I met a person at a conference last month who I was drawn to immediately. His expertise, background, and way of being aren’t at all like my own. I felt immediately that I would benefit from working with him, although I wasn’t entirely sure how. He promptly sent me e-mail, saying he’d like to hear more about my work. After he heard more, he promptly followed up saying that he’s drawn to my work and interested in working with me. To my ear, this already has the makings of a self-org work group:

• We’re drawn to each other’s work and expertise, believing that we can be better together than on our own.
• In a short time, he’s shown up for me again and again, even though I know he’s busy. I’ve done the same for him.
• We’re each going with our gut to a certain extent, because we don’t know each other all that well yet.

So I did something I’ve never done before. In e-mail, I directly asked this relative stranger:

“How do you feel about working as a self-organizing work group with me? I’m not interested in working any other way than as part of these groups, and I work this way from the beginning. This means that you’ll see me:

1. Make the decision to work with you based more on instinct than logical plan.
2. Allow group spontaneity (what we come up with on the fly together) to win out over individual plans and ideas. Often, not always.
3. Comfortable continuing to move in the same general direction together when we don’t agree. And I won’t feel the need to agree on everything, since one value of these groups is being able to hold and honor multiple perspectives.
4. Give more time and energy to this group than to other people/groups. You won’t have to prompt me to get work done or to communicate with you (one sign that a self-org work group is nearing its end is when members begin to struggle to do this).
5. Trust you completely—particularly with respect to your job role—immediately and for as long as we know each other. Also through role, organization, and other life changes. This is in part because I know that we’ll eventually be a fast, effective, and unstoppable group. I figure the sooner we can get to this point, the better, and I find that starting by offering my complete trust helps.
6. Allow the group to pull and push me outside of my comfort zones. Regard the group as the leader and see myself as a learner in it and lucky to be part of it.

I expect the same of all group members while recognizing that everyone will get to this level of trust in the group in their own time. Having been part of 15 of these groups, today I skip the ‘Can I trust this person?’ and ‘Can I be myself with this person?’ parts. When I work with someone I want to work with who is choosing to work with me, I don’t need these questions.”

I figure if he’s interested in working like this, we might as well start from the beginning to the extent possible. I’m not this forward with everyone I meet. With him I intuitively sensed that he could handle me being me right away. For example, sending a deluge of ideas at a person in the beginning is a bad habit of mine. I learned long ago that most people don’t like it. But I’ve also learned that I don’t have to please everyone. I want to find and work with my people—that is, people who want to work as self-org work groups with me. I’ve learned that my people tolerate this bad habit, and some—bless their hearts—even find it endearing. Is he one of my people? I’ll find out soon enough one way or the other.

In sharing my expectations of the group and myself, I also shared my expectations of him. Will some people be put off by this? Yep. But again, I’m not after working with everyone. I’m after finding self-organizing work group members who want to work with me. This is me. Welcome to me!

The list I threw together for him on the fly is some of the common themes I’ve experienced across the 15 self-organizing work groups I’ve studied—specifically related to rapidly fostering these groups. There are many other ways to do it. Other common themes can be seen in what I did:

• Be your whole self—to the extent possible—from the beginning. This means you’re not just putting your best foot forward (the resume Lori), but you’re also being brave enough to share a flaw or two as well (the real Lori).
• Stretch yourself in little ways outside your comfort zone. It wasn’t easy sending that message to an almost complete stranger. Whether we work together or not, I’ll still be happy I did it because I learned something about myself and the people I want to work with by doing it. I’ve noticed that I do little stretches like this on my own and that I allow my self-org work groups to stretch me in big, unexpected, and life-changing ways.
• Let go of trying to find (or be) the perfect person to work with. Amazing SOWGs don’t need perfect individuals to be amazing. Just look for someone who makes you think “I’d be more _____ working with this person.” Fill in that blank with whatever word matters to you—creative, brave, prepared, connected, technically savvy, organized, outgoing, fun, able to communicate with certain others, whatever. Look for people who allow you to be you while stretching you.
• Communicate what you want as an individual. The down side is that what you want as an individual is NOT going to be exactly what this group is about or where this group is going. The up side is that the group will take you BETTER places and allow you to see yourself as something more than you could imagine on your own. Communicating what you want as an individual helps draw the people to you who you should be working with (not necessarily the people you expect). Have you heard the term “strange attractor”? That’s kind of what I’m talking about. You’re going somewhere. As an individual, you don’t know exactly where. As a self-organizing work group, you won’t know exactly either. But you’ll have a more rewarding trip and a lot more fun getting there.

