gain perspective.
As an employee meeting with a senior leader, come prepared with some questions or topics for discussion. Send these
topics in advance to give the senior leader some idea of what
you want to discuss. If you send topics via email in advance,
don't assume anyone read them. Everyone has unplanned events
steal time away from planned activities (like preparing for a
meeting). Senior leaders can also come prepared with questions.
What type of questions do senior leaders want to hear?
First and foremost, ask them how you can help them be more
successful. Senior leaders are expected to execute on a strategy.
Your help is essential for implementing that strategy. Anything
you can do to assist with that is valuable, and your curiosity
about ways you can help is guaranteed to be impactful.
One final note about skip level meetings: Senior leaders
are often curious about "what's really going on" in their organization. If you're concerned that a senior leader needs to know
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something that they seem unaware of, bring up the topic. If the
leader is listening, she'll ask for your candor. Some people have
told me that nothing is "off the record." I argue that this really
depends on the leader. Personally, I respect off-the-record disclaimers and appreciate the transparency people are willing to
bring to a skip-level-type meeting.

Off-site
Teams benefit when they plan some time "off-site" to identify core priorities. They often occur on a quarterly basis "Offsite" is a term that needn't literally mean "off the premises." For
example, if you have a distributed team, meeting "off-site" does
not automatically mean traveling. Don't let location issues deter
you: Set an agenda and hold the meeting.
The goal of the off-site is to get a fresh perspective on
what's really important for your business to succeed and grow.
You want to refresh your view of core priorities as the customer's needs and the broader organization's business priorities
are likely changing. It's cliché but it's true: We're always learning. Take what you and your team have learned over the
previous three months and agree on the core priorities for the
next three months.
The goal of an off-site meeting is not consensus. You are
not going to get every person to agree on the same set of priorities. You want the team to collaborate on a set of core priorities
that they verbally commit to work toward. Verbal commitment
on core priorities is essential.
As an open leader, you need to know that your team is going to support the strategy. If you hear any hesitation or doubt
when you ask for a verbal commitment, ask for clarification.
Your goal is not to force commitment; your goal is to get people
to the point where they commit to the team's statement of core

Organize for Innovation

priorities, leave the meeting to explain the priorities, and start
implementation work.
Off-site meetings are successful when attendees are vulnerable with each other about their concerns and engage in
conflict-heavy discussions. As such, a team might not share all
details as transparently as they share details from other types of
meetings. But I encourage transparency here, because it gives
the larger team perspective about the thought and candor that
went into the discussion. That said, however, airing dirty laundry isn't helpful when you want the larger team focused on
asking clarifying questions about the strategy and working out
tactical details for implementation.

All hands
All-hands meetings are an opportunity for the organization's leader to gather other leaders in conversation. It's also a
perfect opportunity to practice transparency.
If you're the leader planning the meeting, talk with people
in the organization to find out what questions are at the top of
everyone's minds. Think about other topics senior leaders in the
organization have shared and how you can add detail that helps
people understand why the team needs to act on behalf of whatever strategy the team is being implemented.
Open leaders bring others into the conversation. Get a
range of people involved: Invite people who are in the organization to speak and ask partners of the organization to speak on
relevant topics. Facilitate a question-and-answer session after
each main topic.
Also take time to recognize great work by individuals and
small teams. Ask the larger organization to nominate people on
the team who are delivering high caliber work on behalf of customers. When you receive submissions, if one part of the
organization seems heavily weighted, seek balance. Perhaps the
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imbalance comes from one team feeling unengaged or overwhelmed. The leader can ask why one part of the team is well
represented while other parts of the team seem non-existent.
After you have a representative sample of the great work
the team is recognizing, decide what is the best example to
highlight. Again, seek to balance representation in the public
recognition. You want the team to understand that they have
something to learn from each other.
As you're used to reading by now: Record and share.

Conclusion
Some people are going to push back against meetings,
calling them "time sucks" (or worse). Ignore these assertions
and prove the worth of the meeting by making it useful for the
attendees. If you don't find the meeting to be a good use of time,
cancel it and evaluate how you can restart the effort to reach
your desired outcome. You'll find people appreciate your willingness to execute on the strategy despite challenges.
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quis magna finibus porta quis ac justo. Etiam eu tempor lorem.
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ut est urna. Cras sed vehicula lectus. Quisque accumsan lectus
sit amet lacus tristique lacinia. Fusce in enim arcu.

To survive Industry 4.0, leaders should
think beyond the digital
Author McLastName

he 2017 Red Hat Culture Survey 31 found that digital transformation is changing business inside and out. Most

respondents (91%) agreed that technological developments are
altering the way organizations in their industries must operate
in order to succeed.
That's going to require those organizations to take a hard
look at the frameworks that guide their work, the values they
adhere to, the mission that aligns them, and the operational processes that drive the engine of change—in other words, their
organizational cultures.32 It's clear that (due to the various types
of transformation going on) we must address not only operational needs but also the way we think about doing work itself.
Yes, our frameworks—our systems of organizational governance, our standard processes for decision-making, etc.—will
need to change, because the rules of engagement have changed.
But if we've only implemented new processes and frameworks
and still haven't developed agile people and empowered them
with the skills they need to adapt to change, our change efforts
will continue to fail. Currently, the focus of so many change efforts has been on the digital aspects fueling innovation sprints—
31 https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-releases-2017-open-sourceculture-survey-results
32 https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-organizational-culture
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Organize for Innovation

without addressing the key needs to be evaluated in advance of
implementation and changes.
But at the heart of what we call "digital transformation"
isn't just technology—it's people, too. When we forget that, we
put our organizations in danger.
So in this chapter, I'll explain how those traditional rules
of change management are shifting—and explain how your
teams and organization can succeed with their transformations
by thinking beyond the digital.

New rules of engagement
It's time to step beyond the digital in order to succeed in
the rapid state of innovation we're all experiencing. It's time,
that is, to change the way we think about the value of the people
in our organizational ecosystems by empowering them to rapidly
respond to this change—and by providing the necessary skills
and tools for becoming fluent in the critical task of engaging
with change.
Last November,
box,

when interviewed on CNBC's Squawk

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst said: "We

found that when projects typically fail, it is usually not the technology, but has much more to do with the way companies
operate." Jim went on to say that companies looking to transform the ways they

work

must examine their

cultures,

processes, and systems.
In response to Jim's assertion, host Joe Kernen replied:
Does every company need to hire Millenials? Who
else knows how to operate in the current environment?

seems

there

needs

mass

transformation that must happen to change the way
33 https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/11/27/red-hat-ceo-projects-failbecause-of-how-companies-operate-not-technology.html
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Organize for Innovation

people think to get to open source, digital, and embrace new technology.
Kernen's position sounds familiar. The 2018 Deloitte Millennial Survey offers the subtitle "Millennials are disappointed
in business and are unprepared for Industry 4.0"—before even
launching into the study.34 The survey's finding lead to a staggering awareness that organizational and people team leaders have
not taken Millennial workforce development seriously. They are
underprepared for the speed of innovation and for basic teaming
skills.
According to 2017 statistics:35
•

56 million Millennials currently are in the workforce; making up the largest group

•

Gen Z began entering the workforce in 2016 and
now comprise 5% of the workforce

•

Millennials will be 75% of our workforce by 2025 36

But are the Millennials in your organization really pushing
all the change typically tied to digital transformation? Or is it
the case that your entire business hasn't really upgraded its operating

procedures?

