Thriving with Self Organization with Frank Eggink

Can self-management revolutionize your workplace? In this episode of The Agile Within, we promise to unlock the secrets of self-management with our distinguished guest, Frank Eggink from Arnhem, Netherlands. Frank offers his deep expertise from working with 14 diverse companies, shedding light on how moving from a command-and-control leadership style to self-organizing teams can ignite innovation and agility. From a charming chat about his favorite local spot, Loca, to unraveling the English and Dutch nuances of self-management, Frank reveals the strategies that can transform your team’s dynamics and drive unparalleled success.

We also guide you through the intricacies of the Holacracy framework, likening it to an operating system that replaces rigid hierarchies with role-based clarity. With practical advice on maintaining a balance between structure and autonomy, we explore how frameworks like Holacracy can enhance decision-making and leverage individual strengths. Whether you’re part of a startup or a traditional organization, discover actionable tips to foster self-management and grant your teams the autonomy they need to thrive. Don’t miss this compelling episode packed with real-life examples and strategies that can help your organization embrace the future of work.

You may notice lower audio quality during several portions of this episode. The transcript on the Buzzsprout episode site might be helpful.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1449787/episodes/15804511

Connect with Frank on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/freggink/

Learn more about Frank's visits to self-organising and bossless organisations:
https://frankeggink.substack.com/

Learn more about holacracy:
https://www.holacracy.org/
https://www.holacracy.org/how-it-works/

While in Arnhem, Netherlands, grab a bite to eat at Loca:
https://restaurant-loca.nl/

Chapters

• 0:06 Thriving With Self-Management
• 10:32 Navigating Self-Management Frameworks
• 17:57 Effective Strategies for Self-Management

Transcript

Mark: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, Mark Metze. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Well, I hope everyone out there is having a wonderful day. This is Mark Metze at the Agile Within. Our guest for this episode today is Frank Eggink.

Frank: 0:48

Frank welcome to the show, hi Mark. Thanks for having me, thanks for inviting me.

Mark: 0:54

Frank is a self-organizing enthusiast who is passionate about discovering new ways of working, and Frank and I met several months back now at a dysfunction mapping workshop. That was rather interesting.

Frank: 1:09

I remember, yeah, several months back. I'm actually thinking maybe it could be last year, I'm not sure.

Mark: 1:15

It could be at this point.

Frank: 1:16

It could be, but it was fun to attend the workshop. I learned some new, interesting stuff. It was nice meeting you, so that's the reason why we are meeting up now.

Mark: 1:24

Shout out to Michael Lloyd he didn't pay us for this promo, but yeah, if you haven't done dysfunction mapping, there you go. Frank has visited 14 different companies up to now and is planning to visit more that are working with self-organizing and self-managing ways of working and trying to find out a little bit more about the pros and the cons. So the title for today's episode is Thriving with Self-Management. But before we get to that I almost forgot I want to get to our icebreaker question. So, Frank, you are from Arnhem, Netherlands, and if I were coming there for a day and I've never been, which I haven't what's one thing that Frank would say that I couldn't miss doing?

Frank: 2:08

I'm really passionate about eating good food, so I would recommend you going to a restaurant. It's called Loca. It's quite a small restaurant, only a couple of tables, for probably maybe 16 people can sit there, and they have a great menu. It's not that expensive it's actually quite cheap but it's good quality seasonal food. I would definitely take you there. Awesome. So how often do you go there? Let's see? Well, quite often actually, I think last week, yeah, my wife and a couple of friends of ours went there. I think we also went there the week before. So probably two times a month. So do they know you by name? They do. They know us by name, so it's quite easy to make a reservation there, and they already know what we eat and what our preferences are. So that's what we did.

Mark: 2:54

Oh, that's cool, that's really neat. Thriving with self-management. Define for us in your words what is self-management?

