Turquoise control tools. Turquoise companies or how organizations of the future work

Turquoise organizations break stereotypes in the field of personnel management. HR tried to figure out how they differ from typical companies.

From the article you will learn:

Useful tools for HR

What are turquoise organizations

Turquoise companies are living organizations or companies of the future, in which everything is different from the usual companies in Russia. They do not practice a rigid leadership style, but coaching and self-management; instead of KPIs, values ​​and goals are used.

In turquoise organizations there is no place for lazy and non-executive employees who work exclusively under pressure. As a rule, their staff includes creative specialists who are inspired not by the social package, but by interesting tasks and limitless opportunities for development.

Some HR people believe that this approach to the management system is due to a reluctance to delve into processes and waste time on employees, others are confident that the idea is utopian, because, in their opinion, employees, in principle, cannot work well without proper control from management. However, such organizations operate successfully, develop, and their number is gradually increasing.

Turquoise Organization Principles

The principles of the turquoise organization still cause heated debate among skeptics.

To understand why some people treat the companies of the future with a degree of irony, we need to consider the basic principles on which relationships within are based. We can distinguish “three pillars” - evolutionary goal, integrity and self-government.

Evolutionary goal

Evolutionary purpose is manifested in the fact that the company does not work on tasks that are not necessary to achieve specific results, even if it may generate income. The actions of employees and management are aimed exclusively at achieving the goal that was the basis for the creation of the organization. If an employee appears in a company who does not share common ideas, he does not fit in, because he does not find support from his colleagues.

Integrity

Each employee in a turquoise organization is perceived as an individual, and not as a means to achieve goals. His desires, aspirations, and emotions are taken into account. Companies often do not adhere to schedules, plans, and do not separate personal life and work. In them, the person is important, and not a “cog” in the system, with the help of which profitability can be increased. Colleagues are always ready to help if someone has problems, no matter work-related or family.

Self management

Employees have the right to make decisions without discussing them with colleagues or managers. They know that they will have to bear responsibility for it. Despite this, punishment is excluded in turquoise organizations, but more often employees blame themselves for mistakes, so they try not to make mistakes.

Self-management tools in a turquoise organization

Turquoise organizations adhere to the Agile ideology, which reflects the company's culture, value system, principles and way of thinking. According to it, a clear work schedule from idea to result is less effective than the ability to change the algorithm and generate ideas in the process of solving problems.

Increased flexibility of the control system allows:

• achieve freedom from corporate values- people work more than devote time to formalities;
• instill a desire to develop- employees feel important, so they try to grow professionally;
• strengthen team spirit- strong teams are formed within the team, whose members can share experiences, problems, ideas;
• choose the optimal amount of work- the Agile ideology does not accept rush jobs, so employees are not assigned more tasks than they can complete.

To implement the Agile philosophy in practice, turquoise companies use Scrum, Kanban and other tools that explain how to work. At the same time, business owners and managers do not try to write an algorithm of actions, but only draw up a rough plan that each employee is free to understand in their own way.

Scrum

Scrum (framework) is a template that allows you to independently choose ways to achieve your goals, change rules in order to release and improve products based on market needs. The focus is on cross-functionality. In a classic company there are functional departments: marketing, legal department, sales, personnel service, IT, etc. As part of a team, department representatives create a product from start to finish, and practically do not work with documentation.

Important! In turquoise organizations there are no bosses as such; or rather, they do not interfere in work processes and relationships between colleagues. Their roles are played by leaders, mentors, who are ready at any moment to begin completing tasks along with others.

Kanban

Kanban is a working method with which the entire work process is visualized and improved. Kanban may not be classified as an agile tool, but it allows for new use of the workforce. There are no hard and fast rules, only basic principles: time limits, lean production, task reduction, and visualization.

In turquoise organizations that practice Kanban, a large goal is divided into global tasks and implementation stages, which are recorded on sticky notes and placed in a given order on a wall or a special board. Employees finish some tasks and only then start others.