While

Millennials

are

the

trending

scapegoat, let's be honest: Millennials are not who or what is
prompting the need for change in your organization. And while
it isn't about Millennials or even digital transformation, Kernen
was right about one thing: For transformation to happen, people
need to change the way they think.

34 https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/
About-Deloitte/gx-2018-millennial-survey-report.pdf
35 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennialslargest-generation-us-labor-force/
36 https://www.forbes.com/sites/workday/2016/05/05/workforce-2020what-you-need-to-know-now/#9d39c722d632
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Organize for Innovation

As the composition of technologies inside our organizations changes, so does the composition of people—and that
means the composition of expectations is changing, too. If you
expect your company to not only succeed but thrive in the 21st
Century, you'll need to make an immediate investment in interpersonal and managerial competency training.

The speed of innovation
We live in an age of innovation featuring rapid cycles of
change. Futurist Gerd Leonhardt estimates we will see more
change between 2015 and 2035 than in the prior 300 years of
modern history.37 And the cycles of innovation will not be slowing down (in fact, they will be speeding up). To effectively
understand this change, we need to step back and see the large
scale impact of this age.
The source of the changes is far more than "digital transformation" or "emerging technologies." We are a connected and
aware generation who consumes information in mass volumes in
real-time through handheld devices. 38 Policy and regulation are
changing. Political upheaval is occurring. New business models
are emerging. New markets are appearing. We are part of a
global marketplace and a much larger ecosystem—and as with
all ecosystems, the slightest shift in a single part can cause radical changes throughout the whole.
In previous decades, engaging in change has generally
fallen into two initiatives: change readiness and change management. Change readiness involves processes focused on
controlling the change, but does not allow for what happens outside of that controlled space. Change management consists of

37 https://www.futuristgerd.com/future-thinker/
38 https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/the-american-diet-34gigabytes-a-day/
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Organize for Innovation

building and executing the roadmap to roll out changes, but has
been failing at a rate of about 70% for many decades. Organizations have been able to navigate change solely by using change
readiness principles—which are based on internal control of
change and predictability during a process. We can no longer
expect to do business with sailing operations and rules while
navigating a lake full of speedboats.
The current speed of innovation in the market, the move
to open organizational models, and the shift to more agile and
project-focused working groups have caused us to throw out our
playbooks for "normal" business operation. Truth be told,
whether your organization is open, closed, or somewhere in between, you must begin to acknowledge the new playing field
we're on and embrace the skills needed to thrive in it. In order
to thrive (and not just survive), people and organizations alike
must begin thinking beyond processes and tools; we need to begin focusing on people's capabilities for responding to change.
Change readiness focuses on the value of the people; their
contributions, and the insights they glean from working together, will address the challenges for both the disruptors and
the disrupted. Since the speed of innovation and change is only
increasing, we must become change-ready. We must have the
skills to become rapidly-responding, agile humans who can ride
the wave of change rather than allowing the chaos to control us,
our teams, and our business.
Transformation beyond the digital requires a new approach to the way we build agile, open organizations—and, it
will need to start with how we empower our people to engage

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continuous cycles of change. With the advent of Industry 4.0, we
need empowered, engaged change agents more than ever. 39
Humans drive change. Humans sustain change. And failing to invest in people as they grapple with change could be
problematic for your business.
This means a new way of thinking and doing. Our efforts
to make technology work for humans requires applying human
dynamics to solutions rather than just technologies.

An inclusive, holistic approach
Transformation needed for our workforce, business models and organizational ecosystems must go beyond "digital
transformation" alone. However, our approach to building applications, systems, and new technologies cannot be the same one
we use use to train, engage, and prepare people. Digital transformation, policy and regulation changes, new business models
—all are tools, vehicles aiding the achievement of new ends or
goals. But they're not driving the change.
The change engine itself is fueled by people. That means
change is personal—and response varies by context.40
For example: You've probably worked on projects with
someone who seemed resistant to the initiative. They may have
asked 1,000 questions. Or they wanted to continue to reiterate,
over and over, the legacy of what had already been built. As an
innovator, your likely assumption was that they were being "wet
blankets" to the team and initiative—and thus had no place on
an innovation team. (Am I right?!)

39 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/04/05/whyeveryone-must-get-ready-for-4th-industrial-revolution/
#166d57113f90
40 https://opensource.com/open-organization/18/5/navigatingdisruption-2
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Or maybe this was the case: As a detail-oriented risk mitigator, you might have been given a project full of creatives you
don't understand. It is frustrating. The need to move fast, without details or a risk assessment? It boggles your mind. You're
thinking, "Vision is great and all, but let's talk about the potential pitfalls along the way." It has raised all of your red flags, and
your assumption is they aren't in touch with reality—and might
not even be that good at business.
Each of these (too common) scenarios depicts a mismatch
of attitudes toward change. In our work at LDR21, we've discovered that people engage change across a spectrum of filters.
The output of the change engagement—a "change language," if
you will—reveals a person's positive contribution to either drive
change (and aid in adaptability) or to optimize and sustain the
change. When combined with interpersonal competency development, this awareness of positive contribution allows each
person in an organization or on a team to understand how to
navigate change by leveraging their strengths. For instance, if a
team understands that Joe is asking so many questions because
his change skill is detail and risk mitigation, then they are better
able to understand Joe's value in building a solid plan that can
be effective and efficient. And if Allison's change skill is recognized as gaining buy-in from others as she seeks to hear from
underrepresented voices, then the team can understand her particular approach to change management. A team employing it's
change skills effectively is a balanced, well-running change engine.
This awareness also helps people avoid feeling displaced
or underutilized—like they're not contributing value to a process
or project. It provides them with a vocabulary that aids in their
being understood. Taken together, this increases engagement

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and fulfillment in joint work, as everyone is operating from a
more natural and comfortable position.
When a leader then leverages this information to build a
well-balanced, high-performing team, they're providing the entire organizational ecosystem with an engine of change that can
now "surf the wave" of innovation rather than be caught in the
undertow.
Each person in your ecosystem has the capacity for positive contribution and value to either drive change, adapt,
optimize, or sustain change. Everyone has the capacity to be a
valuable contributor, to channel the way they engage with
change, and to make it work for everyone. This understanding
combined with interpersonal competency training is what will
drive the engine of change.
To become a truly open organization, the shift to people
development with interpersonal and change competency development must be a top priority for anyone looking to sustain
growth.
Jen Kelchner is the Founder of LDR21, a firm focused on building agile, open people and organizations who are able to meet
the demands of continuous cycles of change. She advises organizational leaders on open leadership, cultures of trust, and
engaging change based on open org principles.

