4 Foundations

Deep Dive Leadership & Culture with iCoachAndrew

The important first step in dual frame organising is to establish a team of highly competent key players. They must understand the context of inertia discussed earlier and believe in the wisdom of dual frame organising.
At Indonesia Power, the country's largest power generation enterprise, the team is called the Orbex Management & Technology Excellence Centre. At Heidelberg-Indocement, the country's largest private sector building materials enterprise, the team is called the Orbex Management Technology Team. (Orbex is short for Organizing for Business Excellence, a Paradigm for Shaping, Aligning & Attuning Organisations.)

In order to successfully supplement command and control with an agile team network, your key players must have the leadership, the commitment and the involvement of your top management team.

Let us examine the foundations of dual frame organising that should unite your top management team.

Command and control shows individuals in hierarchical reporting relationships. The agile team network shows teams at work connected by value creation linkages.

Command and control drives compliance behaviour. You need it to establish the position power that will enforce order, and reduce chaos otherwise. Command and control enforces coordination work relationships.

The agile team network drives commitment behaviour. The network arrangement demands the personal power needed to stoke morale, and promote speed and flexibility. The agile team network cultivates cooperation and collaboration work relationships.

Both command and control and the agile team network share the same ultimate goal, sustainable profitability for growth.

Sustainable profitability demands the command and control organisation to be lean. To deploy the optimum number of people who use the optimum level of resources to get work done. That’s lean.

Sustainable profitability demands the team network to be agile. Develop the agile team network to address the twin challenges of strategic excellence and operating excellence. You build the network by training, forming, linking and orchestrating teams to do the right things for the business, and do them in the right way.

Strategic resources are managed by a strategy management team. The team orchestrates project teams who strive to execute strategic programs well for your relative strength.

Operational resources are managed by an operating management team. The team orchestrates process teams who manage key management processes. Each process team facilitates the collaboration between a set of function teams who strive to execute routine functions well for your absolute strength.

To activate the model, you need to form and develop four types of teams. A planning team sets strategic or operating goals and standards, and orchestrates the agile team network. A process team facilitates collaboration across function teams to achieve a specific condition of excellence. A function team executes routine activities to help achieve one or more conditions of excellence. A project team is tasked to execute a breakthrough initiative, and disbands when the project is completed.

Before you activate the agile team network, you must train all your people on the Five Dictums of a Winning Team. Their shared understanding and practice of the five dictums will cultivate the right work relationships for your agile team network.