The Starfish Team

This week, I witnessed the power of leaderless teams when our Project Manager fell ill and we were left to manage the work ourselves. The team stepped up their games, made smart decisions and never stopped. In the process, they also began to notice where constraints kept us from moving forward on some tasks, and they found other tasks that will be required and worked those while they waited for obstacles to clear. I myself fell ill one day, and they rose to the challenge.

In the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, the authors explore decentralized leadership. When you hire the right people in the right jobs, and share a vision, business goals and ownership in the work, there is little need for traditional leadership. For us, the change came when executive leadership asked questions about the project methodology were we following. They immediately instructed the team to throw the methodology out the window and just get the work done. My manager called it the "GSD" methodology (or "Get Stuff Done", with a substitute for the middle word). We quickly refactored and removed steps in the official methodology of the enterprise, and cleared more than 12 obstacles. The Business Analysts quickly adapted and sent 4 BRDs into development (who had been relatively idle, waiting for approvals on requirements). So now that each group in the whole application development process has work, the obstacles removed (for the most part), and adapted to change, I think this team is working extremely well together.

So when our key leader, the Project Manager, unexpectedly stepped out, everyone rose to the occasion, and filled in where needed. Where a "spider organization" would have lost their stride, this "starfish team" demonstrated great strength of character and kept the project on track. When I spoke with our Project Manager on the phone, and discussed the situation, she commented that this was the first time in her career, where she felt completely confident that the team would deliver for her and the enterprise. No greater compliment than that!