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Chapter title
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Nunc orci mi, pharetra nec quam at, blandit lobortis sem.

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lestie finibus. Sed eu leo massa. Donec justo felis, pulvinar sit
amet est et, luctus rutrum nibh.

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at tellus nisi. Quisque tempor metus eget felis porta, sit amet
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ligula. Ut ut est urna. Cras sed vehicula lectus. Quisque accumsan lectus sit amet lacus tristique lacinia. Fusce in enim arcu.

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In quis dui in turpis vestibulum efficitur. Vivamus vitae turpis
quis magna finibus porta quis ac justo. Etiam eu tempor lorem.
Proin in quam sit amet nisl euismod volutpat at eget ligula. Ut
ut est urna. Cras sed vehicula lectus. Quisque accumsan lectus
sit amet lacus tristique lacinia. Fusce in enim arcu.

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Part 3:
Motivation & Engagement

Let engagement lead the way
Chad Sansing

hen we talk about Internet health—or a healthy Internet
—we're talking about several interrelated issues: pri-

vacy and security, openness, digital inclusion, web literacy,
decentralization, and how to leverage these issues for good on
behalf of the Internet and its users. The Internet is like an
ecosystem that needs all of us pulling together to maintain its
health and sustainability.
And that ecosystem needs leaders. More specifically, a
healthy Internet needs open leaders.
Open leaders design and build projects that empower others to collaborate within inclusive communities.
That's the core belief of the Open Leadership and Events
(OLE) team at the Mozilla Foundation. In our work to spread the
principles, practices, and skills of open leadership, we aim to design and build programs that empower participants to take the
lead on open projects about data, Internet health, 41 and the impact those things have on both their local and distributed
communities. We serve leaders from around the world and
across a wide range of open, for-profit and non-profit, and technical and non-technical projects.
Participants in OLE programs come from all over the open
ecosystem; they include people working on open data, open edu-

41 https://internethealthreport.org/
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Organize for Innovation

cational resources (OER), open government, open hardware,
open science, open software (F/OSS), privacy and security for
open practitioners, and more. For example, in 2018, Mozilla'
Global Sprint (a 2-day marathon of contribution to open
projects) included projects and communities like these:
•

Rust

•

P5js

•

Reading for Gender Bias

•

Mission: Information

•

Wikipathways

As we support a diverse set of open leaders like these—
and collaborate with them to increase the breadth and depth of
open's impact on the world—we're especially concerned with engagement and understanding the life-cycles of our participants'
relationships with Mozilla and openness in general. We believe
that one way to improve our work and better align it with participants' wants and needs is to follow their lead. Where do they
begin their relationships with us? What kinds of events and
trainings bring them to us? What are their typical next steps after a first engagement? In what kinds of participation do they
engage over time, and do those engagements always deepen?
Do people contribute more or less to us as we invest more in
them? What are our returns on both high-touch and light-touch
programs, and are those returns equitable for participants?
What do they get from us in the value exchanges that underlay
our community interactions? Do they consistently "graduate," so
to speak, to run their own projects or programs after event X or
training Y?
To put it another way: How can following our participants'
patterns of engagement lead us to better understand and improve our work in supporting them?

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To answer that question, we started building a participation index (PI) called the "Mountain of Engagement" (MoE). The
MoE is meant to be both a methodology and measurement tool
for defining and tracking meaningful interactions with our team
so that we can follow individuals and groups of participants and
surface patterns in their engagement with OLE programming.
Those patterns help us identify our most and least successful
programs. From there, we can make decisions about how to improve our work.
We want to help open leaders find helpful pathways to
professional development and success in their own organizations, projects, and communities. We also want to improve our
programs to make sure we are meeting community members'
needs.
This is the story of how we developed the MoE to help us
do those things. It's also the story of what we've learned so far
and what we might do next. We hope that by following a similar
methodology, you can develop a participation index unique to
your organization that helps you strengthen its engagement
with open leaders in your community.

Project DNA
Our MoE drew inspiration from the Total Engagement Index (TEI). In 2017, the advocacy team at the Mozilla Foundation
developed the TEI and its dashboard in order to track how people on our mailing list interacted with emails and other
campaign channels. Vojtech Sedlak and Brett Gaylor led the
work at Mozilla in consultation with Harmony Labs. The MoE is

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also an extension of the well-known pyramid of engagement developed by Groundwire.42
The TEI grouped engagements into different bands or categories of action by depth of involvement. Each engagement in a
particular band added a certain number of points to the TEI, and
the advocacy team tracked the total engagement points it
earned each month on an internal dashboard.
The TEI used these bands to group different kinds of engagements:
1.

OWNING: Actions taken by allied individuals and
organizations to promote Internet health, like
launching their own Internet health campaign or
project

LEADING: Actions taken to partner with Mozilla on
Internet health issues, like partnering on a campaign or event

CONTRIBUTING: Actions taken to support Mozilla's
Internet health work, like donations, project contributions, and amplifying Mozilla content on
social media

ENDORSING: Actions taken to spread Mozilla's Internet health work, like signing petitions and
liking and sharing updates on social media

OBSERVING: Actions taken to learn about Mozilla's
Internet health work, like visiting a campaign
website or opening a campaign email.

An OBSERVING engagement might have earned the team a
fraction of a point, while each LEADING or OWNING might be
worth a full point on its own. By totaling the scores of every en -

42 To get a sense of similar methodologies, visit Groundwire's
Engagement 101 Series:
http://groundwire.org/labs/engagement_101_series/index.html
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gagement in a given month, the advocacy team could track an
aggregate score representing its impact.
The TEI is no longer a primary inspiration for the foundation, but it gave the OLE team a framework for examining our
own work and identifying the key forms of participation and engagement we want to track across our year-long cycle of
leadership trainings and events from our Open Leaders program
through the Global Sprint and MozFest. Our work also draws on
research from Mozilla's Open Innovation team, which explores
being "open by design" and fostering community interactions
and value exchanges in open projects. 43 Other key elements of
the MoE come from team members' experiences with open science

initiatives,

working

open

workshops,

web

literacy

trainings, research done for the Open Leadership Framework, 44
and Mozilla's work to champion openness as an Internet health
issue.45

Developing a Mountain of Engagement
What follows is a description of the steps we took to develop our MoE. This is an intentional, mindful methodology we
developed especially for smaller projects and communities that
need to track engagement differently than a traditional, technical analytics team does. We hope that by following a similar
process, you can identify the types of engagement that matter
most to you and your participants. Once you know which engagements matter most, you can work to improve them and
better scaffold pathways between them.

