Probe your Organization!

Business Agility needs to address the company’s structure, strategy, and processes, all of which depend upon and influence each other. This insight means the simple view that structure follows process follows strategy is wrong; in fact, everything follows everything and in repeated small steps. Thus, the relationship between strategy, structure, and process is complex. The patterns in the relationship can’t be pinned down logically or, in other words, there is no logical entry point. The BOSSA nova approach recommends using probes to make these emergent patterns more visible and to leverage this complexity. (BOSSA nova synthesizes (B)eyond Budgeting, (O)pen (S)pace, (S)ociocracy, and (A)gile.) This presentation provides examples of probing your perspectives on the organigram.

About John Buck

 Director @ GovernanceAlive LLC

John, a former large IT project manager is now an expert in the synthesis of Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy & Agile (BOSSA Nova) and President of GovernanceAlive LLC. His clients span the globe and include plastics manufacturers, colleges and universities, long-term care facilities, co-housing groups, NGOs and software companies. By guiding clients in “rewiring” their basic power structure he helps them toward greater efficiency and increased employee engagement.

He co-authored with Sharon Villines the book We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, about sociocracy. In one sense, sociocracy is democracy specially designed for use when people know each other and have a common aim. In February 2018 John published with Jutta Eckstein a book on Company-wide Agility. This book focuses on synthesizing Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy, and Agility. See https://leanpub.com/bossanova or Amazon. John has personally led many training workshops and sociocracy implementation projects for a variety of companies and organizations.

John’s research and development is ongoing. For example, he is working with Fujitsu’s Advanced Software Lab to develop Weaver, software that helps meetings go better – in-person, online, and asynchronous.