In January, I decided that I needed to surround myself with other local, knowledgeable, folks on the subject of self-organizing systems or groups. I reached out to every person and group I knew, and 15 local people said they’d be interested in a monthly self-organizing systems discussion group. But then an unusual (or maybe not so unusual) thing happened. Of those 15 people, only 4 of us showed up to the monthly discussions. And the only person who claimed career focus on the subject of self-organizing groups or systems was me. At first, I was frustrated, thinking I’d inadvertently created a founded group—a more formal group than I wanted and one in which I’d be an expert teaching others. That wasn’t the kind of group I was looking for.

But the others who showed up were all amazing people, and as it turned out, we all had something else in common. We’re all relatively new consultants in the fields of organizational development, leadership, and/or learning and training. At the second group meeting, we tossed out the agenda entirely and helped one member solve a consulting client’s issue. It was way more fun, impactful, and rewarding than what we’d planned to discuss. This was the working-on-in-the-moment-needs group I really needed! By our fourth meeting, we tossed out our old label—goodbye  “Seattle-Area Self-Org Systems Discussion Group” and took on a new one—hello “New Organizational/Leadership/Learning Development Consultants Group.” This 4-person group is happy to be learning together. As a member every time we part I can’t wait to see them again and feel lucky to be part of the group. I found 3 other people willing to let group spontaneity win out over individual planning. This is the group I really wanted and needed–one that simultaneously supports us as new consultants, surrounds us with people who have different strengths that we can draw on and support, and, for me as an individual, gives me yet another self-organizing group to study (yea!). And in August, several interested others want to join us, including one person I already knew.

Self-Org Groups in the Seattle Seafair Milk Carton Derby

This is a self-organizing work group. Not the group I thought was most important as an individual expert, but an even better group–the group I actually need most right now as a learner. In hindsight, I’ve witnessed a similar group evolution happen before at the true start (collective start, not individual start) of other self-organizing work groups I’ve studied in businesses, universities, and high schools.

So how do you evolve a planned group into a self-organizing work group? You allow it to happen. It’ll look different for everyone, but for me and the groups I’ve studied and been part of it appears to be mostly about letting go as an individual. Just for a moment, let go of the individual plans you thought you needed and the individual expertise you have. Let go of the group or people you thought you needed as an individual. Who are the people who always show up to do or talk about what matters most to you? Who shows up again and again? What does that diverse group have in common? What’s making all of you give up your time with your individual work, families, and lives to be together? What do you actually do and talk about most of the time? What’s drawing you together? That’s where your self-organizing work group lives. My own research taught me that individuals don’t start self-organizing work groups–small 2- or 3-person groups, tackling the needs of the moment, do. It took this latest group to drive that point home, I guess.

Your next self-organizing work group already exists. It’s just waiting to be discovered. Every time I let go of my individual plans and expertise and decide for a moment to be a learner, to just listen and watch for a little while, I’m amazed at how quickly a self-organizing work group shows up to teach me what I actually need to learn right now. And it’s always more than I could have expected as an individual.

From my perspective as a researcher and self-org group member, the most amazing results and outputs of these groups are unexpected, somewhat surprising by-products. They are fringe benefits of working in these groups–groups that allow you to be more of your whole self at work. Instead of focusing on outputs with these groups (which, frankly, organizational employees are responsible for as part of their formal teams anyway), today I see these groups as first and foremost capable of bringing forth remarkable personal and organizational development–so many of those things that our more formalized, planned-to-exist-forever teams struggle with. For example, here are the key impacts, from my perspective, that I’ve seen self-organizing work groups have:

1. Provided free, effective on-the-job skills training, soft skills training, and leadership training for group members and nearby peers, managers, and administrators open to new ways of working and thinking—training that executives, management, and administration in the organizations didn’t have to sell, mandate to others, or even know about.
2. Resulted in meaningful improvements within people in and some people near the groups, including increased sense of connectedness, confidence in self and others, creativity, resilience, awareness of what mattered most, gratitude, and job satisfaction; improved job performance; and improved ability to imagine possibilities for self and others.
3. Allowed group members and some nearby others to fully experience “others” as part of themselves. This appeared to pull these people to a new level of self-understanding from which they then raised their own expectations of themselves and others. It also appears that once people reach this understanding (that they really are better, together, than they are on their own) that they became unwilling and unable, most days, to settle for less.
4. Resulted in meaningful improvements in the organization including improved:

• Communication across groups within the organization, with people served by the organization, and with related organizations/people such as support organizations/people and partner organizations/people
• Awareness of needs within the organization, customer needs, and the needs of related organizations/people such as support organizations/people and partner organizations/people
• Job competencies and skills in and near the group
• Problem triage capabilities in and near the group
• Ability to take on new, unexpected, and more difficult work in people in and near the group and in at least some departments and divisions near the group
• Product and service quality
• Relationships (more honesty and openness)
• Perceptions (more willingness to give other people and groups the benefit of the doubt)
• Resilience (give people and groups energy and combat burnout)

Not to mention that I’ve witnessed these groups bring forth new leaders from within, generate and demonstrate new ideas for products and services, and save time and money.