43 https://medium.com/mozilla-open-innovation/
44 https://mzl.la/olf
45 https://internethealthreport.org/2018/category/openness/
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First we asked: What do we do? We wanted to synthesize
and capture a holistic view of our work taken from each team
member's perspective to minimize the chance we'd overlook
something important that we do, albeit infrequently or implicitly.
We identified major programs like Open Leaders, 46 the Global
Sprint,47 Open Science mini-grants,48 and MozFest,49 as well as
less visible pieces of work like developing curriculum, maintaining a social media presence, researching open leadership
practices, and speaking at conferences.
Then we asked: How do people engage with us? Looking
at all we do, we listed the different types of engagements people
could have with each area of work. For example, someone might
be an attendee, facilitator (presenter), or wrangler (organizer)
at MozFest. Someone else might follow one of our social media
accounts, retweet or share a post, or clap for a blog.
Next, we asked: How might we band, group, or sort these
types of engagements? We decided to use these tiers and descriptors:
1.

LEADING: A high-touch relationship; we maintain
relationships and co-branded events and trainings
with alumni and allies to increase the impact,
prestige, and reach of both parties' work.

COLLABORATING: A high-touch relationship; we offer professional development through our own
events in return for co-creation, localization, and
spread.

46 http://mzl.la/openleaders/
47 https://mzl.la/global-sprint
48 https://science.mozilla.org/blog/2018-mini-grant-rfp
49 http://mzl.la/mozfest
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PARTICIPATING: A high-touch relationship; we offer
community management and professional development through our own trainings and events in
return for soliciting ideas & learning through use.

ENDORSING: A low-touch relationship; we share information with people who gain social capital by
spreading it and networking with others who
share common interests.

LEARNING: A low-touch relationship; we gift resources

open

curriculum

and

get

back

aggregate data (like downloads, registrations, and
views) showing people use our resources and pay
attention to us.
After that, we asked: What does our Mountain of Engagement look like?
Figure 1 shows the graphic we made to illustrate our
MoE.

Figure 1
The OLE team's MoE, CC BY 4.0 by Mozilla

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Once we had our visualization of the MoE, we asked: How
can we operationalize this or make this more useful? In response, we developed a summary document (Figure 2) that
helped us connect each band to examples, scores, and the types
of community interactions and value exchanges that might show
up within each level of engagement.

Figure 2
Summary chart of the draft OLE MoE, CC BY 4.0 by Mozilla

In the same document, we experimented with multipliers
that aligned with our team and foundation's goals. For example,
if were especially interested in engagements from particular
places or groups of people, we might double their scores to
draw our attention to their engagements and the pathways they
took between them.
We wanted to know:
•

What works and what doesn't work for different
groups of participants.

•

How participants move from one engagement to
another or get stuck between them.

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•

How we might systematize the ways we recognize
participants and invite them to deeper levels of
engagement with us over the lifetime of our relationship with them.

With those prompts in mind, we asked ourselves: Where
should we focus our attention? Given our capacities, goals, and
interests,

decided

focus

engagements

the

PARTICIPATING, COLLABORATING, and LEADING levels of the
MoE. While we blog and tweet and send newsletters, most of
our time is spent designing, implementing, and improving hightouch open leadership programs like Open Leaders, the Global
Sprint, and MozFest. We worried that tracking tweets and
retweets and likes and opens would distract us from supporting
those programs and their participants, especially since we were
piloting and testing this approach before importing it in to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Although we're
curious about how our participants reach the PARTICIPATING
level in the first place, we think we can ask them about their
journeys as they move up the MoE; we don't need to follow them
from the first time they visit our website.
Furthermore, we don't compile an aggregate score like
the TEI did; instead, we follow individuals' scores and reach out
with specific communications and invitations to people and
groups that cross different thresholds of engagement with us.
For example, we might send an invitation to get involved with a
program or event at the COLLABORATING level to anyone who
earns 5 or more points at the PARTICIPATING level.
By giving most of our attention and time to participants
higher up the MoE, we can empower them to co-create programming with us and then launch their own communities,
organizations, and projects in support of Internet health.
And that is where we are today.

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We're listening to people who participate in programs like
Open Leaders, the Global Sprint, open science mini-grants, and
MozFest so we can improve those offerings, clarify the pathways
between them, and empower alumni to launch and sustain their
own open Internet health projects in the future. Our ongoing
question is: What do we do with the data we collect?
While you and your community, organization, and project
might be more concerned with another part of the open ecosystem—such as data, government, or software—we hope that this
process (and the questions it raises) will help you understand
when, where, and how to empower your participants to broaden
and deepen their engagement with you and the interests you
share.
To summarize, here are the questions we asked ourselves
while developing the MoE:
•

What do we do?

•

How do people engage with us?

•

How might we band, group, or sort these types of
engagements?

•

What does our Mountain of Engagement (MoE)
look like?

•

How might we operationalize this or make it more
useful?

•

Where should we focus our attention?

•

What do we do with the data we collect?

Early experiments
First, a quick note on data: you should follow all the laws,
policies, and rules that cover data collection, retention, and use
for you and your participants. We always encourage people to
adopt data privacy policies that are as strong as Mozilla's. 50

50 https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/
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Let's take a look at some early data analysis we've done of
participants' engagements with OLE programs during the first
half (H1) of 2018. We want to share these observations to suggest how a MoE might help lead our team—and yours—answer
new questions and develop new pathways and programs to support participants.
In looking at the 1,954 participants who completed an engagement with us between January and June, 2018, we found
that:
•

65% came from outside the United States (US)
and a "virtual" participant group (for which we
have not geographic data).

•

61% completed an engagement at the Participating level of our MoE.

•

61% participated in the 2018 Global Sprint.

•

6% participated in cohort 5 of our Open Leaders
program.

•

5% participated in our open science mini-grant application process.

Engagement data like this can lead us towards:
•

Confirming or correcting our ratio of participants
from the US and from outside the US so we can
sustain or develop inclusive, global participation
from diverse communities in our programming.
We can also shift strategic focus to look at engagement from groups within the US whom we have
not yet effectively or sufficiently invited and welcomed into these programs.

•

Confirming

correcting

our

ratio

PARTICIPATING engagements and engagements at
other levels of the MoE to establish a baseline or

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benchmark for growth in COLLABORATING and
LEADING engagements.
•

Examining the similarities and differences between

audiences

and

opportunities

across

programs to apply best practices, as well as audience-specific invitations, to all of our trainings and
events.
•

Investigating why discrete projects—like developing the Open Leadership Framework— engage far
fewer participants than on-going programs do.

We also looked at participation and scores from all participants who completed 2 or more engagements with us during the
same time period. We found these outcomes:
•

6% of total participants engaged with 2 or more
OLE programs at the PARTICIPATING level or
higher in H1 of 2018.

•

71% of these participants came from outside the
US.

•

76% participated in the 2018 Global Sprint.

•

53% participated in cohort 5 of our Open Leaders
program.

•

17% participated in our open science mini-grant
application process.

•

4% participated in all 3 programs.

•

54% participated in the Global Sprint and Open
Leaders.

•

7% participated in the Global Sprint and open science mini-grant application process.

•

1% participated in Open Leaders and the open science mini-grant application process.