Holacracy

The basis of Holacracy is a branched structure of the organization, consisting of nested and indirectly adjacent circles. If in a classical company structural units are required to coordinate actions with senior management, in holacracy everyone has the right to make decisions and manage the budget within the framework of their goal.

Features of working with personnel in turquoise organizations

Recruitment and selection of personnel

In building teams, employee values ​​matter, and only then professional qualities. Managers and regular employees pay increased attention to the alignment of applicants' values company values at the selection stage, during the adaptation and work process.

Adaptation and training of personnel

In teal organizations, every new employee adapts to the culture. During this period, HR tries to understand how its values ​​compare with the company's values. The specialist undergoes training, including management methods: Scrum, Kanban, Holacracy or others. The main adaptation occurs in the team that is interested in it.

Employee performance assessment

A non-standard assessment system is used. Teams discuss the work process at regular meetings, where everyone receives feedback and learns areas of growth. The performance of employees is not assessed through periodic certification - this is done by a team of 5-9 people every day. If an employee is ineffective, it is immediately noticeable.

Relocation of employees

Self-organization of people in turquoise companies is manifested in managing the composition of the team, which recruits and fires workers. Often HR functions are completely transferred to ordinary specialists. If an employee wants to join another team, he negotiates this with interested parties.

Rules for the relationship between managers and subordinates in turquoise organizations

In companies practicing Agile, there is no place for conflicts and intrigues. No one argues with anyone in them. Managers practically do not interfere with the work of subordinates, but only gently guide employees if they notice that they are having difficulty completing tasks.

If something needs to be regulated, the manager draws up a set of rules and regulations, deviation from which is not regarded as disobedience and is not punished by the manager. Everyone is free to act as they see fit. The main thing is that the employee achieves his goal and does not violate the corporate culture and psychological climate.

As a rule, ardent aggressors who do not share goals and values, act in their own interests, are quickly forgiven. If a person does not want to leave a turquoise organization, the manager can offer “compensation” to avoid conflicts.

In Agile, there is no competition for position or higher salary, so there is no intrigue aimed at the survival of workers. Typically, employees themselves are not interested in being part of a team that they no longer fit in with. The employment relationship is terminated by agreement of the parties or at the initiative of the employee.

Read in the HR Director magazine. Based on the 7 principles of relationships, you will be able to understand which line of behavior to choose and how to get along with subordinates.

Turquoise organizations. Many people have heard of it, but not everyone can figure out what it is and what characteristics it has. Let's go in order.

What are turquoise organizations?

The term itself was introduced in his book “Discovering the Organizations of the Future” by Frederic Laloux. According to his theory, there are seven stages that all organizations around the world go through, with the last five still existing today.

We will not talk about the first six, but will touch only on the last one - the evolutionary, or turquoise stage.

Such organizations arose 30 years ago, due to the fact that people were tired of the constant and widespread control of management, as well as internal competition. Employees are tired of engaging in meaningless activities in the form of preparing reports that only the manager needs and much more. At the moment, there are more and more such companies, including in Russia.

Turquoise organizations have taken the best from orange and green ones. The orange ones inherited the desire to compete with external companies, and the green ones inherited the desire to be a team.

So what are turquoise organizations? This is a new evolutionary stage in the development of any business, when the company begins to live according to the laws of a living system:

• Such a business “organism” senses all internal and external processes as subtly as possible;
• Reacts flexibly to all changes both within the company and in the external environment.

Main characteristics of turquoise organizations

Frederic Laloux identified several characteristics of turquoise organizations, he calls them “three discoveries”:

1. Self management.

A turquoise organization is a flexible, adaptive, self-regulating system. It effectively solves problems of any level of complexity, using the interaction of equal colleagues.

1. Integrity.

In such organizations, it is possible and necessary to maximize human potential with the help of special tools and practices. All of them encourage the internal integrity of each employee, and provide the opportunity to express the full range of different types of mental activity.

