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Principle 4: Apply Self-regulation & Accept feedback

This is one is a series of post on the application of the 12 principles of Permaculture [2] to organizations, and other social systems.  The posts are being generated by members of the Organizational Permaculture [1] group on Facebook. If you like this post, consider joining the group and adding to the  conversation with your own blog post on 1 or more of the 12 Principles of Permaculture [2]

Principle #4: Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback

Principle #4, “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback” speaks to self-discipline, psychological safety and being open. It is important to note that these personal and system-level properties are a means to an and, not an end in and of themselves. The principle “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback” mean in part that we intend to tune and tailor our social systems to be highly receptive to feedback. It means we intend for our social systems to be aware.

It also means we work to actively create and then maintain the ability of the entire system to rapidly identify and respond to change.

This is the essence of organizational agility. The agile world uses the slogan “inspect and adapt” to express the importance of accepting feedback and applying self-regulation.

Self Discipline

Collecting observations is essential to responding to change. Observations can be proactive or reactive, active or passive. Reactive observing is what happens after taking an action, such as introducing an experiment.

Proactive observations are observations of the system as it is, without introducing anything new except your own presence.

Feedback as a Resource

Responding to change can be formal or informal, and frequent or infrequent. As a norm, it can even be absent entirely. There is no adapting without inspecting, observing or otherwise experiencing the environment. This plays out in social systems by using any practice that operationalizes the proactive and reactive styles of observation.

Psychological Safety

Technically, Jay Forrester describes social systems as “1st order nonlinear feedback systems” in his paper, Designing the Future. [3] . For an entire social system to become adept at responding to change, a high level of what Amy Edmondson calls ‘psychological safety’ [4] which is the willingness to take ‘interpersonal risk’ during interactions with individuals, in front of the group. Psychological safety in social systems is important for individuals. When the level of psychological safety is low, levels of self-regulation and acceptance of feedback at the level of individual and group will also be low.

Openness

I’ve written on Openness previously when discussing the Five Scrum Values [5]. Openness includes accepting the best idea, regardless of source. Discussing ideas is a way to express the identification of changes, and also a way to discuss a rational and well-reasoned set of possible responses to that change.

Practical Steps

Any activities that formalize frequent generation  and inspection of feedback are directly supporting Principle #4 of Permaculture: “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback.” Scrum [7] and Open Space [8] both define feedback systems with formal structures. Scrum is a complete framework, while Open Space is a meeting format. Both feature explicit loops of feedback with specific guidance on how to best process the feedback generated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Small Session In Open Space.

 

Practical patterns and processes that can support this principle have certain common characteristics.

First, they share a formalization of frequent feedback loops. Scrum is a good example; it has a daily feedback loop (the Daily Scrum) and feedback loop (the Sprint Review) at the end of each iteration of work.

Second, they have an opt-in aspect, the people in the system choose to participate in using the pattern or process, and are not compelled to use it. Open Space is a good example; everything about it from the beginning to the end is an exercise in opting in or out.

Another good example is the Core Protocols. The Core Protocols [9] are structured interactions that have mechanisms for sending and collecting feedback. (Perfection Game and Investigate protocols respectively). Open Space is a 100% opt-in meeting. Scrum defined the Daily Scrum and Sprint Review as formal observe & inspect points.

 

Summary

To be self-regulating, there must be feedback. The more frequent, the better. The frequency of sampling the environment for feedback by observing in social systems can be monthly, weekly, daily or continuous. Teams and organizations that focus on identifying sources of feedback (and who also become adept at processing it) are in position to learn much faster than organizations that do not [6]. This learning in social systems is essential if we are to Obtain a Yield [10].

 

References:

[1] Organizational Permaculture Group on Facebook. (link)

[2] 12 Principles of Permaculture on Wikipedia (link)

[3] Forrester, Jay. Designing the Future at Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain 1999 (link)

[4] Edmondson Amy, Harvard University. Paper: Psychological Safety in Work Teams” (link)

[5] Mezick, Daniel J., “Scrum Values”, blog post (link)

[6] Mezick, Daniel J. , “Culture That Learn are Superior”, blog post. (link)

[7] Schwaber Ken and Sutherland, Jeff. The Scrum Guide (link)

[8] Herman, Michael. Essay: About Open Space. (link)

[9] Core Protocols explained (link)

[10] Lloyd, Andreas. “Principle 3, Obtain a Yield”, explained. (link)

 

 

 

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Organizational Permaculture: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Organizational permaculture is a concept whose time has come. The idea of doing  planned, predictable, scheduled, and altogether LARGE campaigns of culture change in organizations is not useful. It does not work. It is ineffective. It is misguided. This idea is analogous to clear-cutting a forest, bringing in bulldozers, moving colossal amounts of earth, and repurposing the land for a new and higher “best use”.

 

We know that does not actually work with people, at work, in organizations.

Can you see why?

We need a much better way.

The philosophy and design principles of permaculture offer an alternative. Permaculture offers a proven set of values, principles and practices for creating lasting culture change in living systems.

And what exactly is Permaculture?

Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. (source: PermaCulture Institute)

And what exactly is Organizational Permaculture?

Organizational permaculture is the application of permaculture principles to the observation, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, integration, and maintenance of culture in all human social systems, including: teams, families, and organizations.

 

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.

Families, teams and organizations are living systems. Permaculture provides a set of principles that promote a rational, bottom-up, incremental and effective way to encourage authentic and lasting cultural change … in human systems.

 

 

Organizational Permaculture Overview

Examine these links to get oriented.

Blog Post: Introduction to Organizational Permaculture

Blog Post: Permaculture’s 12 Guiding Principles

 

 

Organizational Permaculture Hacks: Tools and Techniques

Examine these links to get some ideas about how to apply permaculture to your work and play in social settings. These are (perma)culture hacks.

Organizational Permaculture Hack #1: KANBAN

Organizational Permaculture Hack #1: COGNITIVE RECYCLING

 

 

Organizational Permaculture: Additional Links and Resources

Cruise these links to see what others are saying around the web about Organizational Permaculture. Be sure to take a look and consider joining the FaceBook group!

 

 

FaceBook Group: Organizational Permaculture

Blog Post: Business and Permaculture Principles

Blog Post: Organizational Permaculture: What Can Failures Teach Us?

 

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Organizational Permaculture: The 12 Design Principles

The principles of permaculture are an important and perhaps even essential in working rationally with organizational culture.

For those of you intrigued by the Organizational Permaculture concept, I am providing you with a detailed enumeration of the 12 essential principles of permaculture design.

NOTE: These detailed essays come from http://permacultureprinciples.com

You might want to think about your teams, departments and the wider enterprise as you ponder what these principles might mean for how you approach culture change:

The 12 Core Principles of Permaculture. Included are related blog posts from member of the Organizational Permaculture Group on Facebook:

Principle #01: Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in?)

Principle #02: Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in?)

Principle #03: Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

Lloyd, Adreas. Obtain a Yield (link)

 

Principle #04: Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

Mezick Daniel J. Principle #4 of Organizational Permaculture. (link)

Principle #05: Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #06: Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #07: Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in?)

Principle #08: Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #09: Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #1o: Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #11: Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #12: Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

 

Agricultural permaculture principles are in complete alignment with the Agile Manifesto.

Or is is the other way around?

Related Links:

More blog posts from Daniel Mezick on Organizational PermaCulture

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.

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Organizational Permaculture

In a previous post, I explained how Kanban is a tool of Organizational Permaculture.

In another post, I told you about Cognitive Recycling, and how a very small adjustment to your meeting scheduling can have potentially huge leverage in terms of obtaining better results… by harnessing a readily available supply of human cognition.

Organizational Permaculture

Organizational Permaculture is a permaculture approach to elevating levels of team and group learning in organizations. It’s taking advantage of what is already there, and using it. It leverages the often ignored, underutilized, undervalued, abandoned, or otherwise unleveraged human cognition that is readily available to power a task at the group level.

Organizational Permaculture techniques are aligned with the philosophy and approaches of agricultural permaculture. Organizational Permaculture takes the philosophy of agricultural permaculture and applies this philosophy of design to organizations.

Non-invasive, Organizational Permaculture techniques include:

There are many more. I believe that over time, we are going to see more and more of the successful techniques used by organizational consultants recognized as permaculture techniques, successfully applied to organizations.

 

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.

 

Organizational Permaculture techniques align on the design principles of the wider permaculture movement:

Permaculture Principles

  1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
  2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
  3. Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
  4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
  5. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.
  6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
  7. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
  8. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
  9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
  10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
  11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
  12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

Source: Wikipedia Permaculture Design Principles

 

Are the best organizational interventions those that leverage and make use of  what is already there?

Can permaculture techniques be the key to achieving genuine enterprise agile?

Does an understanding of permaculture as applied to organizations help explain how Kanban actually works?

