What are you willing to give up to change the way we work? | Martin Danoesastro

140,021 views ・ 2019-01-29

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00:12
Have you ever watched a flock of birds work together?
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Thousands of animals, flying in perfect synchrony:
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Isn't it fascinating?
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What I find remarkable is that these birds would not be able to do that
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if they all would have to follow one leader.
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Their reaction speed would simply be too low.
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Instead, scientists believe that these birds are aligned on
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a few simple rules,
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allowing every single bird to make autonomous decisions
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while still flying in perfect synchrony.
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Their alignment enables their autonomy,
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and their autonomy makes them fast and flexible.
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Now, what does this have to do with any one of us?
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Well, it's one way of illustrating what I believe to be the most important change
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that is needed in ways of working today.
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The world is getting faster and more complex,
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so we need a new way of working,
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a way that creates alignment around purpose,
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that takes out bureaucracy
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and that truly empowers people to make decisions faster.
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But the question is:
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In order to get there,
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what are we willing to give up?
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A few years ago, I was working with a bank
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that wanted to embark on a digital transformation.
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They wanted their offering to be simpler, more intuitive, more relevant.
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Now, I'm not sure how many of you have seen a bank from the inside,
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so let me try to illustrate what many traditional banks look like.
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You see lots of people in suits
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taking elevators to go to their department,
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marketers sitting with marketers, engineers with engineers, etc.
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You see meetings with 20 people
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where nothing gets decided.
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Great ideas? They end up in PowerPoint parking lots.
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And there are endless handovers between departments.
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Getting anything done can take forever.
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So this bank knew that in order to transform,
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they would have to improve their time to market
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by drastically changing their ways of working as well.
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But how?
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To get some inspiration, we decided to go and have a look at companies
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that seem to be more innovative,
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like Google, Netflix, Spotify, Zappos.
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And I remember how we were walking the halls at one of these companies
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in December 2014,
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a management consultant and a team of bankers.
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We felt like strangers in a strange land,
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surrounded by beanbags and hoodies
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and lots of smart, creative employees.
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So then we asked, "How is your company organized?"
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And we expected to get an org chart.
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But instead, they used strange drawings
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with funny names like "squads" and "chapters" and "tribes"
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to explain how they were organized.
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So then we tried to translate that to our own world.
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We asked, "How many people are working for you?"
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"It depends."
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"Who do you report to?"
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"It depends."
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"Who decides on your priorities?"
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"It depends."
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You can imagine our surprise.
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We were asking for what we thought were some of the basic principles
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of organizations,
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and their answer was, "It depends."
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Now, over the course of that day,
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we gained a better understanding of their model.
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They believed in the power of small, autonomous teams.
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Their teams were like mini-start-ups.
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They had product people and IT engineers in the same team
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so they could design, build and test ideas with customers
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independently of others in the company.
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They did not need handovers between departments.
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They had all the skills needed right there in the team.
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Now, at the end of that day, we had a session
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to reflect on what we had learned.
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And we had started to like their model,
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so we were already thinking of how to apply some of these ideas to a bank.
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But then, one of the hosts, a guy who had not said a word all day,
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he suddenly said,
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"So I see you like our model.
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But I have one question for you:
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What are you willing to give up?"
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What were we willing to give up?
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We did not have an answer immediately, but we knew he was right.
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Change is not only about embracing the new;
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it's about giving up on some of the old as well.
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Now, over the past five years,
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I have worked with companies all over the world
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to change their ways of working.
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And clearly, every company has their own skeptics
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about why this is not going to work for them.
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"Our product is more complex,"
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or "They don't have the legacy IT like we do,"
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or "Regulators just won't allow this in our industry."
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But for this bank and also for the other companies
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that I have worked with afterwards,
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change was possible.
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Within a year, we completely blew up the old silos
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between marketing, product, channels and IT.
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Three thousand employees were reorganized into 350 multidisciplinary teams.
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So instead of product people sitting just with product people
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and engineers with engineers,
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a product person and an engineer were now members of the same team.
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You could be a member of a team responsible for account opening
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or for the mobile banking app, etc.
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At the go-live date of that new organization,
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some people were shaking hands for the very first time,
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only to find out that they had been sitting two minutes away from each other
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but they were sending each other emails and status reports for the last 10 years.
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You would hear someone saying,
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"Ah, so you're the guy that I was always chasing for answers."
