A management system is a set of policies, processes, and procedures used by an organization to ensure that it can fulfill the tasks required to achieve its objectives. Every organization adopts several principles from several management theories and he needs to translate them into a concrete guideline for people how to conduct their daily activities.
I never saw a written version of a management system. All of my career I follow a set of norms I had in my head. I believe that every organization should have a management system written and available for everyone to use.
Therefore, I’m taking the first step and I will share Galaxies management system. I’ll be happy to see other management systems and to learn from others. This is a challenge for you!
- We trust people! Act daily base on this assumption. Our goal is to always increase trust and prevent fear.
- Self-management: The best way to prepare people for the future and truly give them the feeling that they are part of a company is by providing them autonomy and authority to make their decisions. People are getting used to asking permissions, remember it when you are working with new people.
- Self-organized: Teams are going organically and reach their peak when they are managed by the people in the team and not by an external authority.
- No-silos: Every work we need to do should be done by a group of people with the needed expertise to do the work. We don’t want silos of expiries; we want hybrid teams.
- No fear: Use inspiration, positive compensation model and team dynamics. Never use implicit or explicit fear.
- We want to create a community that is business, not the other way around. Community is about us and what I can do to help.
- Self-awareness is the best tool to create a better working environment. Everyone needs to focus on self-awareness.
- Equilibrium is death! every group needs to evolve and change over time. If a group didn’t change, but the business environment did, it’s your responsibility to raise a flag.
- Transparency: People are adults and they can deal with good and bad news. Always convey the true and be 100% transparent. That’s the only way to create trust.
- Let people learn from mistakes: When someone fails, help him understand how to prevent it next time, don’t use any variation of blame.
- Decisions should be based on data, not cognitive bias: Make sure you are deciding while taking into account data. Never decide based on what you’ve heard. This principle applied to people conflicts. If you want to listen to people, get at least three people’s opinions.
- Proven experience and knowledge trump everything else. When you perform your functions, resolving conflicts or making decision give wight to PROVEN experience and knowledge.
- Organization are organism, not mechanism: Organizations are complex adaptive system subject to chaos. Accept this fact. Instead of fighting it understand how nature uses complexity and chaos to survive and leverage it.
- Always keep people informed. If you can or can not perform a task, you asked to do. If there any delay. Always update people that depend on you. If you have any doubt to inform, inform.
- Start with synthesis, followed by analysis: When you are looking for a source of a problem use first of all system thinking to find issues in the system. Move to analysis, just if you didn’t find any issue in the system.
- Let our system raise conflicts focus on the resolution. The system we put in place will raise conflicts based on agreed services between functions. focus on the resolution.
By using the above guidelines any member of galaxies understands how to influence people and events. In our world, every member is a manager, or there are no managers at all.