My own opinion is that the most important thing about these groups isn’t what they produce: it’s what they demonstrate about us as human beings. We have it in us to work as close, smart, agile, grateful, ever-improving collectives. We have it in us to come together across difficulty, time, distance, diverse backgrounds and experience and become something greater together than we are on our own. We can surprise ourselves. These groups teach their members that. And they teach many nearby others too.

My own first 2-year self-org work group got amazing results for our organization. By the time the larger organization fully noticed, though, the group itself had disbanded and the individuals moved on to other things (what mattered most to us had changed). Most people who received the larger organization’s recognition for the new work were peers of the group who’d worked with us, self-organized themselves, improved the group’s work, and carried on from where the group started. Near the end of the group’s lifetime, for many of us in and near the group, we figured out that it wasn’t the results that we were individually after that mattered most to us any more. What mattered most was that we were demonstrating that a cross-department group could work together effectively and happily, make our own work more rewarding and fun, and bring forth important change from the inside out. And we felt grateful and happy to have been part of such an amazing group, and confident that we could do it again. At 36, this task-focused introvert and workaholic finally learned that it wasn’t what she did or what she knew that made her special—it was who she was as this group. I couldn’t see this at all without the help of this group.

Self-organizing work groups will create outputs of some sort to serve the needs of the moment, but what the outputs will be or will look like can’t be entirely known ahead of time, even to the individuals in the group. In these groups, together people become something greater than their individual selves, and when this happens—in that moment—they can imagine more than they could as individuals. The outputs they create as a group knock their own socks off, not to mention many people and groups around them.

In my experience, the outputs these groups create are better than what anyone could expect or plan for as an individual. But how that shows up in different organizations and for different groups is different. It appears to depend on what the group itself is after and how out-in-the-open the particular group is. Some have created outputs:

• For themselves and those around them, and the outputs didn’t need to go farther than that and nobody outside their circle of influence was any the wiser
• For their entire organization, making them available for interested others but not forcing them on anyone
• With people the organization serves, such as with customers
• That entire business divisions or school districts eventually adopted as their own, although unless you were a researcher determinedly studying the group, you’d be hard-pressed to know where the outputs originated because the people and groups around these groups adjusted the outputs and made them their own

In most organizations I’ve been in, individuals are in more than one type of group. That is, they’re working on their formal team (which they see as a concocted or founded group planned to last into the future, as shown in the figure from Arrow et al, 2000) and as part of a self-organizing work group.

Forces in Group Formation (from Arrow et al, 2000)

In these organizations, in my experience, it is the formal team(s) that gets and takes the credit for any outputs that the self-org work groups create. This has been fine with the SOWGs I’ve studied and been part of. These groups just wanted things to improve and together cared less about who got the credit (in fact, self-org work group members I’ve studied attribute success primarily to the group, each other, and to others around the group or being served by the group). Besides, as individuals they were often still part of those formal teams that got the credit (or still experienced themselves as part of those teams even though they’d moved on), so they could be happy and proud when their formal teams got the credit.

Since this doesn’t appear to matter most to the groups themselves, I wouldn’t spend much time worrying about discouraging the organic growth of self-organizing work groups. These groups are powerful groups of highly supported and motivated humans. Although difficult to see if you don’t see yourself as part of one yet, they’re all around us. In my experience, they show up everywhere–even where management and administration appears to be doing every possible thing imaginable to get it their way. You and your organization are ahead of the game in even recognizing that these groups exist and that they are doing the organization good. My recommendation is to:

1. Focus on learning to recognize self-organization when you see it
2. Learn from those who are already self-organizing at the group level. Watch for energy, excitement, and people going above and beyond for the people they’re working for and with—where you find these things, you’ll find a self-org group to learn from. Watch, participate, and listen to what is said without words.
3. Become a self-organizing work group yourself. These groups demonstrate what it takes to self-organize better than individuals can. And as a self-org group yourself, you won’t have to take my word for it that amazing results (and outputs) are the by-products–the fringe benefits–of these groups. Stick with your group, and you’ll experience it yourself.