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(Laughter)
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But now, they're having coffee together every day.
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If the product guy has an idea, he can just raise it
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to get input from the engineer who is sitting right next to him.
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They can decide to test with customers immediately --
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no handovers, no PowerPoints, no red tape,
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just getting stuff done.
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Now, getting there is not easy.
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And as it turns out,
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"What are you willing to give up?"
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is exactly the right question to ask.
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Autonomous decision-making requires multidisciplinary teams.
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Instead of decisions going up and down the organization,
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we want the team to decide.
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But to do so, we need all the skills and expertise for that decision
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in the team.
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And this brings difficult trade-offs.
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Can we physically co-locate our people who are working in different buildings,
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different cities or even different countries today?
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Or should we invest in better videoconferencing?
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And how do we ensure consistency in the way we do things
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across these teams?
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We still need some kind of management matrix.
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Now, all these changes to structure and process and procedure --
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they are not easy.
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But in the end,
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I found that the most difficult thing to change
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is our own behavior.
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Let me try to illustrate.
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If we want these teams to be fast, flexible, creative, like a mini-start-up,
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they have to be empowered and autonomous.
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But this means we cannot have leaders commanding their people what to do,
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when to do, how to do.
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No micromanagers.
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But it also means that each employee needs to become a leader,
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regardless of their formal title.
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It's about all of us stepping up to take initiative.
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Now obviously, we also cannot afford
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to have all these teams running in different directions,
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because that would certainly lead to chaos.
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So we need alignment and autonomy at the same time,
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just like a flock of birds.
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In an organizational setting,
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this requires new behaviors,
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and with each new behavior,
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there is giving up on something old as well.
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Leaders have to make sure that everyone in the organization
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is aligned around the overall purpose -- the why --
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and the overall priorities -- the what.
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But then they have to let go and trust their teams
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to make the right decisions on how to get there.
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Now, creating alignment requires open and transparent communication.
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But you know how they say that information is a source of power?
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Well, for some managers,
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sharing information may feel as if they're giving up that source of power.
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And it's not just managers.
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The teams need to communicate openly and transparently as well.
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In these companies, the teams typically work in short sprints,
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and at the end of every sprint, they organize a demo session
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to share the output of what they've done, transparently.
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And every day,
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each member of the team gives an update
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of what they are working on individually.
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Now, all this transparency can be uncomfortable for people,
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because suddenly, there is no place to hide anymore.
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Everything we do is transparent for everyone.
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So, alignment is not easy,
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and providing autonomy is not so obvious, either.
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One executive at another company
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likes to explain how he used to be a master of milestone-tracking.
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Now, today, to know how things are going,
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instead of looking at status reports,
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he needs to walk down to the team floors to attend one of their sessions.
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And instead of telling people what to do,
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he looks for ways to help them.
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That is radical change
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for someone who used to be a master of milestone-tracking.
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But in the old world, this executive said,
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"I only had the illusion of control.
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In reality, many projects would run over time and over budget, anyway.
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Now I have much more transparency,
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and I can course-correct much earlier if needed."
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And middle managers need to change as well.
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First of all, without the handovers and the PowerPoint,
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there's less of a need for middle managers.
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And in the old world, there was this idea of thinkers and doers.
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Employees would just follow orders.
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But now, instead of only managing other people,
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middle managers were expected to become player-coaches.
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So imagine, for the last 10 years,
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you have just been telling other people what to do,
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but now you're expected to do things yourself again.
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Clearly, this model is not for everyone,
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and some great people leave the company.
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But the result is a new culture
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with less hierarchy.
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And all of this is hard work.
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But it's worth it.
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The companies that I worked with,
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they were used to deploying new product features a few times per year.
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Now they have releases every few weeks,
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and without the handovers and the red tape,
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the whole organization becomes more efficient.
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And finally, if you walk the halls of these companies today,
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you just feel a new energy.
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It feels as if you're walking the halls of a very large start-up.
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Now, to be fair, these companies, they cannot claim victory yet.
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But at least with this new model,
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they are much better prepared to respond to change.
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The world is getting faster and more complex,
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so we need to reboot our way of working.
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And the hardest part of that change is not in structure
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or process or procedure,
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and it's also not just senior executives taking charge.
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Leaders will be all of those in the organization
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who embrace the change.
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We all have to lead the change.
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So the question is:
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What are you willing to give up?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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