1. Evolutionary goal.

Such organizations, since they are living systems, have their own idea of ​​​​the direction of the company's future activities. Employees of a turquoise organization try to listen and understand “what the organization wants to become,” as well as “what purpose it wants to serve.”

Which companies are turquoise organizations?

Turquoise organizations first emerged in the United States. And these are the following companies:

• Patagonia
• Zappos,
• HolacracyOne,
• Glassfrog and others.

Let's look at a small case to understand the principles by which turquoise organizations operate. The Dutch company Burtzorg provides home care services. Within a few years after the changes were introduced, the number of company employees increased from 10 to 7,000 people. What is the essence of their activities? Health workers themselves control the following responsibilities:

• keep records of patients,
• plan work
• draw up a vacation schedule,
• provide training to newcomers.

Burtsorg spends 40% less time on patient care than other nursing organizations. At the same time, the company's employees allow themselves something that is strictly prohibited in other similar organizations: they drink coffee with their patients and their relatives! Surprisingly, patients recover 2 times faster, and the number of emergency hospitalizations is one third less.

The current crisis is shaking everyone not only in business, but also on a personal level, so many are thinking about changes. That the time has come to move to a qualitatively new level, both for yourself and for your company. It seems like the old matrix refuses to work, new breath, thinking and behavior are needed. In this wave of business forums, we are increasingly hearing talk about the “turquoise companies” trend. This term was proposed by Frederic Laloux in his book “Discovering the Organizations of the Future.” The essence of turquoise is that people no longer want to work from morning to evening five times a week. The leaders, in turn, also do not want army command. This means that the time has come for “living” - or so-called turquoise - companies working as a single organism for the benefit of society. But is this really salvation or just another fashionable utopia? We will discuss this further.

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New times, new companies
Former McKensey employee Frederic Laloux said that previous company models do not meet the aspirations of modern people. If twenty years ago it was important for a person to find a permanent job for the rest of his life, today this thought is scary, since a person now needs self-realization and freedom. The modern employee does not hold on to his old place and is not afraid to move forward - to create his own projects. So Lalu identified seven stages that organizations around the world have gone through: infrared, purple, red, amber, orange, green and turquoise.
Most companies in our country are at the orange stage, where the most important thing is competition. Here it is important to win the competition: both internal between employees and external. There is a clear hierarchy in the structure of orange companies - everything is like in the animal world. Planning is done at the top, execution of orders is done at the bottom. Late for work - fine, again - dismissal. Here is an approximate mechanism of the work of large companies, the work of which is studied by students of management faculties around the world, in order to later become the same.

If the red company is the Army, then the turquoise one is a living organism.

In new turquoise companies, people don’t want to make reports or read protocols ten times a day. The main thing here is to do the maximum to the limit for the sake of the overall goal of the company.

Turquoise companies are the last in the chain of evolution
In turquoise companies, strategy emerges naturally and is not imposed by management. Each employee understands what he is doing and why. But this, as we all understand, is an idealistic view of life and people.
Yulia Belyak - Creator of the LoDi mobile application and founder of the startup studio Jubel (jubel.ru) says this: “Turquoise companies originated in the West, where I lived and worked for the last 16 years, and, therefore, was able to fully experience it myself, and now I am successfully using it in Russia. In such a company, it is not the title and position that play an important role, but leadership qualities. It’s important to be not just a manager, but a person who is trusted and followed.”

One of the advantages is that you do not need to rely only on your knowledge and experience. On the downside, the manager does not always know what is really happening, and therefore it is important to use the metric of key performance indicators.

“I have several ways of selecting people who fit this style of business culture,” admits Belyak (LoDi). “During the interview, I ask the candidate to criticize me or the business to understand whether he can think critically or just wants to be liked. Or I also like to give trial tasks after the interview. My tactic is not to give tasks, but to describe the problem, thereby testing how a person thinks, how independently he can come to a solution.”