Forces in Group Formation

Many of the teams and groups we’re part of at work today are concocted (created by people external to the group) or founded (created by a founding internal member or members). Both types are planned by individuals to last into the future, as shown in this figure from the book Small Groups as Complex Systems (Arrow, McGrath, & Berdahl, 2000). Individuals have to plan and work and struggle to make these groups work and to sustain them into the future. When it comes to self-organizing work groups, however, you have to toss out that way of thinking. Self-organizing work groups form to help individuals. They help you, not the other way around. You don’t have to help them. All you have to do is open yourself up and learn. 

My research shows that self-organizing work groups don’t live on indefinitely, from an individual perspective. Those I’ve studied and been part of have had life spans of a few months to a few years. However, they do live on by boosting confidence, self-esteem, and visibility of group members, instilling the desire to keep creating self-organizing groups in their members and in some nearby others, and by fostering other self-organizing work groups around them. From my perspective, this short lifespan from an individual perspective is a very good thing, because it makes it ok for people to follow their own energy and passion. People staying with groups as they need them and moving on as they don’t is a good thing for your organization, even if it doesn’t always feel great in the moment.

If you’re part of a self-organizing group that matters a lot to you but others aren’t drawn to it the way you hoped they’d be, I suggest moving into learner mode. Instead of focusing on motivating others—which is a perspective needed with concocted and founded groups that doesn’t appear to serve us well with self-organizing groups—I’d suggest instead that you try to put yourself into a better position to see what self-organizing work groups are already happening and already doing around you.

 Two ideas:

• Find a local SOWG to learn from. Watch the energy level. Where there is visible energy, excitement, and people going above and beyond the call of duty to help each other, you’ll find a self-organizing work group to learn from.
• Form a new self-organizing work group yourself. Tip: at the beginning of self-org work groups, people:

1. Experience a difficulty and recognize their personal limitations
2. Recognize something that they find personally valuable in somebody else—something similar to and different from themselves
3. Experience a desire to work with that somebody else to simultaneously better serve themselves and the people who matter most to them
4. Informally talk with the other person or people who they believe would best serve themselves and the people who matter most to them
5. Stick together and move in the same general direction

Group members join the group for different reasons, but they all go through a similar process to create and join the group for themselves, within themselves. For people open to them, watching (and, even better, participating in) these groups gives people the self confidence they need to try self-organizing for themselves. People are drawn to the groups’ very visible energy and enthusiasm and honesty, see what is possible in the moment, and very often see that they are capable of much of what the group is capable of. 

But once the group has successfully responded to the in-the-moment needs of its members and the people who matter most to them, it’s on its way to being over.

If you’re part of a self-organizing work group yourself, and you feel your enthusiasm for it wane, that may mean that your individual interests have changed and it’s time for you to let go of your group, let go of the work or turn it over to others who can give more energy and time to the ideas (if that’s needed), and move on to what matters most to you now. If you hold on to your SOWG past successfully tackling your own needs, you’re moving the group back into the planned space. I almost moved my first one back into being a founded group–other group members helped me make a different choice. As I mentioned earlier, founded groups are planned by individuals to exist into the future, and they contain some members who are resident experts who help solve other people’s problems not just their own. If you’re trying to do this, I recommend you find different groups and people to learn with than me and my groups. Founded groups aren’t groups I’m interested in, I don’t actively study them, and I participate in them only to a limited extent, because they’re not as rewarding or as much fun, for me, as self-organizing groups.

But I read the description and words “self-organizing group” in Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization and said “That’s us!” Later, I came across this picture in the book Small Groups as Complex Systems: Formation, Coordination, Development, and Adaptation by Holly Arrow, Joseph McGrath, and Jennifer Berdhal and again said “That’s us!” This was the first picture I’d seen that succinctly described the difference in the experience we were having and why we were having it.

Forces in Group Formation (Arrow et al)

In this image, external means from outside the group, internal means from within the group, planned means built by designers, and emergent means arising spontaneously.

As a researcher, I don’t study the difference between the types of groups in this picture. I only study self-organizing groups. I began doing this for a very self-centered reason: the experience of being part of my own self-organizing work group was so amazing, so life altering (and career changing), that this was the only way I wanted to work ever again. Fortunately, my time with my own group had made me confident and aware enough that I could do it. I continue this research, studying self-organizing work groups and groups, for another very self-centered reason: because the more time I spend with these groups, the more amazing things I can see in human beings in general, in human groups, and in human organizations. That, and I learn more rapidly when I’m with them than on my own. For somebody who loves to learn like I do, these groups are irresistable.

