7 reasons why DevOps needs to change its colour
TL;DR
DevOps is Orange but needs to turn Green and eventually Teal
I came across the Teal Organisation concept about a year ago and immediately felt that there was a relationship with the DevOps movement that had to be explored.
There is a field of psychology called “developmental theory”, whose concepts can be applied not only to individuals but societies as a whole. One of its basic tenets is that societies do not grow and evolve linearly, but in stages of advancement in maturity, consciousness, and complexity.
Philosopher Ken Wilber uses colours to identify them following the light spectrum, from infrared to ultraviolet. The same colour scheme has been used by Frederic Laloux in his book Reinventing Organisations for the naming of the successive stages of management evolution.
Let’s take a quick look at those stages.
Red
The very first form of organisation in the evolution of human history, started around 8,000 BC and come in the shape of small armies that pioneered division of labour, in contrast to the tribal organisation of hunters-gatherers. In this Red category, the leader’s authority is absolute and imposed by violence and fear. Red organisations still exist today in the forms of street gangs, organised crime and tribal militias.
Amber
Fast forward to 4,000 BC and we enter the Amber age. Innovations in agriculture, the advent of bureaucracy and organised religion ushered this new age. Amber Organisations have very strict, pyramidal hierarchies. The chaotic and violent Red organisations were replaced by much larger, rigidly stratified ones, capable of producing stability, pyramids and cathedrals. Amber organisations of today include Churches, Armies, and Public sector organisations.
Orange
It took at least another 3,200 years, before what we call Renaissance sowed the seeds for the next Orange stage. Absolute God-given authority was replaced Scientific and Empirical proof of superiority. The concepts of Innovation, Accountability and Meritocracy gave birth to the modern organisation as we know it today. Perceived as a machine, its goal is to maximise efficiency by adopting engineering terms and practices e.g. inputs, outputs, processes, flows and bottlenecks. Few can argue that the Orange stage has led to unprecedented prosperity and progress in the industrialised world. On the flip side however, it’s also been the driver for issues such as corporate greed, short-termism and widespread environmental degradation.
Green
The dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the modern Orange organisation led to the Green stage thinking. Inspired by Postmodernity and the movements of gender equality, anti-racism and environmentalism, Green companies use the concept of family as their organisational paradigm and make social responsibility part of their raison d’être. Their focus shifts from shareholders to stakeholders. Cost rises in the short term with the view that long term returns, both tangible and intangible, will be higher for all involved. They introduce Empowerment and Egalitarian management and invest in their people and the communities they operate in. Being Green is not easy; it requires constant recalibration between hierarchy and egalitarianism, profitability and sustainability.
Teal
That brings us to the latest organisational model emerging; its colour is Teal. This new model sees the organisation as a living organism and is enabled by three new concepts
- Self Management — based on peer relationships, power and control are deeply integrated within the organisation but are based on flexible natural hierarchies rather than being fixed to specific posts and individuals.
- Wholeness — rather than encouraging people to demonstrate only their “professional” selves and qualities, everyone is invited to bring along their full personality, vibrancy and spirit.
- Evolutionary purpose — this is a shift from the static top down mission statement towards the quest for the company’s inner calling and the continuous sensing of what’s being asked of it from the world. Agility and responsiveness replace the mechanistic approach of linear planning and execution.
Frederic Laloux has done a great job researching and defining the Teal paradigm, by studying a variety of companies from different fields and sectors, that have spontaneously adopted the principles and methods of this new stage in Human Collaboration. Examples include:
How does DevOps relate to all that?
Red and Amber organisational modes do not make for fertile DevOps grounds. The willingness to transform structures, rethink functions and collaborate freely across all directions, are prerequisites that those organisational forms do not meet.
Moving on to Orange. DevOps really comes to life out of the management tools and practices of that paradigm. Value Stream Mapping, Lean, Kanban, Continuous Delivery, this is what DevOps adoption tends to mean for the majority of the organisations practicing it today.
We have already argued that DevOps is much more than that. Its softer green and teal cultural aspects are deemed to be more important than its orange gains. The “people” aspect is valued higher over the processes, and over the ever evolving and shifting tech tooling landscape. There is a plethora of articles arguing that, and prominent voices in the DevOps community, such as Kelsey Hightower and Andrew Clay Shafer, have been advocating along those lines for a while.
That’s why DevOps needs to align itself with Green and Teal. The choice between the two depends on the size and maturity of the organisation and the resolution of its ownership to go down that path.
Here are 7 reasons why moving to shorter wavelengths makes real business sense:
- Build teams that care. By adopting empowerment, egalitarian or self-management structures, the sense of ownership and accountability becomes real. Workers do give sh*t, when they are trusted to come up with sh*t and then become responsible for delivering it.
- Reduce employee turnover. Getting fully involved, being allowed to bring your whole self to work and being invited to be part of something meaningful, are great ways to ensure employees stick around.
- Motivate everyone. Adopting Teal is a guaranteed way to provide Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, and ensure that everyone stays motivated, doing the best work they are capable of.
- Become truly Agile and ready to pivot successfully when required. Developing the sensing and responsiveness required by organisations with an Evolutionary Purpose, equips the organisation with a natural ability to continuously adjust to reality and market needs.
- Innovate. The above agility, combined with self-management creates ideal conditions for innovation. Change actually comes from the people that sense what needs to change on the field and at the perimeter, rather than being dictated from the centre or the top. This is similar to the way organisms have evolved for millennia i.e. by responding to changes in their environment in order to adapt. Some attempts do not work out, but some others are successful, spread rapidly and become the norm.
- Become Leaner and more efficient. Teal organisations tend to minimise support staff functions of all types. For example, workers tend to do their own recruiting and purchasing, contracting out specialised expertise as and when required. The self-management emerging network helps them to keep aligned with the larger organisation, whilst providing guidance and expertise.
- Avoid culture toxicity, constant state of emergency and burnout. One of the benefits of Teal is that the company that operates as a living organism, gradually becomes self-controlled, self-corrected and self-healing. Hence, doing away with leaders and managers that have to strive to (unsuccessfully) keep on top of everything all the time.
So is Teal a free lunch? Of course not. As a prerequisite, the top Leadership and Ownership of the company need to understand it, embrace it, and be willing to work tirelessly on building the organisation along those principles from the ground up. Fostering the environment and its people according to the Teal principles, as they apply to their circumstances, is not an easy task. However, stories like the one from Buurtzorg shows that not only does it work, but can also produce impressive results all-round. And that I think is something more companies need to take a closer look at.