Frank: 3:05

Oh, that's an interesting question, because I've been thinking about that lately myself, because I think I wrote a post on LinkedIn a couple of days back, a week ago. Well, you have self-management, you have boss organization, but you also have self-organization. Apparently, there's a difference in what self-organization and self-management means in English and in the Dutch language. I think self-organization for you is where you have way more freedom than in self-management. In self-management, you're familiar with Scrum, so someone will tell you. Your product owner will tell you okay, well, this is what we want to build, this is most important for us, and as a team, you're capable of determining how to do it because you're the professional, you're the expert, so you can decide on what's the best way to implement this.

Frank: 3:49

I think that's self-management, and in Dutch it would translate to self-organization, which is interesting. There's, I think, a Chinese company called Haier. They work with self-organization, but they go a bit further, that you can even form a team. You come up with a new kind of product idea, come up with funding for it and in the end, you could become your own company, which is really like okay, that's possibly self-organization.

Mark: 4:20

But in.

Frank: 4:20

Dutch that would be self-management translated. So let's talk about self-organization, I think, a better term. We are kind of determining more about what you can actually do, not only how you do the work, but also what you do Interesting, so why is that important?

Frank: 4:34

I think that's important because traditional companies often come up with plans. They have somewhere well, position A and we want to go to position B, and they kind of well, they make kind of a plan how to get there. And I've spoken with you, mentioned with 14 companies already, and quite a few of them mentioned that if you're really focused on going from A to B, probably miss out on a lot of opportunities, because everything that's unrelated to going to point B will probably cause resistance or the company not wanting to focus on it, so it will stifle innovation. So, by actually allowing people to find new ways of how to innovate or define new products and services, I think that's, in the end, better for the company itself.

Mark: 5:29

That can be a challenge for a team, especially a team that has had a more command and control style of leadership that is in place, and if that's their experience of you, tell me what to do and then give me the freedom of how to do it. Unless you tell me what needs to be done, I really can't do my job well, if that makes any sense. So I know you're working with different companies and I think the ones that you are focusing on are ones that are really looking to thrive with and have good experiences with self-organization. But what about those teams where you're trying to build, let's say, from the ground up you're trying to build up self-organization.

Frank: 6:14

Probably it will take a longer time to get there because people are not used to it. Like you said, some people are really used to oh, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I believe that that starts when you're probably the same in the US, but when you go to school in the Netherlands at age four, you're being pushed into a kind of fixed mold where everyone is focusing on things you're not good at instead of on your talents and you're getting punished. So failure is. It's quite difficult to deal with that because there's a lot of focus on making mistakes and avoiding making mistakes.

Frank: 6:53

And that's something that you end up when you start working, especially in a company where, when you start working there when you're quite young I would say probably at age 20 first job you're having, it's scary because the first, when you're quite young I would say probably at age 20, the first job you're having is scary because it's the first time you're entering a corporate job. So you'll probably do what someone tells you and it's maybe difficult to speak up against someone. So you'll probably do it and if you make a mistake, you're often yeah, you could get punished, which in the end, will make you focus on the stuff you're good at, you probably won't do anything that's out of those boundaries. So it's difficult to start with, but I think to start with, becoming more self-organized or self-managed is to actually start, as a manager or company owner, to actually trust your people in doing the right thing and giving them more autonomy in making their own decisions or by involving them in the way that you make decisions as a manager.

Mark: 8:00

And I think, as you're visiting with these companies, you're talking to founders. You're not talking to necessarily the boots on the ground, right? So what else, from their perspective, can you share with us as they seek to build a self-organizing organization?

Frank: 8:17

Yeah, I should tell you I spoke with most. I think most companies I spoke with was with the owner or CEO. Some of them were coaches and some even a couple of employees. But I would say, of all the owners and CEOs I've spoken with, they feel that it's really important to become self-organizing or boss organization in the end, because they truly believe that it's the only way to in this rapidly changing world where stuff is changing at a faster rate every day. So you have to become yeah, agile is a good word nimble, respond quickly to changes. By embracing self-organization, you are actually capable of steering quickly, rather than in a traditional organization where there's like a manager who has to kind of approve every decision.

Frank: 9:10

So most of them say well, when we start with self-organization, we see like we have more impact from day one.

Frank: 9:18

And they also feel that I think everyone talks about that they actually trust people in making decisions.