Here we might ask ourselves how participants move between programs and how to encourage more consistent

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engagement across multiple programs. Is there a way to connect the open science mini-grant application to another program
or sequence of programs? Are there pieces of invitation to the
Global Sprint and pieces of support for participants that we can
adapt for other programs? What motivates participants to engage in multiple OLE programs? What makes the combination of
Global Sprint and Open Leaders so popular with repeat participants?
With the MozFest 2018 and the 2019 Global Sprint coming up later this year and early next, we can return to these
questions with new data and a larger sample of participants and
engagements to help us answer questions like these.

A story of engagement
Looking back at the last few years of engagement data we
have for our Open Leaders program, we found a drop off in how
many past participants returned as mentors for new participants
in the next cohort. Between rounds 1 and 3, that conversion rate
went from 70% down to 55%. The number of open leaders willing to stick with us and to move from the participating band of
our MoE to the collaborating band dropped by double digits.
However, by paying attention to that pathway of engagement in OLE programming between PARTICIPATING (being a
mentee) and COLLABORATING (becoming a mentor) on the MoE,
we were able to identify this problem quickly and work to keep
more participants engaged between rounds 3 and 4. By adding
additional mentor training as a form of professional development and support for returning participants, we brought the
percentage of past participants willing to stay on as collaborators back up to 72%. However, as we continued to develop and
grow the program, that number dropped back down to 50%
when we looked at participants from cohort 5 who returned as
mentors for cohort 6.
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Something is happening as we scale up the number of participants in the Open Leaders program. By using our MoE to
focus our attention on key results like the pathway and conversion rate from participant to mentor, we can respond to issues
like these and calibrate our work to fit our leaders' needs. We
can also see how many participants submit a proposal to
MozFest or return to the next Global Sprint and ask whether or
not these opportunities take the place of continued engagement
with Open Leaders for some participants.
Maybe becoming a mentor isn't the best fit for continued
engagement after participating in Open Leaders. Or maybe becoming a mentor is the best fit for continued engagement after
participating in a different offering. The MoE gives us the opportunity to consider such possibilities and to look for successes
and challenges across our programs.
As we iterate on that mentor training further, our goal after cohort 6 is a 90% conversion rate. By refining our programs,
we can make each one better at graduating participants to the
next level of our MoE and then, ideally, out into the Internet
health movement as the leads of their own communities, organizations, and projects.

Next steps
Paying attention to how people engage with us helps us
improve our programs, clarify the pathways between them, and
refine invitations we share to participate in them
You might use your own Mountain of Engagement—and
the data you collect through it—to set similar goals for your
community, organization, or project.
In pursuit of a world-class open leadership program, we
let engagement lead the way. We want to empower participants
to shape our work according to their needs and in support of a
healthy Internet for all.
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Chad Sansing is a curriculum manager at the Mozilla Foundation. Prior to working on the Open Leadership and Events team,
he developed Web Literacy curriculum for the foundation. He
joined Mozilla after teaching middle school English, social studies, and technology for 14 years. He is passionate about Internet
health, facilitation, games, and helping non-technical audiences
understand the advantages of working open and practicing open
leadership, especially in libraries, schools, and other community
learning spaces.

124

When empowering employee decisionmaking, intent is everything
Ron McFarland

n Japanese business discussions, one term appears again
and again: "gemba." Over many years living and working for

Japanese companies, I've probably heard the phrase "gemba de
kimeru" a million times. Basically, it means that issues must be
solved and decided on the front-line, where the problems and/or
opportunities are. Popular thinking holds that people can work
with their peers to solve problems. In Japan, however, problems
with this thinking can develop.
Here, top managers often don't want to "stick out." They
don't want to assume too much responsibility. So they pass decision-making "down" to front-line people, essentially removing
themselves from the decision-making picture. They don't grant
front-line employees decision-making power in order to empower them. They do it to avoid responsibility for failures.
As Jim Whitehurst says in The Open Organization, granting front-line employees more autonomy is a way of driving
innovation—not avoiding culpability. Jim describes the ways
Western managers struggle with the issue of autonomy (they
fear letting their staff make decisions, as they think that by do ing so they'll lose organizational power), but they miss this
critical intercultural difference. (Interestingly, if managers stay
involved in supporting roles and believe that front-line people

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can make decisions on their own, they can actually become
more powerful. But that's another article.)
Managers should stay involved in critical decision-making,
even as they grant their front-line employees a bigger voice in
decisions. But their role needs to change. As Whitehurst says in
The Open Organization, they need to facilitate, not delegate.
That's a critical distinction that my time in Japan has taught me.
It's also shown me one source of this problem—as well as
a few paths to fixing it.

In need of meritocracy
When managers ask their staff to make decisions, then divest completely from the decision-making process, they can
actually reveal their own weaknesses. I've seen engineers transferred to high level, personnel-related department positions, for
example. These transfers were not based on ability or experience, but simply on title and the number of years of experience
they had in the company. Promoted candidates unfortunately
tend to lack managerial skills and sensibilities (after all, they
were trained as engineers). So to make sure the department is
functional, these newly-minted managers have to rely heavily on
their staff. We in the department were shocked by this, and
prayed that incoming managers wouldn't weaken our departments too greatly.
Interestingly, however, I've seen some success in this uncomfortable working environment. Quite simply, the manager
announced he didn't feel he was fully qualified for the position,
and that he would need all the staff's support to be successful,
particularly from those who have been in the department for
many years. Admitting one's limits actually helps build engagement.

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Peer projects can begin at parties
Japanese company parties always feature an emcee, who
announces the start of the party. Imagine a party to welcome the
unqualified boss I mentioned above. Typically, people are sitting
around a large table, and initially there is only one discussion
going on (one the emcee controls). The emcee welcomes everyone and asks someone to give a toast ("kanpai") to begin the
boss's welcome party. From that point on, people start eating
and drinking. Then the emcee asks everyone to introduce themselves, both to the whole group and to the boss, and to mention
some of the things they're working on. After all participants
have introduced themselves, the new boss speaks.
In my experience, the unsuccessful inexperienced bosses
announce how they'd like to improve the department. The best
unqualified managers simply present their career highlights,
then mention that they're looking forward to getting to know
and working with everyone. When general conversation resumes, the new manager actually moves around the room,
pouring beer in each associate's glass, offering an individual
greeting. At that time, the manager asks about each member's
most urgent concerns with the intent of finding a way to genuinely understand them. Armed with what they've learned at
these parties, these inexperienced (but smart) managers begin
finding ways they can be helpful. Rather than just announce a
plan to make changes, they spend time trying to understand
what their employees need to have changed.
With the right introductions, questioning, and ideation,
critical peer projects can begin during those parties, whether
through the boss's introductions or close colleagues just kicking
ideas around. These type of parties are not just for new employees (or new bosses). Many Japanese companies have these
parties with subsidiaries, vendors, and customers with the same

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goal. They really generate front-line projects to explore partnerships as well.