As a researcher conducting case study research, all I can do is describe what the self-organizing groups I study are like. If there’s difference to be found between these groups and other groups, it’s up to you to reflect on the teams and groups you work with, and find the difference, if any. That said, I’m also a self-organizing work group member myself. As a group member, here’s my own experience from the first group that helped me recognize myself as a self-organizing work group…

I was working in an organization that was frustrating me. I saw two very passionate people working together on an idea to change things. I recognized their ideas as my ideas. One was so passionate about what they wanted to do that as he stood in the stairwell with me, describing a meeting they’d just had, tears welled up in his eyes. In almost 5 years in the organization, I’d never seen anyone’s eyes well up with tears before (outside of myself, that is). In that moment, I decided to give my organization one more year (I’d been planning to quit). I told him I’d been thinking about the same things the previous year, looked him in the eye and said “I’m with you.” through my own slightly teary eyes.

Eventually, a fourth and then a fifth person joined us from other parts of the division as we recognized we weren’t complete at just 3 people (given the division-wide change we were interested in). We planned and planned and pushed and pushed. It wasn’t easy, but it was rewarding and fun and challenging working together 95% of the time. We decided to take a “pilot” approach and involve others from around the organization. Multiple pilot projects (and more than a year) later, many people had become part of us (some short term, some long term, and most began to promote the work on our behalf in other parts of the division). The last pilot project was very successful. One group member recognized that he needed to let go—to move on to give other people in the organization a chance to do similar, self-organizing work like we’d had the chance to do. As he let go, I began to believe that I could let go. And when I let go of my need to make this work the division’s work, to have everyone do exactly what we were doing, and to become the resident expert, all sorts of amazing things started to happen. The three of us working most closely recognized that we could take individual actions and make individual choices that were in sync (we’d learn later), people around us began to self-organize (at least 3 other self-org groups formed to support the work), and people from all over the organization (not just the division we were trying to change) started calling us and asking us to tell them about what we were doing. People all over the place began giving us the benefit of the doubt. Suddenly, everything felt easy. Suddenly, instead of trudging up a mountain, it felt like I’d jumped into a river and was floating happily along. The final pilot project was so successful that most people across the division decided it was the right direction to go in, upper management noticed, and they reorganized the division to support what we were all doing.

When the formal re-org happened, at that point most of us in the group had achieved what we wanted in the first place—the division would do the work we cared about going forward. We then had a choice—stay and become resident experts and founders helping solve other people’s problems or move on to (1) let others have the amazing, self-organizing experience we had and (2) find the same “magic” again elsewhere that we’d had together for more than two years. In the months that followed, four of the five of us (those that had worked most closely) recognized that what mattered most to us had changed (helped by the others), and we moved on to other work, divisions, and organizations. One group member—who hadn’t had a chance to work on any of the pilot projects—stayed to keep learning with new groups.

As a group member, I recognize that our group was a founded group for at least the first year that we were together and as individuals we believed that our planning, our designs, and our hard work was the primary reason big things would happen. The group became a self-organizing group for us when we individually let go—at the points we each recognized that what mattered most to the success wasn’t actually what we were planning, designing, and building at all. Instead, what mattered most was that we were together, working across the division’s silos, learning, and happy. The simple fact that people from different parts of the division could work this way, happily and effectively, was actually what people were drawn to and responding to and trying out for themselves. The existence of the group mattered most. The work itself was secondary to what we’d been demonstrating as a group–that working this closely was possible, rewarding, effective, and fun. It wasn’t our plans at all!

As a group we were close enough that we came to see that our existence as a self-organizing group mattered most, and when we saw that, it got easier to let everything go. When people came to us and said “What should we do the morning of Day 2 of this customer meeting?” we began saying things such as “It doesn’t matter what we did. What matters is that you are there, together, and you are listening to each other. Listen. Learn. Decide what matters most in the moment for you and the customers you’re with. We don’t know what is needed in the moment–only you do. Focus on what matters most. Let everything else go.” When people ask me how the group started, as an individual I know how lucky I was to be part of it, how little I actually had to do with its success, and what amazing people I got to be with.

As a group member, for me the difference between a self-organizing group and a founded group is that the self-organizing group taught me how to let go—first in many, many little ways and then in big, life altering ways—and it made me want to work this way again more than it made me want to stay and be a founder. Also, the group radically altered my perspective of “self.” When I entered the self-organizing group, my “self” was primarily me as an individual. During out time together, my “self” became primarily the group and, some days, the division as a whole. The group helped me see that others were self-organizing around us and that the belief in ourselves and each other was alive and well in people all around us and all over the division. Compared to this, an individual need to have my name associated with the few details I’d personally planned in the division seemed almost meaningless to me. I began to imagine myself as something else–something outside the organization entirely. I wasn’t sure what this new self was, but I was compelled to leave and find out.

