The Loop Approach

Going round in circles to get ahead

How best to adapt established companies to a rapidly changing economy has long been a topic of debate in both the corporate and academic worlds. This challenge is especially pressing for large organizations that may have grown top-heavy and rigid with time but now need to be light on their feet to stay relevant and profitable. Until now, the best attempts have consisted of plucking tools and methods from the world of start-ups and applying them wholesale in large corporate environments. Most of these efforts have either fizzled or failed outright because they lacked a framework for a comprehensive corporation-sized rollout. »The Loop Approach« introduces a new series of methods that could help change the course of operations for even the most colossal organizations. Sebastian Klein and Ben Hughes provide a wide-ranging set of guidelines for achieving corporate agility, complete with checklists and worksheets that should prove instantly applicable. Want proof? The methods outlined in »The Loop Approach« have already been successfully implemented at such European corporate giants as Audi, Deutsche Bahn, and Telekom.

Préface
Going round in circles to get ahead

Auteur
Ben Hughes hat einen Hintergrund in Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Psychologie und angewandter Mathematik. Er hat in mehreren internationalen Managementberatungen gearbeitet und leitet den Content-Bereich von Blinkist, einem Start-up, das mit Kurzfassungen von Sachbüchern Tausende Menschen neu fürs Lesen begeistert. Ben Hughes (M.Sc. Tech.) is a speaker, author, and leader. A former management consultant, he spent ten years building and leading the content team at the Berlin-based start-up Blinkist. Based on his experiences with self-organization there, he co-authored the book The Loop Approach. He speaks about hybrid leadership, self-organization, and the regenerative transformation.

Échantillon de lecture
Part 1: Launch Check-in Let's start with a check-in. Whenever we want to do something well, we always start our work with a check-in. Checking in is the simple act of stepping back, taking a deep breath, and affirming to others that we're really there, present in the moment. Making time for this short break helps us understand our own intentions and communicate them to others, thereby getting everyone on the same page. If someone's mind is still dwelling on last night's Margarita Monday or on their life crisis, they shed such preoccupations here. Typically, a check-in takes the form of two simple questions, which everyone present answers in turn. So to get you started on your journey of working through this book together with us, please answer the following questions. What's on your mind? What has your attention right now? Take as much time as you need. Just like you, we find ourselves taking part in a major transformation that's gripping the world right now. A transformation that's fundamentally changing the way people work together in organizations. The rigid hierarchies of old are being replaced by new, more flexible organizational models, and this will be arguably the greatest organizational upheaval since the Industrial Revolution. And as with most revolutions, there's just no ignoring this one. New organizational models will become the status quo, and traditional hierarchies will fall along the wayside of history, like steam engines and fax machines before them. We can't imagine going back to a world without electricity, airplanes or the internet, and soon, the same will be true of these new organizational models. But why is this revolution happening? If you've ever worked in a corporation that's organized as a traditional hierarchy, you probably also recognize and appreciate that change is sorely needed. Until recently, it was commonly accepted that if you wanted to get any larger group of people to work together, the pyramid1 model was the only way to go. But today, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the era of the pyramid is over. And while there are many reasons for this, we want to highlight three: First, people find it very demotivating to work in a rigid hierarchy, where they're just expected to do as they're told. Young, well-educated professionals entering the workforce today are no longer willing to sacrifice years of their career to just following orders from pointy-haired bosses. After all, they can afford to be picky: the market for good talent is competitive, meaning employees are no longer desperate to cling on to whatever stable job they can. The most sought-after professionals demand much more than a steady paycheck: they want meaning, flexibility, and to be trusted with the authority to make decisions that actually impact the organization. Second, the rigid, hierarchical pyramids of the past are just too slow and cumbersome to succeed in competition with young, agile upstarts. Without the burden of a pyramid on their shoulders, the newcomers are much faster at adapting to their changing environment. As a result, they are inventing and reinventing businesses faster than the old guard can even fathom, let alone compete with. If established corporations used to laugh off small startups operating from garages somewhere, their smirks have since been thoroughly wiped off their faces. As companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google have proved, any scrappy newcomer could skyrocket to the top of the Fortune 500 list in under a decade, leaving former industry leaders in the dust. The age of the dinosaurs is overthe mammals are here, baby! Third, if we take a big picture view, we rapidly see that our world desperately needs new kinds of organizations. From accelerating climate change to increasing inequality, we believe that many of humanity's biggest challenges today stem from our sadly out-of-date organizational model. Countless organizations emerging today have already adopted the greater purpose of changing the world for the better, and they only continue to evolve around this purpose2. Many such companies have already entered the spotlight via Frederic Laloux's book Reinventing Organizations. And in our own work, we see more new purpose-driven companies similar to Patagonia, Burtzoorg, and Zappos emerging every week. What's more, we're also excited to see many larger organizationsor at least parts of themtake on the challenge of reinventing themselves and boldly reorganizing how people work within them. A new mindset What we're currently witnessing in the world around us is a great shift from one dominant type of organizational operating system3 to another. The old, hierarchical management pyramid, which for millenia seemed like the only viable option for running any larger organization, is finally being replaced by more network-like models. But this update isn't going smoothly. Not at all. In fact, it's generating lots of tension and friction. On the one hand, we have a new generation of companies that's instinctively embracing new way of doing things. They adopt ready-made solutions like Holacracy, or design their own, and just go with it. Meanwhile, most companies still run on the old operating system, and for them, updating to a new one is no easy task (yes, even worse than Windows 10). Though the software analogy can make it sound like companies just need to press a button to update and reboot, the truth is that it's much more complicated and arduous. And the older and larger an organization, the harder and more painful the transformation will be. So does this mean that all the old tankers weighed down by pyramids are doomed to rust in their old docks and sink? Or can they be refitted with the new operating system, making them agile and nimble skiffs once again? These aren't easy questions to answer. But one thing we know for sure: it's not enough to just put a fresh coat of paint on a rusted structure. What's needed is a fundamental shift of mindset within the organization. The classi…