Meetings in the bars at night
But occasionally official company parties are not the best
environments for speaking freely and openly, particularly regarding uncomfortable issues. On some delicate subjects, I have
been more successful holding peer-to-peer, open discussions after those parties.
I ask a few attendees to grab a beer or two at a yakitori
restaurant after the party. The people I select for these meetings
usually demonstrate the desire to make improvements (as opposed to those wanting to maintain the status quo). I also select
people that take pride in their work, will be accountable for performance, and have proven they've got the skills to introduce
important changes. With that environment and small group size,
those discussions have been very successful for me, and I think
that environment is the best venue for creative open discussions
throughout Japan.

Finding a balance
Whether you're putting together peers at a formal business meeting, at an official boss's welcome party, or in a bar, I
can't stress enough the importance of balancing the four criteria
Whitehurst explains in The Open Organization:
1.

Encouraging members to speak freely and honestly

Encouraging members be courageous enough to be different

Selecting members committed to achievement

Selecting members with the willingness to be accountable for whatever is decided
This is how to catalyze front-line engagement—by staying

involved in decision-making, not by skirting it.
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Ron McFarland has been working in Japan for 40 years, and he's
spent more than 30 of them in international sales, sales management training, and expanding sales worldwide. He's worked
in or been to more than 80 countries. Over the past 14 years,
Ron has established distributors in the United States and
throughout Europe for a Tokyo-headquartered, Japanese hardware cutting tool manufacturer.

129

The Tao of project management
Allison Matlack

he Tao Te Ching51, believed to have been written52 by the
sage Lao Tzu53 in the 6th century BCE, is among the most

widely translated texts in existence. It has inspired everything
from religions to funny movies about dating, and authors have
used it as a metaphor to explain all kinds of things (even programming).
This text is what immediately comes to my mind when
thinking about project management in open organizations.
That might sound strange. But to understand where I'm
coming from, you should start by reading The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance, Red Hat president and
CEO Jim Whitehurst's manifesto on corporate culture and the
new leadership paradigm. In this book, Jim (with a little help
from other Red Hatters) explains the difference between conventional organizations (a "top-down" approach, with decisions
coming down from central command to employees motivated by
promotion and pay) and open organizations (a bottom-up approach, with leaders focused on inspiring purpose and passion
so employees are empowered to be and do their best).

51 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taote-v3.html
52 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching
53 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/
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This concept—that employees in open organizations are
motivated by passion, purpose, and engagement—plays directly
into where I think project managers should focus.
And to explain, I'll return to the Tao Te Ching.

Don't let your job title define you
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.54
What exactly is project management? And what does a
project manager do?
As you might expect, part of being a project manager is
managing projects: gathering requirements, managing stakeholder

communication,

setting

priority,

scheduling

helping the team resolve blockers. Many institutions

tasks,

can teach

you how to manage projects very well, and these are good skills
to have.
However, literally managing projects is only part of what
project managers in open organizations do. These organizations
require something more: Courage. If you're good at managing
projects (or if you're good at any job, really), then you can start
to feel safe in your routine. That's when you know you need to
find the courage to take a risk.

54 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taote-v3.html#1
55 http://www.pmi.org/certification/project-management-professionalpmp.aspx
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Do you have the courage to step outside of your comfort
zone? The courage to ask important people challenging questions that might raise eyebrows, but that might also uncover a
better way forward? The courage to identify the next thing that
needs to be done—then the courage to go and do it? The
courage to call out communication gaps and take initiative to fix
them? The courage to try things? The courage to fail?
The opening passage of the Tao Te Ching (which I cited
above) suggests that words, labels, and names are limiting. That
includes job titles. In open organizations, project managers
don't just perform the rote tasks required to manage projects.
They help teams accomplish the organization's mission, however
defined.

Connect the right people
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.56
One of the most difficult lessons I had to learn as I transitioned into project management was that not having all the
answers was perfectly acceptable, even expected. That was new
for me. I like having all the answers. But as a project manager,
my role is more about connecting people—so the ones who do
have the answers can collaborate efficiently.
This does not mean dodging responsibility or ownership.
This means being comfortable saying, "I don't know, but I will
find out for you," and closing that loop as quickly as possible.
Picture a wagon wheel. Without the stability and direction
provided by the center hole, the spokes would fall and the wheel

56 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taotev3.html#11
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collapse in on itself. Project managers in an open organization
can help a team maintain forward momentum by bringing the
right people together and cultivating the right discussions.

Trust your team
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don't trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!"57
Rebecca Fernandez58 once told me that what differentiates
leaders in open organizations is not the trust people have in
them, but the trust they have in other people.
Open organizations do a great job hiring smart people
who are passionate about what their companies are doing. In order for them to do their best work, we have to give them what
they need and then get out of their way.
Here, I think the above passage from the Tao Te Ching
speaks for itself.

57 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taotev3.html#17
58 https://opensource.com/users/rebecca
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Be effortless
The Master does nothing
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.59
Do you know the type of person who is always extremely
busy? The one who seems frazzled and stressed with too many
things to do?
Don't be that person.
I know that's easier said than done. The thing that most
helps me keep from being that person is remembering that we
are all extremely busy. I don't have a single co-worker who is
bored.
But someone needs to be the calm in the middle of the
storm. Someone needs to be the person who reassures the team
that everything is going to be okay, that we'll find a way to get
things done within the parameters dictated by reality and the
number of business hours in a day (because that's the truth, and
we have to).
Be that person.
What this passage of the Tao Te Ching says to me is that
the person who's always talking about what she or he is doing
has no time to actually do those things. If you can make your job
seem effortless to those around you, then you're doing your job
right.

59 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taotev3.html#38
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Be a culture coach
When a superior man hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes it, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn't laugh,
it wouldn't be the Tao.60
Last fall, I enrolled an MBA business ethics class with a
bunch of federal employees. When I started describing my company's culture, values, and ethics framework, I got the direct
impression that both my classmates and my professor thought I
was a naive young lady with a lot of lovely daydreams 61 about
how companies should run. They told me things couldn't possibly be as they seemed. They said I should investigate further.
So I did.
And here's what I found: Things are exactly as they seem.
In open organizations, culture matters. Maintaining that
culture as an organization grows makes it possible to wake up
and look forward to going to work in the morning. I (and other
members of open organizations) don't want to "work to live," as
my classmates described it. I need to feel a passion and purpose, to understand how the work I do on a daily basis directly
contributes to something I believe in.

60 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taotev3.html#41
61 https://opensource.com/open-organization/15/9/reflections-openorganization-starry-eyed-dreamer
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As a project manager, you might think that your job has
nothing to do with cultivating your company's culture on your
team. However, it's your job to embody it.

