In the 1970’s the feminist movement had successfully avoided the excessive hierarchy and bureaucracy of large organisations but still struggled with the same inability to achieve it’s goals. Jo Freeman, a feminist political scientist wrote the paper “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” on this topic and suggested that instead of avoiding structure entirely the movement should invent new structures and adapt existing ones to create ones consistent with its values. Simply put: for any team, a lack of structure is every bit as debilitating as too much.
Therefore, when it comes to building teams, leaders should only specify the basic structures that will foster team effectiveness and reduce the organisation creating obstacles, while not specifying too much. So the key becomes understanding which features are critical and which aren’t.
This is a presentation delivered by John McFadyen at Agile Northants, June 2016
3. “The idea of‘structurelessness’[…] has
moved from a healthy counter to those
tendencies to becoming a goddess in
its own right.”
– Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness
4. QWhat does an architect do
when designing a building?
5. QWhat are the three key structural
features for team effectiveness?
14. Members should take an active, rather
than a reactive, stance toward the
environment in which the team operates,
continuously scanning the environment
and inventing or adjusting their
performance strategies accordingly.
15. The behavioural boundaries
within which the team operates
should be demarcated, identifying
the small handful of things the
members must always do and
those they must never do.
23. “A well-composed team strikes a
balance between having members
who are too similar to one another on
the one hand and too different on the
other.”
– J. Richard Hackman
24. QWhat ways are there to deal with
those lacking inter-personal skills?
25. What if they don't lack the
skills?
What if the mix is wrong?What about the structure?
28. “People would try to use the
"structureless" group and the informal
conference for purposes for which they
were unsuitable out of a blind belief
that no other means could possibly be
anything but oppressive.”
– Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness