Energy and Self-Organizing Teams

 

Much is discussed about facilitating self-organizing teams in Agile/Scrum.  In my article on the Japanese origins of Scrum, Takeuchi and Nonaka who originated and inspired the Scrum movement, discussed the aspects of self-organization that leads teams to create their own unique rhythm, as they are forced to synchronize their work and pace in order to reach project timelines. 

But the question as to how to maintain peak performance of these teams is not addressed by the framework.  This is not surprising since Scrum is a light weight framework that leaves it up to the implementor to implement.  Fortunately, there has been a movement by Tony Schwartz called The Energy Project, which addresses identifying and managing our natural bio-rythms and fluctuating energy levels to achieve peak performance.

According to the site, based on a 2008 Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study of 90,000 employees across 18 countries, only 20 percent of them – 1 out of every five – feel fully engaged at work. Forty percent are actively disengaged.  Demand is exceeding our capacity to match supply.  The ethic of "more, bigger, faster" exacts a series of silent but pernicious costs at work, undermining our energy, focus, creativity, and passion.  Nearly 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day, according to the Energy Project initiative.

This issue should be of no surprise to many of the project managers and ScrumMasters out there trying to manage and motivate burned out teams, within a corporate environment of slashed budgets, relentless pace of work and a looming fear of unemployment.

The idea is that by integrating multidisciplinary findings from the science of high performance, we can identify and manage the neglected four core needs that energize great performance: sustainability (physical); security (emotional); self-expression (mental); and significance (spiritual).  Rather than running like computers at high speeds for long periods, we're at our best when we pulse rhythmically between expending and regularly renewing energy across each of our four needs. 

At the individual level, it explains how we can build specific rituals into our daily schedules to balance intense effort with regular renewal.  To offset emotionally draining experiences with practices that fuel endurance and move between a narrow focus on urgent demands towards more strategic and creative thinking.  Ultimately, it seeks to balance a short-term focus on immediate results with a values-based commitment that deliver real business value and organizational harmony. 

The site kind of overhypes the idea, but the main ideas behind identifying, managing and facilitating your teams ability to self-organize according to core energy levels at the physical, emotional, mental and spirititual levels is a powerful idea that should be explored more.