Frank: 9:25

An example that they often give and they often give as well is we're really good at we all have a partner, we have kids, we have a mortgage, we make huge financial decisions in our life, but the moment we step out of the front door it kind of changes instantly and they truly believe that, well, you can trust people and they're correct.

Frank: 9:47

The front door it kind of changes instantly. And they truly believe that, well, you can trust people. And of course, there's always someone who will take abuse of the freedom that they're given. But that's only a minority and they feel that by addressing that individually, not making rules for exceptions, that's better for them, for the company and for the employees and, in the end, for the customers as well. And they also believe that employees won't work for a company for a lifetime, I would say. They switch jobs rather every two, three years, by focusing more on roles than based on traditional functions, what they were traditionally kind of used to doing. Based on traditional functions, what they were traditionally kind of used to doing, it's easier to focus on talent. But also, when someone leaves, it's not like you're throwing away 40 years of knowledge.

Mark: 10:32

Right, you and I were talking a couple weeks back. One of the things that you told me was that 95% of the companies that you had talked to were utilizing at least some part of the Holacracy framework. Explain for our listeners out there. Tell us what this Holacracy framework is, and then we can move into how it's been utilized.

Frank: 10:59

Yeah, as you said, it's a framework focusing on process and structure.

Frank: 11:04

One of the CEOs or founders of one of the companies I visited he explained it as well. Holacracy is like an operating system, so it's like Windows or Mac and some companies install a hierarchy and you could also install a lucracy and it's based on it's kind of a framework, with focusing on people having different roles. So in traditional organizations you have functions Someone is maybe a marketeer or a legal advisor, but if you're using bureaucracy it's you kind of take a function and you split it up into multiple roles. So you could be maybe someone is a marketer and you have to simplify it a bit. You have two tasks. One of them is to to call customers and the other one is to make quotations. In traditional organizations you would do both. Maybe you're really good at calling customers, but you're not that good at making a quotation. Then what often happens is that during the performance review they're focusing on well, you have to improve your quotation-making skills and when you're actually being role-based as a company, you could split it. And if you're good at calling a customer, then by all means you can do it If you're passionate about all the plants in the office and you want to take care of them as well, then fine, you can do that too, but you don't have to take on a role that you're not good at. So it's really focusing on people's talents.

Frank: 12:38

So not focusing on traditional functions, but more on roles. So that's one thing, and there's kind of a structure meeting. Yeah, there are two meetings focusing on how to make decisions in a holacratic organization. One is really focusing on the governance meeting. So, okay, do we have the right roles? Do we have to add roles? Do we have to change roles? Do we have to add roles? Do we have to change roles? Do we have to remove roles?

Frank: 13:05

And that's something that doesn't happen in traditional organizations that often end up having more and more functions and stuff probably won't disappear, and they have a meeting that's focused on the work that's being done what projects are running, do you need any support, stuff? That that's. That's kind of more day-to-day, and the decision making in those two meetings is not based on consensus, where everyone has to agree with it, but it's focused on consent. So someone might have a proposition, they'll make the proposition. There's a strict format, which I won't go into now because it's yeah, it's. It's quite long to explain, but in the end, everyone can have their say. So even the quiet people can say something about it, and they'll make the decision based on okay, is it good enough for now? Is it safe enough to try? So if no one has a real, any real They'll just start doing it and they'll start experimenting with it.

Mark: 14:04

So I've got a bit of a theoretical question for you here. I'm going to put you on the spot. So have you ever encountered teams that say why are we using this hola framework? There's a lot of rules. I thought we were self-organizing. I thought we were going to choose the way that we want to work.