Kaizen
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing
is done,
nothing is left undone.62
The general field of project management is too focused on
the latest and greatest tools. But the answer to the question of
which tool you should use is always the same: "the simplest."
For example, I keep my running to-do list in a text file on
my desktop because it serves its purpose without unnecessary
distractions. Whatever tools, processes, and procedures you introduce to a team should increase efficiency and remove
obstacles, not introduce additional complexity. So instead of focusing on the tools, focus on the problem(s) you're using those
tools to solve.
My favorite part of being a project manager in an Agile
world is having the freedom to throw out what doesn't work.
This is related to the concept of kaizen 63, or "continuous improvement." Don't be afraid to try and fail. Failing is the label

62 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taotev3.html#48
63 https://www.kaizen.com/about-us/definition-of-kaizen.html
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we've put on the process of learning what works and what
doesn't. But it's the only way to improve.
The best processes arise organically. As a project manager, you can help your team by supporting them and not trying
to force them into anything.

Practice
Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.64
I believe in what open organizations are doing. What open
organizations are doing for the field of management is almost as
important as the actual products and services they offer. We
have an opportunity to lead by example, to inspire passion and
purpose in others, to create working environments that inspire
and empower.
I encourage you to find ways to incorporate some of these
ideas into your own projects and teams to see what happens.
Learn about your organization's mission and how your projects
contribute to it. Have courage, expect to try some things that
won't work, and don't forget to share the lessons you learn with
our community so we can continue to improve.
Allison Matlack is a project manager leading case management
teams at Red Hat. Previously, she was the content editor/manager for the Red Hat Customer Portal for more than three years.

64 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/%7Ephalsall/texts/taotev3.html#67
137

Leading through the power of "thank
you"
Curtis A. Carver

simple "thank you" can go a long way. Most of all, an expression of gratitude and the recognition of a job well

done can reinforce an organizational culture of collaboration
and transparency in an organization.
That kind of culture doesn't just emerge automatically. It
requires conscious and deliberate behaviors aimed at making
sure people know how much they're valued. On IT teams where
I've served in a leadership role, I've developed a simple system
for making sure accolades get amplified, resulting in organizational communities built on respect and thankfulness.
In this chapter, I'll explain what it involves because I believe any team or organization could implement it overnight.

Praise and progress—in public
We call it Praise and Progress.
At its heart is the Praise and Progress meeting, which we
hold once every month. In that meeting, each team in my organization receives two minutes of everyone's attention. They can
use that time use to explain something important they recently
accomplished; that's the "Progress" part. Then they can publicly
thank someone who made a difference to their work. That's the
"Praise" part—and it's the most important.
During this portion of the meeting, employees often take
time to personally thank—in front of their peers—individuals
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Organize for Innovation

who helped them and made an impact on their work. Sometimes, participants will thank people who aren't at the meeting:
People on other teams or in other departments. When that happens, I send those folks emails to let them know our team has
recognized them, and I add my own personal thanks to the note.
I also send a copy to their managers.
Occasionally, people will simply thank co-workers who are
making a difference in their professional lives. And that kind of
gratitude can be extraordinarily powerful. For example, when I
initiated Praise and Progress at the University of Alabama in
Birmingham, someone came forward to express gratitude for the
mentorship he continues to receive from someone who isn't even
in his department—a former, exemplary boss who continues to
take an interest in his life and wants to help him navigate his career. And as I always do, I contacted that manager to let him
know his former employee had thanked him publicly at our
meeting and continued to speak so warmly about him. The response I received taught me so much about a new member of
my own team.
Overall, the benefits of this monthly community tradition
have been amazing. For example:
•

Praise and Progress builds a culture of innovation.
Every month, we're talking together about our
successes and new projects, and that fosters both
a sense of forward movement and a spirit of accomplishment.

•

The meetings build a culture of gratitude and
teamwork within the company. As everyone becomes more comfortable with the Praise and
Progress ritual, they open up more—and that culture

gratitude

entrenched.

139

gets

even

deeply

Organize for Innovation

•

As a leader in the organization, Praise and
Progress meetings are extraordinarily educational
for me because I not only hear teammates' perceptions of the projects they're working on, but I also
often learn things I never even knew my organization was doing!

•

Discussing our work publicly is a great way to foster transparency across the organization. Since
we're sharing our successes and the stories of the
challenges that led to them, we can often help one
another and lend immediate guidance.

But even more surprising to me was the effect that Praise
and Progress had on my organization's relationships with external teams and stakeholders. These simple gestures engage an
entire community around an IT project, which helps build communities of practice throughout and across organizations. And
that leads to true cultural change. But apart from helping everyone feel appreciated for their hard work, Praise and Progress
also helps build "mini-champions" for the IT organization among
all the campuses and departments we serve. The tradition leads
to situations in which people are talking about all the good
things they hear the IT organization is doing. It builds tremendous goodwill, allowing me to kill poisoned seeds before they
ever sprout.

Not about you
When you're trying to change an organization, make sure
the organization itself remains your priority. Any change you initiate should be about the organization; it's not about you. It's
about the customers you're serving (students, in my case) and
what you're equipping them to do (again, in my case, changing
how they think about the world).

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Doing that can be difficult. But for open leaders, the best
way to do it is to get a community of dedicated professionals involved and, one-by-one, convince them that they can be an agent
of innovation. Engage them in building the relationships and
provide the scaffolding so that they can openly collaborate on
building the next generation of leaders, and you will.
Constructing a culture of gratitude is a great first step in
doing that. It's amazing what a simple "thank-you" can help you
do.
Curtis A. Carver Jr., Ph.D. is the Vice President and Chief Information Officer for the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Previously, he was the vice chancellor and chief information officer for the Board of Regents of University System of Georgia.

141

More engaging meetings begin with
trustful relationships
MaryJo Burchard

eople tend to focus on the technical elements of meeting
prep: setting the objective(s), making the agenda, choos-

ing a place and duration, selecting stakeholders, articulating a
timeline, and so on. But if you want people to come to a meeting
ready to fully engage, building trust is mission-critical, too. If
you need people to engage in your meetings, then you're likely
expecting people to come ready to share their creativity, problem-solving, and innovation ideas.
All these things require taking risks—and risks force people to be vulnerable. Trust is therefore fundamental to getting
anyone to engage meaningfully in meetings. But trust is not unilateral. If you think people either "trust you or they don't,"
you're missing important opportunities to help people feel free
to bring everything they have to engage in your meetings.
Let's look at seven questions open leaders can ask themselves as they get ready to gauge and build trust levels in
advance of their meetings. The extent to which you're able to do
this can make or break constructive engagement in meetings.

1. Are you for real?
Engagement begins with people's need for confidence.
First and foremost, they're going to want to know that the meeting they are walking into will be exactly what you told them
they'd be walking into. They want to be able to rely on and ac142

Organize for Innovation

cept the accuracy of your stated reason for the meeting, its objectives,

etc.,

at face value,

knowing

that you are not

intentionally attempting to deceive or trap anyone, nor are you
withholding crucial information from them.
When people can trust your authenticity and they know
you've shared exactly what they're getting into, they can prepare themselves accordingly. Blindsided people may be reticent
to participate at the same depth.