In Russia, Artem Agabekov is building his company Adventum according to “turquoise” principles - trust, responsibility and motivation (Agabekov is also the founder of the Window Factory company); to some extent, the Anderson cafe chain can be classified as a turquoise company, even German Gref is trying to move Sberbank in this direction. In the West, of course, there are already hundreds of them: Costco, UPS, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods Market and others.

An efficient company or a utopia with a beautiful name?
The first rule of any leader is not to look at the market or at your employees through rose-colored glasses. No matter how wonderful the company is, we must admit that most subordinates solve their life problems at work, not yours. Even if you find a team of like-minded people, as a rule, they will work for the sake of their own tasks - for the sake of their personal growth. Sooner or later, they, as “living organisms,” will want to do something of their own. Are you lucky and your “living organisms” don’t want to leave you?! This means they just like being subordinate.

The fact is that the problem with turquoise companies is not that too many want to be bosses, but that too many want to be subordinates.

This passivity is observed not only in Russia. Few people want to take on extra responsibility. Besides the fact that people don’t want to be managers, they don’t want to be freelancers either. They want to complete the tasks that are put in front of them, and not come up with something themselves. Such employees throw work out of their minds as soon as the clock hand shows 18.00 - the end of the working day! Moreover, it’s not just about business. If you analyze philistine trends, you will see that fewer and fewer people want to start a family and take responsibility for someone other than themselves. Not to mention being a boss and being responsible for the workforce.
Agabekov himself writes that on average one out of 32 candidates gets into his company! And this is quite logical - the remaining 31 want to work in more familiar and irresponsible conditions. But let's not fall into conservatism - society is really changing. It is indeed difficult for people today to sit in the office from 9 to 18. But this does not yet lead to the conclusion that the new “freedom-loving” employees are ready and able to work freely. No matter what anyone says, most people can work effectively only under the close supervision of their superiors and with a strict schedule.
It is also important to consider that any turquoise organization is based on the personality of the leader. Agabekov has a high moral standard (no one argues with this), but this also does not mean that his employees have the same.

Conclusion:
On the one hand, Laloux’s theory is more relevant for Russia than ever. Our country has always been “red,” which brought many problems to everyone living here. Now is the time for change, the time for new formations. German Gref said this if organizations and government institutions in Russia do not change, the situation will only get worse. On the other hand, you need to understand that a “turquoise” company is a kind of utopia - human nature changes extremely slowly. And it is reckless for a manager to hope for a high level of awareness of employees if they developed in completely different “unfree” conditions than he himself. However, the “turquoise” trend is a reason to think about how to create a balance between managers and subordinates and make sure that one day “turquoise” companies in our country become the majority.

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Turquoise organizations - what is it?

The Turquoise Organization model is described in the book “Discovering the Organizations of the Future” by ex-McKinsey & Company partner, coach and facilitator Frederic Laloux.

The turquoise organization is presented by the author as a living organism that develops beyond the control of personnel. The task of the staff is to feel, listen and understand what the organization wants to become.

Turquoise organizations have certain principles::

• there are no positions and no hierarchy;
• there is no project manager, you can independently nominate yourself to complete the project;
• open exchange of information;
• no bonuses, profits are distributed equally;
• no promotions;
• roles and responsibilities are constantly redistributed in agreement with colleagues;
• collegial discussion of problems, search for the best answer jointly;
• you can identify problems beyond your authority;
• Team performance is paramount.

According to Frederic Laloux, throughout the history of mankind, new types of organizations arose and replaced each other - from Red to Turquoise. They all differ from each other in management principles, relationships between people, definition of goals, etc.

How Sberbank becomes a Turquoise organization

The Turquoise VSP project started at Srednerussky Bank in the spring of 2016. The transition to the new system occurred on the initiative of the employees themselves, who were inspired by the ideas described in the book by Frederic Laloux. Employee badges feature the same butterflies that appear on the cover of the book “Discovering the Organizations of the Future.” This apparently emphasizes the direct connection between the ideas of Frederic Laloux and what Sberbank is trying to implement in practice. If the experience of the Moscow region branches is successful, the concept will begin to be broadcast throughout the company.