Is iteration and incrementality an essential design principle when dealing with all manner of culture, be it agricultural or organizational?

 

Related Links:

The Permaculture Institute

Permaculture principles, and ethics

More Blog Posts on Organizational Permaculture

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Culture Hacking, Organizational Permaculture & Kanban

I explained to you in a previous post how Kanban supports 12 of the 16 Tribal (team) Learning Patterns [1] found in The Culture Game Book [2]. That post also contains a link to an interesting post that connects Kanban to the Agile Manifesto’s 12 Principles.

Culture Hacking, Permaculture and Kanban

This post identifies an agricultural technique (actually an agricultural-sustainability hack) called permaculture.

Permaculture principles and practices associate with culture hacking in general, and Kanban (in particular.)

A full set of links for all footnotes are provided at the end of this post.

Kanban

Kanban is a method for managing work and work flow. It is visual, and exposes certain things that are going on within a group doing work, and makes those things explicit. In the canonical form of Kanban, it imposes at least SOME structure by also making policies explicit, limiting work-in-progress, and so on. (If you need a primer on Kanban you can reference link [3] to catch up).

Organizationally, it’s hard to object to Kanban, in part because it does not ask very much of you– at least at first. There are few if any  anxiety-triggering changes in current roles, goals, meetings, and artifacts. This makes it easy for everyone to relax, and opt-in to the Kanban game, because Kanban, at least at first, does not seem to demand very much of you. Kanban is something that is easy to insert into the situation. And that ‘something’ is a refocusing of attention on things that matter to work groups, things like “the type of work we are doing”, “the flow of that work”, “the regulation of those flows”, and the like.

Now I want you to notice that when you introduce Kanban, you are actually engaging in the introduction and composition of new elements with existing elements in ways that are complimentary. Repeat: With Kanban, you are engaging in the introduction and composition of new elements with existing elements in ways that are complimentary.

Which brings us to the fascinating topic of permaculture.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a form of agriculture. It is a discipline of design and composition that leads to the sustainable extraction of value from the resulting system. Rather than make wide-scope changes, permaculture practitioners compose complimentary elements in service to sustainability of yield:

Permaculture asks the question, “Where does this element go? How can it be placed for the maximum benefit of the system?” To answer this question, the central concept of permaculture is maximizing useful connections between components and synergy of the final design. The focus of permaculture, therefore, is not on each separate element, but rather on the relationships created among elements by the way they are placed together; the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Permaculture design therefore seeks to minimize waste, human labor, and energy input by building systems with maximal benefits between design elements to achieve a high level of synergy. Permaculture designs evolve over time by taking into account these relationships and elements and can become extremely complex systems that produce a high density of food and materials with minimal input. (Source: Wikipedia [4] )

It’s drop-dead obvious that Kanban is an application of permaculture applied to low-producing social-systems instead of low-producing tracts of land.

Intrigued? Check out these 12 Principles of Permaculture…as you examine the list, map the permaculture concepts listed to what is going on inside Kanban implementations as described in the book KANBAN by David Anderson [5]:

Permaculture Principles

  1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
  2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
  3. Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
  4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
  5. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.
  6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
  7. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
  8. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
  9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
  10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
  11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
  12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

Source: Wikipedia Permaculture Design Principles [6]

Is understanding the language of permaculture a key to understanding and implementing effective culture change in organizations? Probably!

What’s interesting is how the language of agricultural permaculture supports the best incremental-culture-change ideas found in my book THE CULTURE GAME book [2] and the KANBAN book from David Anderson [3].

 

Kanban…is permaculture…applied to knowledge workers. — Alexis Nicolas (France)

 

The Organizational Permaculture Approach

Here is even more support for the incremental, here-and-now permaculture approach, from a blog post, by noted complexity-science authority David Snowden [7] :

So if you want to change organizations, three basic principles:

  1. You don’t lecture management on how they are old fashioned in their thinking, instead you put them into situations and give them tools where old ways of thinking are not sustainable and they have to act differently. If they work it out for themselves its sustainable.
  2. You pick off areas where the pain threshold is the highest, for example (to pick up Agile themes) the interaction between approaches such as Agile and the measurement and management practices of the HR function.
  3. You then create approaches that change the measurement and feedback mechanisms that work in parallel with existing methods.

Implications of Organizational Permaculture

  1. Client organizations, coaches and other culture hackers can probably benefit tremendously by studying and applying the core concept of permaculture to the design of interventions. Kanban is an element for designing and composing permaculture learning solutions inside existing organizations.
  2. The most effective culture hacks are probably those that strongly align with the 12 Principles of Permaculture. This likely explains (in part) the success of Kanban [3] and the 16 Culture Game Tribal Learning patterns [2]
  3. We probably need to pay particularly close attention to Kanban case studies, since Kanban is actually a particularly good example of how to introduce and apply permaculture techniques and permaculture thinking to culture change in organizations.
  4. We probably need to search for and find more easy-to-introduce permaculture technologies like Kanban and repeat the pattern. Techniques that can co-exist with what is already there and substantially improve team learning quickly are what we are looking for.

Summary

Kanban implementations are significantly aligned with the 12 core principles of agricultural permaculture. Culture change via the incremental permaculture approach is an interesting idea whose time has come. Most effective culture hacks probably have very strong alignment with the 12 Principles of Permaculture.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Kanban and Tribal Learning (link)

[2] The Culture Game Book (link)

[3] Kanban Explained (Wikipedia entry) (link)

[4] Permaculture (Wikipedia entry) (link)

[5] KANBAN: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Business (link)

[6] Wikipedia: Permaculture Design Principles (link)

[7] David Snowden Blog Post with 3 Big Ideas: “Rose Tinting” (link)

 

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Cognitive Recycling

I teach #Agile teams that when gathering requirements, it’s best to intentionally leverage the “back of mind” of all the participants. This is what I call a cognitive leverage point in team learning. To make use of this, you must restructure your meetings, to leverage the unconscious….the back of the mind.

…it works like this:

We have all participated in long, soul-sucking meetings without breaks, where we are on a kind of death march to complete the meeting. These meetings are highly demotivating…. and also completely ignore (and therefore do not leverage) the extremely powerful “back of mind” feature of human cognition.

The trick is to STOP having long meetings. Especially when working on sense-making!!

Instead, for any kind of important group sense-making task, like requirements-gathering, schedule several short 1-hour-or-less meetings, 1 per day. The first meeting is short, and highly focused, some work gets done….and then it ends.

However, we ALL KNOW that tomorrow we are doing this meeting again. This is where it gets interesting. The game is just beginning…

 

Cognitive Recycling

Everyone in the group keeps ‘cycling’ and working in the problem when in the elevator, when commuting home, when winding down at home, AND when sleeping. They “work” on the problem, “back-of-mind”, for 24 hours…even when sleeping. (Participants report dreaming about the work in between meetings.)

They anticipate and expect the next meeting the next day, and because of this, they tend to integrate learning, from the “back-of-mind”,  even when sleeping. They iterate and re-iterate…cycle and recycle…using the unconscious “back of mind”.

The next day, the deeply integrative learning goes to the front-of-mind, where it is accessed and used to advance the task at hand with the group during the meeting. This occurs at every meeting.

 

Cognitive Recycling and Permaculture

Cognitive Recycling is a way to get people “thinking” 24X7, even while doing other tasks. It leverages your “backchannel” or back-of-mind, by setting up a clear purpose for a meeting, and some anticipation…via a predictable and scheduled rhythm, or cadence.

As a practice it honors several of the 12 permaculture design principles:

  • Catch and store energy;
  • Use and value renewable resources and services;
  • Produce no waste; Use small and slow solutions;
  • Use edges and value the marginal.

My clients report the following:

  • A sense of control, stemming from a set of predictable, short, clear-purpose meetings
  • A sense of progress, stemming from increased daily insights and ‘ahas’
  • A sense of membership in the task at hand
  • Strong feelings of integration and satisfaction with the work and the people doing it with them

Simple Steps for Cognitive Recycling:

To leverage the effects of cognitive recycling, follow these steps:

1. Replace a planned meeting of N hours with N meetings of 1 hour each, on successive days. For example for a 5-hour meeting plan five or 1-hour meetings … on successive days.

2. Schedule the meetings for the same time each day. This is effective, because it establishes the regular period or cadence, which is essential.

Team and organizational learning is NOT random— I teach that we must intend it. Group learning is not automatic. What is nearly automatic is low levels of learning when people gather in groups. Group learning is no accident.

Learning leverage is what you get when you leverage the unconscious processes of the brain. When a group of people actively do this together, leveraging “back-of-mind”, the volume of excellent-quality results can be quite astonishing.

Cognitive Recycling. Give it a try. It’s a technique of  Organizational Permaculture.

(NOTE: This and other strong techniques for group learning are described in detail in my book, THE CULTURE GAME.)

 

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.