2. Are you safe?
Few things are more daunting than the fear of walking
into an ambush. When people wonder if their input will cause
someone to be thrown under the bus—or worse, when people
fear that problem-solving or brainstorming sessions will turn
into a dogpile or blame-fest—you can bet that the only people
who will be excited to engage are the people who enjoy being
abusive, calling it "collaboration." Contrary to what some in the
open source community seem to believe, intentional use of caustic, demeaning expressions for "feedback" will not produce the
highest quality outputs.
What the team will end up with instead is an unwritten
rule that the most oppressive voices always win; other brilliant
ideas will be stifled when the people who have them do not feel
personally safe to share them. With the exception of people who
enjoy the cathartic rush of harsh exchanges, openness to genuine feedback occurs when people do not fear that they will be
personally attacked or publicly humiliated in the process. For
the strongest possible engagement in meetings, set clear group
expectations that balance candor and transparency with enforced communication and behavioral norms that promote
confidence rather than intimidation.

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When people can trust you to model and reinforce threatreducing behaviors during collaboration and idea sharing, you
make room for a true meritocracy of ideas to emerge.

3. Are you consistent?
One of the greatest gifts a leader or decision-maker can
give to stakeholders is a clear sense of consistency. Consistency
enables people to obtain some level of clarity regarding the
range of possibilities for any given meeting—and it helps them
plan accordingly.
Even if people are not fond of your predictable behavior,
they can learn to navigate their own responsibilities around
what they know you will say or do. As an added bonus, in your
absence your consistent behavior will still enable them to engage in making decisions about which they can confidently
predict your general thoughts and responses.
When people can trust your words and actions to have
clear, reliable patterns, they can gain a clearer sense of their
role in the engagement process.

4. Can they depend on you?
Somewhat related to consistency is your reputation for being a person of your word. I have facilitated countless decisionmaking meetings in organizations that began with the question,
"Is this going to be another one of those meetings where we do
all the hard work and come up with a workable solution, and
then the powers that be are going to just do whatever they want
anyway?" Past failures to follow through can destroy people's
motivation to attempt to engage again. If a history of undependable follow-through and unkept commitments exists (whether or
not you were at the heart of them), acknowledge the failure to
the people in advance and discuss with them the measures you

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will take to keep the current commitments related to this new
meeting.
When people can trust your word to follow through on
commitments related to their investment in the meeting, they
can often give the process another chance, even if others failed
to follow through in the past.

5. Do you know your stuff?
Having the skill and expertise to conduct the meeting and
discuss responsibilities isn't enough. You need to know your people. A meeting in which the leader is unfamiliar with the group's
history, trigger words, social cues, behavioral norms, and shared
values will make it very difficult to make sure you (and others!)
are engaging in alignment with cultural expectations. Perceived
incompetence by the person leading a meeting can be an immediate engagement-killer.
If you are new to the group, before the meeting (or as an
opening session), let the people help you catch up with discovery discussions (individually or in small groups), and ask them
for help in understanding the shared story, values, history,
norms, etc. in addition to any nuanced skills or knowledge you'll
need to grasp to facilitate effective discussions.
When people can trust that you know what you are doing,
they can relax and focus on their own responsibilities in the
meeting.

6. Does the buck stop with you?
With complex or wide-scale projects, it's easy for things to
fall through the cracks. People you work with are likely heavy
hitters who already want to do a good job—but someone has to
assume ultimate responsibility for the success of the entire
team. I'm not talking about ultimate "fault" or "blame" in case
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something goes wrong (we want solutions, not human targets).
I'm talking about ownership. Someone needs to assume personal
responsibility to help set up the task/project/team for success,
and own any initiative that needs to be assumed if it begins to
flounder. If you assume ownership, you embrace the responsibility to engage with the stakeholders holistically and proactively.
Your words and actions will hold you and everyone else to the
highest possible standards.
When people can trust that you assume personal responsibility and ownership of helping them succeed, the mental and
emotional energy they'd commit to self-protection "just in case
you drop the ball" can be redirected to bolstering their own contributions.

7. Do people believe that your intent is to help?
This is the linchpin of trust.
People can handle a lot of things—inconsistent or erratic
behaviors, stupid verbal responses, lack of follow-through, even
lack of knowledge or ownership—if they can sense that you are
really trying to do right by them. It is worth the time to connect
with people beyond what you need from them, to take a genuine
interest in who they are as people and what's going on in their
lives. Beyond being good interpersonal protocol, it's good business.
When people are inclined to believe what you say and do
is intended to help and not harm them, they will be more likely
to interpret and respond to your failings to have the best possible motives, which often means they'll engage with you to help
work through the kinks even if they are frustrated or even angry
with your behavior.

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Bottom line
Trust is where engagement begins, in meetings and in life.
Understanding the multiple dimensions of trust gives us the opportunity to have conversations that can help us build it up
wherever it is lacking—before we need it in the meeting.
For example, when we allow someone to tell us, "I trust
that you mean well, but I do not yet trust your competence in
this skill," or "I trust your expertise and I know you intend to do
what you say, but I find that your optimism about what can be
done in an hour exceeds reality, so despite your good heart, I
cannot currently trust your dependability," we have a chance to
pinpoint what areas we need to foster their trust. Responding to
statements like these with questions like, "What do you need
from me in order to grow in your trust of me in this area?" and
then following up to track your progress can also add to others'
perception of your intent to do them good.
Stay with it! Over time, both trust—and with it, engagement—will grow.
MaryJo Burchard (Concord Solutions) helps leaders in nonprofits, education, business, and public sector develop open
behaviors and interactions to measurably raise the bar of humane engagement in the workplace. She has a PhD in
Organizational Leadership from Regent University and conducts
training and internal organizational development consulting for
the City of Virginia Beach, where she lives with her husband
Kenny, their son Victor, and their chihuahua-pug, Stanley.

147

Chapter title
Author McLastName

orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Nunc orci mi, pharetra nec quam at, blandit lobortis sem.

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lestie finibus. Sed eu leo massa. Donec justo felis, pulvinar sit
amet est et, luctus rutrum nibh.

Maecenas

interdum

erat.

Nunc

consectetur

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150

Appendix A
The Open Organization Definition

Nam auctor neque
Vestibulum vel mi dapibus, hendrerit urna ut, mattis orci.
Nam auctor neque nibh, sit amet bibendum sem finibus et.
Morbi egestas arcu nec lobortis efficitur. Nulla in orci libero. In
at tellus nisi. Quisque tempor metus eget felis porta, sit amet
dictum libero fermentum. Morbi pulvinar ultrices urna, at aliquet est pulvinar et. Suspendisse euismod urna ut lacus viverra
auctor.

Maecenas

interdum

erat.

Nunc

consectetur

scelerisque varius. Integer posuere turpis in felis aliquet,
dapibus efficitur enim venenatis. Praesent vehicula scelerisque
sem, nec lobortis nisl convallis sit amet. Donec at elit nibh.

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Additional resources
The book series
Continue reading about the future of work, management,
and leadership in the Open Organization book series. Get
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The discussion list
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regularly exchange resources and discuss the themes of this
book. Chime in at www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/openorglist.

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