In hindsight, the group helped me recognize that, for me, anything less than working this way wasn’t effective enough and didn’t expect enough of me and the people I worked with. Through the group I was finally able to let go of my own ego (not my own needs, which actually matter more than ever, because today I see them as a reflection of greater needs within a greater whole). The group helped me recognize that I learn better and more rapidly as a learner within a group of learners than I do from individual experts. It’s also more challenging and more fun to work this way. It’s often scarier too, but group members always help me push through and embrace my fear. The self-organizing groups I’ve studied have reinforced and amplified my desire to work only as part of self-organizing groups. Individual expertise just isn’t as interesting to me as being a learner, learning with other learners, in groups we created for ourselves. I enter them differently today. Today self-organizing groups show up everywhere for me. When they don’t, I look for the limits of my individual plans and thoughts, I let them go, I wait and soon I’m watching in wonder as amazing people show up to work with me–people and groups so much better than I could have imagined on my own.

Today, I recognize myself primarily as a self-organizing group member. From my perspective, everyone is self-organizing (the people around the groups I study teach me that) and I can learn about self-organizing groups working with anyone. Ten years ago I was a shy, quiet employee who blamed my managers, colleagues, and organization when things went wrong. Today I’m a full-time learner (and researcher, blogger, author, and consultant) who runs her own business, works with people all over the world, and has nobody to blame but herself when things go wrong.

That’s the difference between self-organizing groups and founded groups that I experienced.

• People in the group learn from each other and about themselves
• If they stay together long enough, people in the group can come to perceive that they’re able to learn faster and better together than they could on their own
• The group naturally draws others in (for example, a teacher-group drawing in students in or an employee-group drawing in customers) to learn with and from as its ready to
• The group helps members to continue to expand their definition of self (from “my customers” to “our customers” or from “my students” to “our students,” for example) and continue to ask themselves “What matters most? What matters most?” (apparently even past the lifetime of the group)
• People and groups nearby (working with the group or a group member) and people and groups personally close to group members can see what the group is doing, see that they’re often “just playing it by ear,” see themselves in the group, and use the group to learn
• People in the group—once they achieve what they were after for themselves and those who matter most to them—let go of the group and move on, looking to find the same “magic” elsewhere
• Many nearby others—people and groups open to a new way of working and thinking—self-organize themselves and go on to demonstrate this way of learning to others

As a trained educator, what I see in and around the self-organizing work groups I study is so far beyond cool that we’re going to have to invent a new word for it. Unbelievably cool works for now. This type of learning—from within, from experience, and for multiple people and groups—is what many of us get advanced degrees to muster the courage and brain cells to do on our own. As an individual, though, it’s tough to pull off learning such as this consistently and for extended periods of time. At least it is for me.

Today, more and more I’m participating in and studying self-organizing groups that exist outside of formal organizations–some of the groups aren’t centered around getting work done but around building community. This is scary territory for me as a person who has defined herself through work and through expertise in the past. I’m learning that what is now easy for me within organization and across organizations (fostering and sustaining self-org work groups) is still remarkably challenging for me outside the comfortable confines of organizational walls and shared work. But once again, I’m in the lucky position of getting to learn from learners—as a learner. For example, today I learned that in a newly forming self-organizing group—outside of any organization—I’m learning faster and better as a 2-person group than I can on my own. Here’s how…

I’m currently co-creating a monthly discussion group on the subject “self-organizing systems” here in Seattle. I need this group because the idea of further studying self-organizing systems—across dozens of disciplines—is just too daunting to tackle on my own. It’s taking too much time. I need to be learning from and with others. Eleven strangers, so far, have agreed to become part of this discussion group. We met for the firt time in late March, and I facilitated a discussion about what self-organizing work groups in organizations are and how to recognize them. Attendees asked me to continue the talk at the May meeting. This week, however, the amazing woman who agreed to co-facilitate the May meeting asked me the question “What do you want to learn in this group?” She reminded me that it’s the group itself that I want—a group to learn about self-organizing systems with and from—and that I was risking setting myself up as an expert teaching a class, which won’t give me what I want from the group. This is a woman who claims no expertise about self-organizing systems, like I do. She came to the group to learn. She reminded me of what mattered most to me about this group. I want it to be a place where I get to be a learner, not the expert, and where where I get to learn along with others.  So together we’re changing the May meeting to be a discussion about what supports success in self-organizing groups like the one we’re creating (outside of organizations and not focused directly on work). None of us, to my knowledge, is an expert on that.

