If, as Jerry Weinberg points, leadership is a process of creating an environment where people become empowered let’s focus on how we create and evolve environments we work at. One thing is how we build our teams. If we focus only on technical skills we won’t cover the leadership gap. Another issue is the system. As W. Edwards Deming famously said, a bad system will defeat a good person every time. If we hire great people but put them in highly constrained environment they won’t thrive. Lastly, we have an organizational culture, which is a steering force behind everyday leadership acts or lack of them. It is also one of the main reasons why many transformations fail. I will show how all these areas are inseparably interconnected and how we need to change all three to evolve toward participatory leadership. The end result is that every team member overtakes a role of a leader dynamically, depending on the context. Research on collective intelligence shows how flawed our recruitment approaches are. Experience of system thinkers suggests how much potential is hidden in improving the system. Finally, an organizational culture is what adds meaning to our actions thus is a crucial enabler of change of our behaviors. These are building blocks of the participatory leadership approach. This isn’t just a theory. In Lunar Logic we’ve put this theory into practice. You will learn our story along with why we believe it works. Even though some of the ideas shared during the session may sound counter-intuitive or even radical we are the living proof that it can be done.

1. Pawel Brodzinski
@pawelbrodzinski
People, System, Culture:
Where Leadership Thrives

2. Hi, I’m Pawel
Lunar Logic
http://lunarlogic.io
Blog
http://brodzinski.com
Twitter
@pawelbrodzinski

3. Leadership is the process of
creating an environment in
which people become empowered
Gerald Weinberg
Source: G. Weinberg: Becoming a Technical Leader: An
Organic Problem-Solving Approach

4. Empowerment

5. Systems Thinking

6. 95% of performance
is attributable to
the system

7. Performance or
performance
variability?

8. Is variability bad?

9. Development of software
products is a betting business

10. In business, to be a success,
you only have to be right once
Mark Cuban
Source: G. http://blogmaverick.com/2005/05/30/success-
and-motivation-you-only-have-to-be-right-once/

11. The system in
knowledge work

12. People and the system is a
symbiotic relationship.
One doesn't govern the other.
Jim Benson

13. People versus system
is a false dichotomy

15. Ad-hoc teams

16. Emergent
practices

17. Autonomy

18. A system is not a sum of
behaviors of its parts; it's a
product of their interactions
Russel Ackoff

19. What makes
one a great
candidate?

20. Technical skills?

21. Craftsmanship?

22. Communication
skills?

23. Learning?

24. Superhero

25. in·tel·li·gence noun in-ˈte-lə-jən(t)s
(1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with
new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled
use of reason
(2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate
one's environment or to think abstractly as measured
by objective criteria (as tests)
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence

26. A system is not a sum of
behaviors of its parts; it's a
product of their interactions
Russel Ackoff

27. Intelligence
versus
Collective Intelligence

28. How are
individual and
collective
intellingece
correlated?

29. There’s no connection
between individual
intelligence and
collective intelligence
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups

30. Collective intelligence trumps
individual intelligence

31. Collective intelligence was
much more predictive in terms
of succeeding in complex tasks
than average individual
intelligence or maximal
individual intelligence
Anita Woolley

32. Indicators of collective
intelligence
Social perceptiveness
Evenness of communication
Moderate cognitive style diversity
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups

33. How would you
feel about
working with
women in your
team?

34. The more women the
better collective
intelligence*
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups

35. Understanding
team dynamics

36. Sofware development
is a team sport

37. Optimizing for
collaboration

38. Software development
business?

39. Two days of my work was
summarized by a commit that
adds five lines of code and
removes two
Marcin Kostrzewa, Lunar Logic

40. Happiness
business!

43. 40% women

44. Not enough women
in the industry?

45. No formal leadership
Emergent, contextual
leadership

46. Empathy catalyzes
everyone’s
development

47. A bad system will defeat a good
person every time
W. Edwards Deming

48. organizational culture
the behavior of humans who are part of an
organization and the meanings that the people react
to their actions
includes the organization values, visions, norms,
working language, systems, symbols, beliefs, and
habits
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture

50. Mission Statements

54. Leadership is the process of
creating an environment in
which people become empowered
Gerald Weinberg
Source: G. Weinberg: Becoming a Technical Leader: An
Organic Problem-Solving Approach

55. How far can people go
changing the system?

56. It’s easier to ask forgiveness
than it is to get permission
Grace Hopper

57. Respect for people does not
mean, you have to like them,
agree with them or fail to
challenge any half baked ideas
you hear from them
Stephen Parry

58. How new hires infuence
organizational culture?

59. Hiring for cultural fit

60. groupthink
psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group
of people, in which the desire for harmony or
conformity in the group results in an irrational or
dysfunctional decision-making outcome
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

61. What would happen
if we tore down
existing
hierarchies?

62. #NoManagement

64. Emergent
values

65. Participation in
strategy creation

67. If you
don’t like
something…

69. If you don’t know
what to tell,
tell the truth

70. Optimize for clients’
happiness

72. CEO role

74. Cultural fit

75. Let misfits go

76. lead·er·ship noun ˈliːdəʃɪp
(1) : The action of leading a group of people or an
organization, or the ability to do this
(2) : The state or position of being a leader
Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/leadership

77. How we design
and evolve
the system

78. Who is capable of leading

79. How leadership
skills are used

80. What kind of stuff people can
influence

81. Participatory leadership

82. The ultimate goal:
everyone is a leader

83. Thank you
Pawel Brodzinski
brodzinski.com
lunarlogic.io
@pawelbrodzinski