Frank: 14:23

I have heard about it during the conversations I had with the company owners. Some people like it because it's one of the benefits is that it's really clear, because it's role-based, what you're doing, what are your responsibilities and what are the tasks you're doing. That's something that's lacking in traditional hierarchical organizations, because people often don't know who's responsible and who's doing what. But that also gives freedom. I would say. Getting used to a different format of meetings is challenging. That's what they told us at the beginning. It's quite labor-intensive, laborious. It will take a long time to get used to the framework and the way the meetings are structured. What they actually use is that they talk about tension. So if you feel some kind of tension that's kind of work-related you address it. So let me give an example that might be easier. The tension might be well, we forgot to send out the newsletter to the customers. We were late again. So someone might feel that there's some kind of a tension. Someone can bring it up and then he or she has to come up with well, I'm proposing this and they'll make the decision in the meeting format. But that kind of asks from people that they are willing to share the tensions, and that's also something that people find really difficult. I would say people are maybe not happy at first because it's quite strict.

Frank: 15:51

By doing it in a certain way, you actually well. There are some boundaries that you create where people, within those boundaries they contrive. Without the boundaries we end up in chaos. It's the same in society where we have like stop signs. So it's kind of similar to that. But by practicing it more and more it gets easier. But I also don't want to say that it's the best way. I think it's a good way to start with self-organization or self-management, especially if you've never done it, or even if you have a traditional hierarchy and want to try something else. Then you could start with parts of it. You could start working with role-based working, step away from traditional functions. You could try the meeting format, you could try bits of it. But I even spoke with a couple of companies that never used the Holacracy framework and they kind of naturally grew a way of working.

Mark: 16:55

I had somebody explain self-management very rarely, if ever, means 100% self-management. What they were getting at was there's a difference between self-management and anarchy. You mentioned the word chaos. When you hear teams saying well, I thought we were self-managing, I thought we were self-organizing. Why can't we make these decisions? Think about in our own world. Now, like you said, there have to be some laws, there has to be something that guides us. It can't just be you know, for those of us in the States here, it can't be the Wild West, where you're just going to some territory that's never been explored before and you just make the laws as you go. I'm interpreting this holacracy as giving you some sort of guardrails so that the team can be self-managing but they aren't overwhelmed.

Frank: 17:54

Yeah, I would say that's a good description of it.

Mark: 17:57

You think of those of us that are parents and you've got a toddler. There are certain things that you do to protect your child from in the house. You want them to have an independent mind and you want them to explore. But there's a reason why we put those little plastic covers in the outlets. There's a reason why we put gate in front of the stairs. There's a reason why we make sure that the cabinets with sharp objects are locked so they can't get in them. That's where my mind is going with this discussion.

Frank: 18:27

Yeah, I think that's a good analogy. Like you said, companies often do is they hear about self-organization, self-management. They start coming up with well, autonomy, ownership, and they say, well, you're now self-managing, do what you want.

Frank: 18:42

you're now self-managing, do what you want to do Go self-organize, go self-organize, and then they're surprised that they end up in an NLT. That could happen, of course, but actually it could be a great start to work role-based, to do different meeting formats, to work based on tension and they often say tension is fuel. So if there's something that's not working right in the organization, you can speak up and you can experiment. I visited a company in Groningen, north of the Netherlands, and they had a way of doing strategic planning for the next year, and during one of their meetings they work with Holacracy as well they were discussing well, we try this for a couple of times, it isn't working for us and let's try something else.

Frank: 19:27

So it's a framework, but it still gives you the opportunity to experiment with different ways, and then even with, okay, what about salary setting? We can do it in a different way and experiment with it. Like you said, the guardrails are there to give people clarity as well. That's also way to role based working. So you know who's responsible for something and who to address. Okay, if work isn't getting done, you can easily walk up to someone and say okay, when are you going to?

Mark: 19:54

do it, and I assume you have the freedom to choose those roles. So if you have certain strengths, you may say I have a writer's background, so external communications is something that I excel at. I would be good at taking that role instead of just taking a person and having a more communist way about it. It's like okay, frank, I don't care what you say, you're going to communicate with all of our partners, so that's your job.

Frank: 20:19

Now you figure it out and go do it yeah, I kind of kind of feel that actually has that in a certain way, because there is someone with the role that it's I think it's called a lead link and it's not like a manager, but he or she has kind of the responsibility to kind of divide roles and they can also take roles back.

