Gustavo Razzetti, director general de LAPIZ
Gustavo Razzetti, Managing Director at LAPIZ, wrote on the blog The Read about the qualities a leader of an organization trying to adopt self-organization should have. Nine months ago his agency went through this process and his job consisted not in eliminating managers or hierarchies but in adopting an approach in which decision-making didn’t revolve around control and anticipation, but encouraged decentralization and adaptation, instead. For Razzetti the role of leaders is overrated. “Self-org is not about eliminating leaders, but rethinking their role in a more balanced way” he wrote. In this sense, he identified 5 ways in which leaders must act in a reorganization process: Vision curator, transformation driver, bar raiser, connecting glue, and fresh perspective. The first one implies motivating people to use their vision as a reference for each group to validate and test their decisions. The second is encouraging right decision-making over comfortable ones. The third is about how to avoid lowering the bar and understanding that self-organization is a maturing process. The fourth way is to make sure communications flow across circles in a company. And the fifth and last one is that leaders must be clear about where they can add value by offering a fresh perspective or specific knowledge on a topic. “Finally, remember that you have the power to pave the walkway — but that doesn’t mean you should determine how people walk across the park. Leadership in a self-organizing company is about being mindful of your team’s footsteps” he concluded.