Would an individual expert on self-organizing systems have pulled me to this understanding so quickly? Probably not. Despite all my years of study and expertise, I didn’t. I needed a learner and to be a learner to remind me of what matters most to me–learning!

So, there’s reason #2981 for creating/joining self-organizing groups and work groups for yourself. You get to learn from learners as a learner (and teaching others can then become a non-stressful fringe benefit of simply being a self-organizing group member). No individual expert on the planet, including me, has more to teach me than self-organizing groups of learners. I know this. But on the days when I forget, thankfully, my self-organizing group members show up to help remind me. Unbelievably cool!

I’ve heard similar questions elsewhere, so I thought I’d share my response. Here’s the response I sent him.

I’ve attached a graphic called “Forces in Group Formation” from the book Small Groups as Complex Systems (Arrow, McGrath, & Berdahl, 2000). It demonstrates distinctions in the kind of groups I seek out and study–self-organizing groups at work (spontaneous small groups created by people themselves, not externals to the group, in response to in-the-moment felt needs of group members and the people they care most about at work).

Forces in Group Formation

Other types of groups described in this graphic are:

• Concocted groups (designed by externals to last into the future—typical work team in a large organization)
• Founded groups (designed by internals to last into the future—typical small business start up)
• Circumstantial groups (spontaneous groups that form in response primarily to external stimuli—bus riders become a group when their bus gets stuck in the snow).

Having studied self-organizing work groups (and peers and managers and administrators near them) for 5+ years now, from my perspective all of these types of groups exist within human organizations. I now see all humans and human groups as living, self-organizing systems. But I didn’t have to change my environment or organization to see self-organizing work groups in action: I had to change myself. I became part of one and stayed with it long enough that I started to see self-organization in other people and groups around me. So today, for me, the question isn’t “Can self-organizing work groups work in a particular environment?” As a self-organizing work group member, I can see that these groups are already there. The questions I’m interested in have become: “How do we recognize these groups when we see them? What are their impacts, benefits, and drawbacks? How do people foster them, sustain them, and end them at the appropriate time? And how do people overcome barriers to them at work?”

From my perspective, many of the assumptions we make—for example, that some people are free riders or that some organizations lack the mechanisms to self-organize—are based on what we’ve learned by primarily paying attention to the concocted and founded groups in our systems. So I wouldn’t call you cynical at all. That said, those aren’t the groups I participate in (or watch) any more, and what I now see on a daily basis (in organizations, groups, and people I meet) knocks my socks off (as a person, of course, not as a researcher–as a researcher I rarely allow my socks to be knocked off).

My research has demonstrated that most people in and many people near the self-organizing work groups I study can see these groups during their lifetimes. Others can’t. Others can see self-organizing work group members as individuals (individuals becoming organizational leaders, getting better at their jobs, moving and thinking faster than others, becoming more confident and spreading that confidence, and bringing together people and groups who couldn’t work together before), but they were unaware that the individual was also part of a self-organizing work group.

At whatever point you become interested enough in this subject to join us, please come to a meeting of the Seattle-area Self-Org Systems discussion group. We’re a cross-disciplinary group of learners, discussions are co-facilitated by community creator/sustainers, and anyone is welcome.

Until then, as an individual, I recommend that you start/join a self-organizing work group for yourself (which might be as simple as reflecting and recognizing that you’re already part of one). Being part of one of these groups appears to be the best way for an individual to see self-organizing work groups already at work in his or her environment.

Putting words to what I’ve witnessed in the groups I’ve studied and been part of makes them sound a bit “woo woo” (as many of my friends in high tech would say). But these groups aren’t woo woo in practice. These groups get things done. They foster change and bring forth organizational leaders. They allow members–and many nearby others–to see more potential and possibility than they could imagine on their own. I’ve seen these groups change large business divisions and whole organizations. I’ve seen them generate and demonstrate new product and service ideas, change division-wide processes, add new roles and titles to an organization, draw new people and groups into an organization, involve customers and partners and students in planning and learning, get silo’d divisions and departments to work together, improve employee and teacher and manager and administrator performance, improve job satisfaction and self-confidence, and push high school student graduation rates up near 100%.

Why do people resist change at work? One idea is that it’s because they haven’t recognized themselves as part of a greater whole at work yet. They are disconnected from the greater whole, and they are putting their individual self and needs first (or those of their own team/department/division), because that’s what matters most to them. Do savvy arguments, logic, data, spreadsheets, graphs, and pie charts–brought forth by another individual or formal team–make these individuals change? Not in my experience. However, I’ve witnessed self-organizing work groups demonstrate to themselves and many nearby others that they are all part of a greater whole. Not because of what they said, but because of what they are. The possibilities their simple existence demonstrates. Once people experience these possibilities for themselves, they begin to believe there is a greater whole that matters and can begin to recognize themselves as such. What they thought they were (and did, and needed, as individuals) no longer makes sense, so they change. Themselves.