Frank: 20:39

But of course, you're still entitled to say, okay, I'm good at this, so I'm really good at calling a customer, let me do it. Beside that, I want to do like social media and that's something, or or do something in finance or marketing, and that's something you can't do in a traditional organization. I mean, I've been a software engineer myself. You start as a junior, you end up being a media senior, an architect, then, well, you have to become like a project manager or a manager, and there was no possibility for me to do anything in marketing or finance or anything else. And that's that's the beauty of working role-based and that's not only a lot of democracy but most, I think all the companies I spoke with work role-based, so actually focusing on people's talents, so you can actually. It's not like climbing the corporate ladder like we used to, but you grow as a person by doing different things and learning in a different way than we're used to.

Mark: 21:38

So we've talked a lot about self-management, we've talked about the holacracy framework, but as far as self-management goes, what are some strategies or what are some ways that we can look to improve or increase self-management within a company?

Frank: 21:54

If you're a starting company, like a small company or startup, then it's really good to realize. At some point you end up with 15, 20, 25 people I think I've heard mostly 20, 25 people. I think I've heard mostly around 20, 25 people. You start thinking, okay, well, we need to implement some form of hierarchy, management, and I think that's a good moment to think about okay, what do I want to be as a company? Do I want to become self-organizing, self-managing? Because if you start implementing a hierarchy, it's really difficult to it's more difficult to step away from it. So that's a good moment to actually think, as a CEO or as an owner, which way do we want to go with our company? And I think it's essential that you do this as a company owner, because if you only do it as a single team and an organization, it can work, but it will still be kind of a team that's self-managing, more nimble than the rest of the organization. So at some point you'll walk into a wall. So it's essential that the owner is really wanting to do it.

Frank: 22:58

And if you're in a traditional organization, of course you can start with a team by giving them more freedom and, for instance, okay, what do we do with our yearly budget, for instance, quite often you have to ask permission for okay, I want to have a new laptop, or I want to do something together with my team, something fun, maybe go bowling, or we want try out a new tool, something else, and what you could do as a manager of that department, okay, well, let's give the team more autonomy, more ownership, by giving them a budget and letting them decide how to actually spend it. If they want to spend it on doing like four trips to a different country every year, if that's making them happy, that's fine. If they want to buy a new laptop, that's also fine. And in that case, being the manager, you don't have to give permission for everything they want to do, and it will give them, or the team, more confidence in making decisions and not being punished for it, and it will give the manager more freedom.

Mark: 24:03

Yeah, one of the things that stuck out to me that you said is giving them the permission. So breaking people of the habit of having to ask for permission before doing something I see as being key and that's a learned response and that if you have been brought up in an organization where you have to ask for permission before you do something, that's a slow way to operate, especially if you have multiple layers of management. The person at the top is the one that typically makes most of the decisions. Then you have to go, I like to say you have to go up the chain and then you have to go back down the chain for all your decisions and it just seems like a very big slog at that point. And I see people getting checked out like this is never going to change.

Frank: 24:50

Like I said, it will take a long time to actually make a decision. Or even if you have an idea and you bring it up, then it might not even get done because it's not prioritized in a way. But I would even go a bit further than because I said giving them permission. I think it's it's more than that. It's actually trusting them to do the right thing and because if you give permission then well, it kind of implies that you can take it away, but it's okay. Actually trusting people to make the right decision.

Mark: 25:16

I think that's that's a better way of saying it so there's giving them the permission, but I've had it communicated to me. Okay, you can do this, but you better not fail.

Frank: 25:28

Ah yeah, if you do it that way, then people might not make the decision and they'll still come back to you being in a manager position to make the decision for them. You need to be careful not to judge them, and I think it's essential to make people allow people to make mistakes, because that's the way they learn to actually build confidence for them to make the decisions and to feel confident as a manager too, that they actually can make decisions that you want them to make.

Mark: 26:00

So, frank, what about working with people with strong personalities? When you talk about self-management and self-organization, sometimes people with very strong personalities can kick the door open and storm through. How do you work with those strong type A personalities that may take their liberties a little too far a?