There is no longer a hierarchy in Turquoise offices: instead of managers, coaches work here. And this is not a meaningless game with terminology, as it might seem from the outside. According to management, the main difference between a coach and a manager is that he helps to make decisions independently, while the manager simply gives them in a ready-made form.

Also, in advanced offices, other fundamental principles of organizations of the future are put into practice: self-government, freedom in decision-making, collegial opinion on personnel issues, discussion of current issues at general daily meetings and the ability for any employee to make their own proposals (the best ones are implemented in practice). The main goal is customer satisfaction. Now employees think not about plans, but about what the client needs.

German Gref, having visited one of the Turquoise offices in June last year, noted positive changes: “The whole team has a sense of ownership. They feel responsible for building lasting relationships with clients. And this greatly increases people’s engagement and satisfaction with work. Many processes are undergoing significant transformation.”

TV series "Turquoise Diary"

In the first episode of the film, employees of Sberbank office 115 in Balashikha talk about how they received the news that the principles of the Turquoise organization were being introduced in their branch. It also provides examples of specific cases in working with clients and how, according to the new model, certain problems are solved. Also interesting is the story of one of the newcomers about how he had an interview in an office where there were no managers.

You can watch the first episode on the Sberbank TV website:Copying and any processing of materials from the site is prohibited

If the founder or head of the company is not a supporter of “turquoise” at heart, it is almost impossible for the organization to rebuild.

Experimenting with the turquoise method will require redesign of business processes and additional training. Managers who are accustomed to unconditional power may leave. This is a normal transient process. But a top manager who does not profess “turquoise” will be afraid of difficulties and will return to the old management system.

Are the size, scope and geography of the company important?

They don't really matter. There are successful turquoise innovators in medicine, industry, trade, services, IT, the non-profit sector and other areas.

The organizations cited as examples in Lalu's book range from hundreds to tens of thousands of employees and are located in different parts of the world: from the evangelical school ESBZ (1,500 students and teachers) to the energy company AES (19,000 specialists).

How to hire new employees

It is better to hire new colleagues to people who will work with them.

Don’t just push this task to HR: involve future colleagues in developing a test task for a new employee, invite them to attend the interview.

A good option is when the candidate is interviewed by several people at once and then a closed vote is held.

How to teach employees to take responsibility for their actions

Turquoise organizations aim to ensure that every employee involved in the decision-making stage feels like an entrepreneur. This helps build a strong team, improve information sharing, and engage employees. When a person is involved in decision-making, interested in his opinion and his personal goals, he stops sitting out at work.

The company creates conditions in which smart and responsible people reveal their potential, and whiners and lazy people are naturally eliminated.

And without a “great evolutionary goal” there is no way

Can. But it’s worth thinking about what employees talk about at the water cooler and what values ​​they convey.

Frederic Laloux gives an example in the book that Buurtzorg never recorded its purpose in the form of a written document, a company mission statement. But at the same time, all Buurtzorg employees talk about it all the time. They find that in oral form the meaning of the company's activities remains alive and does not freeze in established formulations. This makes the company's purpose evolutionary and implies its ability to develop.

But it seems to me that your “turquoise” is just a temporary fashion craze.

Laloux's theory has critics who look for flaws in the system. For example, in heated discussions on Habré it is called"utopian communism". Users periodically criticize the turquoise company Valve, which has not updated the site for a long time, and some options in the world famous online game Dota 2, because the company's employees themselves choose which projects to work on.

At the same time, the large companies listed above become successful precisely thanks to the daily implementation of turquoise practices. The turquoise management style is not about chaos and lack of regulations. This is a rejection of the stereotype that every person is necessarily lazy and incapable of doing good things without constant supervision. Well, you can “try on” this idea in your workflow in different ways.