Another idea is that maybe, actually, people don’t resist change. Maybe all people have it in them to thrive in chaos, embrace change, and foster change. Maybe we do this every day and are doing this right now. Maybe human beings are amazing creatures that, like other living creatures on the planet, are capable of bringing forth change and changing themselves in an instant. Personally, to believe this, I first had to let go of the idea that I could make even one “other” person change. (My husband is SO happy about this.) Maybe someone truly amazing—like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Maya Angelou or someone–could get to this belief on his or her own. Not me. As an individual–no way. It was only by recognizing myself as a self-organizing work group member, and then studying other groups like ours for years, that I became capable of believing this. And it is only through my continued participation in self-organizing groups and work groups than I am able to hang on to this perspective. For me, the change that needs to happen is always in myself. Fortunately, today–most of the time–my “self” isn’t as small as I once believed.

Indicator #9. Re-form and immediately exist again, as needed, after your lifetime.

Demonstrated, for example, by:

• Group members continuing to help each other, as needed, months and years after the lifetime of the group.
• Group members happily coming together again after the group’s lifetime.
• After the group’s lifetime, when together, members simultaneously demonstrating the same abilities and experiences that they experienced happening during their lifetimes. For example, although some members of the groups I’ve studied hadn’t seen each other or worked together for months or years, they immediately began speaking for the collective, expanding on each others’ ideas without feeling the need to come to agreement, openly sharing themselves without fear of hidden agenda, finishing each others’ sentences and thoughts, teasing each other, and so on.

Here in the United States, on our Veterans Day and Memorial Day holidays, you can turn on any TV and see groups of old soldiers  back together to remember. Decades, even whole lifetimes, may have passed, yet these veterans smile and laugh and hug–and sometimes cry–together, as if no time had passed at all. These have always been powerful, unforgettable images for me, because they demonstrate so much of what seems amazing about us as human beings. We have it in us to form connections unbounded by time, distance, and individual experience.

I’ve been consciously studying self-organizing work groups since 2006. In that time, I’ve been with several groups after their lifetimes (half a year to several years AFTER the working lifetimes of the groups). Group members are back together to reflect on their time as a group. Each time we do this, the experience feels similar. Group members smile and laugh and reminise and brainstorm and work, together, as if no time had passed at all.  I get to watch people who are clearly deeply connected, happy to be together, happy to help each other (and their current/former organizations, as needed), and happy to help and teach me. Soon enough, they pull me in to join them and share my own experience as a self-organizing work group member myself. I see in these groups the same thing I see in the old veterans on TV–people whose connections appear to be unbounded by time, distance, and individual experience. Better yet, I experience it myself. 

Does this sound like something our organizations could use more of? Our employees and customers? Teachers and students? Managers and administrators? Nurses, doctors, and patients? How about our individual, stressed-out work selves? Spend 10-minutes of conscious time with a self-organizing work group. For me, it has become a no brainer. I want to work in these groups, with these groups, and with the people who emerge from them. The first step for me was recognizing that I was already part of a group like this. Awareness, on my own, isn’t my strong suit. Fortunately for me, my self-organizing work groups help me experience and see what I can’t fully imagine and experience on my own.

Indicator #8: Enjoying yourself in the moment and in hindsight

I am self-organizing when I enjoy myself in the moment and in hindsight. Demonstrated in the following ways: 

• Laughing and smiling
• Experiencing a sense of freedom, talking about experiencing a sense of freedom/describing a sense of freedom, and demonstrating a sense of freedom (for example, thinking from another perspective, switching roles with another, or surprising yourself)
• Expressing and demonstrating excitement
• Making fun of yourself
• Telling jokes to and teasing others you consider part of yourself
• Reminiscing
• Experiencing moments of “wow!” and “ah-ha!”

As a group, we’re self-organizing when we enjoy ourselves in the moment and in hindsight. Demonstrated in the following ways:

• Collective laughter and smiles
• Group members talking all at the same time (demonstrating excitement about what they’re doing and saying)
• Teasing each other
• Joking together
• Group members feel the work is fun and rewarding most of the time—in the moment and in hindsight
• Happily reminiscing together after the lifetime of the group
• Experiencing collective moments of “wow!” and “ah-ha!”