Frank: 26:21

little too far. That's a good question. The way that these companies actually structure their decision-making process, that really helps in preventing people who are kind of outspoken to make all the decisions. Also, the role-based working helps in that because it's not only one person that has an HR function, but it's more people who have a role. Maybe one of them is focusing on hiring, the other one is focusing on firing, the other one is doing something else, so it's kind of distributed over multiple people and the meeting format, like I said, will help in getting everyone's opinion on the decision that you're about to make, which in traditional organizations you often have one or two people who are outspoken. So that will definitely help.

Frank: 27:16

But of course there's still the risk of people taking their responsibilities too far, and that's something that's a problem or a challenge in normal organizations. But there you have a manager who is kind of there to address that situation. But if you're self-organizing or you're using holacracy, there's no manager who can actually solve that problem for you. Then you have to talk to that person one-on-one or maybe mention it during one of the meetings that you have some kind of tension where, well, I'm seeing that too much responsibility is going to that role You're actually talking about roles, not about persons Then you can come up with a different way of working. But that's challenging for people because you need to be able to give and also receive feedback in a proper way, and that's something most of us are not used to, we're not trained in that. There's some resistance. I need to say something about it. I can't go to a manager, I have to do it myself, which is challenging, but you're still. By doing it and giving someone that feedback, you have to kind of keep the relationship. Thinking back to the organization I spoke with, of course there's always someone who might bend the rules a bit more, but actually talking to that person one-on-one, or addressing it in one of the meetings, will quickly resolve the issue.

Frank: 28:40

I would say the issue. I would say Rather than what happens in traditional organizations when someone does something or takes too much responsibility or whatever, then we're kind of inclined to making rules for exceptions. We end up with big rule books. It demands not necessarily new skills, but different skills from people who work there and it's I wouldn't say it's for everyone. Some people still enjoy working in an organization where there's a manager who actually says well, I want you to do this and they're perfectly happy doing what they're asked. The people who actually enjoy it have more happiness in work, they have more purpose, but still it's a challenge. I would say.

Mark: 29:23

Well, Frank, I've really been enjoying our conversation here. What parting advice would you give to our listeners out there that are wanting to explore self-management?

Frank: 29:34

Yeah, I was thinking about, because I'm truly passionate about self-organization, self-management, boss of organizations. I was thinking, yeah, why is that of organizations thinking about? Why is that? Because we are really capable of running our own lives, making our own decisions financial ones, we have a mortgage, we have kids, we have a partner.

Frank: 29:52

We don't have a manager at home. So if I have a conflict with my wife or with my kids or we have some kind of disagreement, I have to solve it with them on my own. We have to talk about it, and I think that's kind of natural to humans. We don't kind of ask someone else. Well, I'm having a problem with my wife, I can't solve it, so please come and fix it. And I think that's, for me, the key when. Why does work have to be different from the way we live our daily lives? We are perfectly capable of making decisions, and that's something that I heard with every organization. I interviewed with every CEO, every owner as well. I truly believe in people's professionalism, their expertise and I really trust them in making the right decisions. So why should I solve the problems for them? They can perfectly do it themselves. I think that's something I want you to part with as a way to go.

Mark: 30:59

Well, Frank, for our listeners out there who want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that? I?

Frank: 31:05

think the best way to do it is look me up on LinkedIn. There's even a link to the blog I'm writing. It's on substack Every company I visit. I made a list of, I think, at the moment, 80 or 90 companies that work in self-organizing, bossless way. I've visited, like you said, 14 already and writing a blog about every one of them. I think I wrote four now, so I still have 10 more to go and probably a bit more. So I think that's the best way to reach me. So look me up on LinkedIn.

Mark: 31:36

Great. We'll put those links in the show notes so make it easy for our listeners out there. Well, everybody, it's been a wonderful time. Frank, I really appreciate you spending your valuable time with me to talk about self-management and self-organization. It's been a pleasure, my friend. Thanks, Mark, for inviting me. I would love to do it again.

Mark: 32:01

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the Agile Within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues Until next time. This has been your host, Mark Metze.