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Teal_definitions

Teal organizations definitions​

Teal​

See Teal Organization

Digital Organization (DO)​

  • A digital organized group of people who work on a joined mission.
  • A successful digital organization needs to define:
    • Well defined & understood mission (which includes the vision)
    • Well defined set of values
    • Agreed strategy how to get to that mission
    • Motivated people who want to make this mission reality

Mission​

  • What does a DO want to accomplish, why does it exist.
  • As part of the mission following needs to be described
    • Vision
    • Strategy
    • Values

Digital Organization Members or 'Member' in short (DOM)​

  • All members agree on
    • The values, goals, vision from the DO they belong to.
  • Productive members need:
    • To be really motivated to live following the rules they together defined
    • Willing to be disciplined in working together and using agreed tools
    • Aware and work together from love perspective
    • Nee to try to avoid using ego,fear... as driving forces (is a constant struggle)
    • Have respect (for human effort, skills of people, ...)
    • Willing to deliver quality
    • Need to be not afraid to
      • Make mistakes, this happens all the time and is just natural path to more maturity
      • Be 100% transparent at all times
      • Share information even when not ready yet (show progress)
      • Show contribution and be open about it
      • Show if something is not known yet

Circle(s)​

  • A group of members who work together a chosen set of goals
  • The members who work together on 1 or more projects.
  • The DO has a top circle called the DO Circle (DOC)
  • Circles are created underneath the DOC to execute on specific area's in the company.

Project​

  • Project is a sub part of a circle to accomplish subgoal (is digitally represented by a repository in github/gogs)
  • Each project has a start date & end data. objects are often linked to customers or items to deliver or a DO or Circle milestone.
  • A project typically has multiple milestones.
  • Each project has 2 owners (see more later)
    • Promoter : promotes the project, is the one pushing the project forward
    • Guardian : guards the quality of the project, checks values, communication, structure
  • Each project has X number of members, this can be very flexible.
  • Pitfalls:
    • Projects are not departments of categories like in classic organization.
      • E.g. marketing, engineering, product management, legal
      • These are like the classic vertical ways of how to structure other organization structures.

Milestone​

  • Well defined deliverables for projects or for a mission.
  • Time difference between milestones should never be more than 1 month.
  • Longer term projects need to be divided into multiple milestones (many sometimes).
  • Milestones need to be well defined and it needs to be clear for everyone what the requirements are for a milestone.

Companies​

  • The link to the non digital world.
  • A company has a legal presence and has required funding.
  • A company is the structure which provides return to its shareholders.
  • The digital counterpart of a company is called a Digital Organization (DO)
  • This funding allows 1 or more circles to be created & funded.

Teams (def)​

  • Group of people working together as part of 1 company.
  • Each team has a team lead to deal with the practical items about allowing people to be productive in their mission(s).
  • Team leads are only there to
    • Coach their team members to become better in accomplishing chosen mission(s)
    • Be at service, make each team member as successful as possible
    • Coach: provide required knowledge & experience (e.g. about the mission(s))
    • Deal with reviews, ...
  • Pitfalls, do not follow the old school concepts
    • Team lead should not manage !!! people will choose their missions & contribute.
    • It's not up to team leads to create tasks or follow up on tasks !!!
    • It's not up to team leads to create projects or follow up on them !!!
  • Teams are just a necessity to make sure people can be productive and basic requirements like salaries and other practical items are arranged.
  • Team leads are there to support, not to manage.

Information​

  • The energy which keeps everything running, required to make any mission a success.
  • Some rules
    • Source of information should only exist once (don't duplicate)
    • Information needs to be modular so it can be reused
    • Information needs to be version controlled & change should be visible
    • Information is without design !!! it's just text or structured data
      • E.g. don't lose lots of data reformatting, trying to get the fonts right, headers with right numbers, ...
      • Use a easy textual format which can express everything you need (e.g. markdown) and then conversion tools will create the required format: website, pdf, ...
    • Structured data can be expressed in human readable data formats and also stored in information management systems like git (examples of human readable data formats are yaml, toml, ...).
      • Lots of people believe that data only belongs in databases, which is absolutely not correct, any complex system can be recreated by means of some easy to read structured data formats, it would be not super user friendly at beginning but once understood its super powerful and much more transparent.

Transparency​

  • The value nr 1 to make teal possible
  • Some rules
    • Don't hide, everything needs to be visible for the groups of people you work with
    • Work done needs to be traceable and open
      • Anyone should be able to see work done by who when and how much, this transparency allows to see what contributions of people are and that way have an automation information flow.
    • Immediately put information on the right location so other people can find it.