Choose your position: How we reorganised our team set up at MOIA using self-selection
by Sophie Martin & Antonela Mestrovic
Can you imagine a working environment where you can select your role and team based on what you are good at, what you are passionate about, and how you can contribute best to the success of your company — all without talking to your supervisor? This is how we chose our ideal teams at MOIA when we self-reorganised and evolved the whole structure of our Product Development Organisation in the beginning of 2020.
We develop our digital products in a highly dynamic market and grew significantly to around 200 employees over the past two years. Our growth in product and organisational maturity motivated us to challenge our formal structure (how we understand and practice people leadership) and value creation structure (how we organise our collaboration along the lines of the value we want to provide for our customers and users).
When thinking about starting this movement, we quickly realised the importance of the following aspects:
- We believe in tapping into our collective intelligence to come to the best feasible solution that fits our goals and needs — that’s why we wanted to involve everybody that the new team set up concerns equally and early in the process.
- We believe in the individual skills and sense of responsibility of everyone working at MOIA in combination with the power of freedom of choice — that’s why we decided to trust each other fully to come to a solution that everyone can commit to.
- We believe that change is our only constant — that’s why we wanted to preserve the good from our experience as a rather young company and solve the pieces of the new challenges together.
How did we “route” the right people into the right teams?
Sounds like a magic bullet? Perhaps, but to us these thoughts sparked inspiration and curiosity, which triggered our bravery to dare to try an experiment which was new to most of us. We are still on our journey, but six months in (with the effects of the global Corona crisis as our first stress test) we are happy to share our experience and hope it inspires you, just as it inspired us to try something new.
Our self-selection approach is based on the Self-Selection framework as described in the book “Creating Great Teams: How Self-Selection Lets People Excel” with some MOIA magic added.
1. Facilitate the change
Change takes some time and effort. Although self-selection appears to be a straightforward method, there are a lot of questions that get asked on the way. Self-organisation works the best when there is clarity about team goals and boundaries. What are the criteria for a fully formed team? What should people think of?
Although the boundaries may sound quite straightforward at first, it takes some time to align definitions across the organisation and to answer all questions and concerns. You also need to work on the team mission statements, required skills, and a target range for the number of people in every team.
There will also probably be a lot of questions related to the event itself. For the majority of people it is a new and unpredictable situation. Although very exciting, it is normal that such uncertainty can trigger unease in people. In order for everyone to be prepared, we offered the following things upfront:
- Presentation of the method and process in our monthly all-hands
- Multiple Q&A sessions for everyone
- FAQs with answers to recurring questions we heard during these sessions
- Individual consultation and 1-on-1s with people who raised their concerns
2. Run the event
Once you have answered all the questions and have informed everyone about self-selection and how you are going to implement it, you are on the right track and most of the work is done! In order to help people understand the teams and engage in the right conversations, you will need to prepare posters explaining the teams’ mission and required skills, boundaries or “the rules of the game” and photos of everyone so they can move them around. One of our biggest lessons was: do not underestimate the preparation time, or you may end up with a late night ‘material cutting party’ (don’t ask how we know)!
Once all the material is ready and everybody joins, the show time starts! In our experience, self-selection was a very fun and lively event. It starts with POs pitching the teams that are available for selection. In every short iteration, people try out different possibilities for team distribution and try to find the right match for their skills, motivation, and the company’s needs. Each iteration is followed by the overview of the current state with everybody in the room: which teams are lacking roles or having too many people for a role? Which teams still need a role to be filled? The purpose of this step is to make everybody aware about the challenges and to encourage collective problem solving.
At the end of the event, we had the vast majority of the teams fully formed with a few teams who believed that they did not have a “perfect” setup. However, they believed that they had the best solution that could be found, and that the exercise brought to surface challenges that they already knew they had (for example, the lack of specialists for a specific role). Self-selection will not result in perfect distributions, just like any other method. At the end of the event, we asked all 120 people whether they felt that it was the best solution we could find. To our surprise, everyone raised their hands for yes!
3. Put it in the action
You now have a new team distribution — share the results with everyone and make sure to celebrate the exciting and challenging day behind you! We used the day after the self-selection event to come up with a seating plan. Since the self-selection worked so well here, we simply assigned a business domain to a dedicated area and blocked the time before lunch for everyone to move and find their own solution. (In the times of remote working, this sounds like a distant challenge! Read how to run a remote self-selection event here).
Going around the company with the boxes, monitors, and other office props was a lot of fun! The next day, we were ready to start in the new teams. We organised a “team huddle” in each team to sort out key things that they need to start working like basic team agreements, agile processes, technology stacks, and handover. If you are an agile coach or a scrum master, get ready to roll up your sleeves as the work just starts here, with so many teams running kick-off workshops, aligning on their roles, responsibilities, missions, and working agreements. However, the fact that everyone in the team actively chose that mission and group of people brings a special atmosphere of dedication and commitment to the teams, which makes this phase feel fresh and enthusiastic!
Like every change, running self-selection and starting with a new team setup requires the effort and the courage to let go of the old, familiar ways we are used to, and step in the unknown. And we believe that it was worth it! If you are considering running a self-selection event, we can warmly recommend the resources from nomad8. Also, feel free to get in touch with our agile coaches at MOIA to exchange your experiences — we are happy to share!
