What your organisation can learn from Buurtzorg’s high performance— 2: Jos de Blok and the "Decision Free Leader"
What this series is about
In a series of articles, it will be shown that a paradigm shift in decision making allows for a single principle — a principle which can be adopted by any organisation — to explain Buurtzorg’s organisational structure and the resulting high organisational performance. Using Buurtzorg as an example, this series invites any organisation to fully utilise the talents of their employees, and thus dramatically improve organisational performance (not to mention job satisfaction). All it takes is a closer look at decision making (the paradigm shift), and then avoid or minimise it (the principle). Go here to part 1.
About the previous article in the series
Part 1 — "Teal for dummies" (and high performance for all) — introduced Buurtzorg, how its self-managing teams and organisational structure got into the management spotlight, and also how its high performance has been challenging to copy. The key to understanding Buurtzorg's structure and high performance lies in its approach to decision making.
This article introduces a paradigm shift in how to look at decision making, before demonstrating how Jos de Blok — based on common sense and personal experiences — set out to create an organisation without managers making decisions for experts on the job. Next, his leadership-role in a decision-free environment is considered. It ends with an approach to identify someone's suitability to take on a leadership-role (also in a hierarchical organisation) when decisions are to be minimised.
Organisations don't exist to make decisions, but to achieve goals
To state that organisations should avoid, or minimise, decision making, sounds plain stupid. Organisations make decisions all the time. The higher in the hierarchy you operate, the more decisions — and or the more important decisions — need to be made. They are key to move anything forward in each and every organisation. Or so we think.
The presented paradigm shift is about clarifying what a decision, in the context of an organisation, really is. The paradigm shift will distinguish "decisions" from other (risk-free) choices, such as e.g., approvals, go-aheads and the obvious-next-thing-to-do.
Organisations don't exist to make decisions. They exist to achieve goals ("desired outcomes"). High performing organisations achieve their goals at minimal risk. One way of looking at decision making, is to distinguish between decisions which increase risk (the desired outcome will not be achieved), and those which don't. Another way of looking at decision making, is to reformulate the Oxford dictionary's definition of decision making, and arrive at a definition which gives all the pointers any organisation needs to begin minimising decision making, minimise risk, and achieve high performance. (And if you want the full and elaborate explanation, and to e.g., understand what the alternatives to decision making are, go to this article)
Two types of Decisions: those that increase risk, and those that don't
By definition, any high performing organisation is to achieve its desired outcome at minimal risk. Like every organisation, it has to make many decisions. But not all decisions are equal. We can make a distinction between two types: decisions which increase risk, and decisions which don't.
Examples of decisions which do not increase risk, are decisions which are taken by an expert. Someone to whom a particular situation is fully transparent. If this expert can substantiate why a particular proposal or action will contribute to achieving a desired outcome, then there is no (or only minimal) risk associated with the decision. It becomes obvious. The logical thing to do.
If the situation in which a choice is to be made is truly transparent (to the expert), then the expert's proposal of what to do next may be so obvious, there is longer a choice to be made. And if there is nothing to choose between, then there is nothing to "decide" (only to approve, perhaps).
In other words, decisions which don't increase risk, are no longer decisions. Ergo, all decisions increase risk, and decisions must thus be minimised.
Reformulating the Oxford Dictionary definition of "decision"
The second approach to explain the needed paradigm shift on decision making, also immediately reveals what needs to be done to minimise it.
The Oxford Dictionary definition of a decision is: "A conclusion or resolution arrived at after careful thought".
From this follows:
- In order to be able to make a decision there must be something to choose between: a decision is therefore a kind of choice.
- There is “a something” that is given thought to, and the decision will affect this something. In other words, there is a purpose or an intent to a decision: a decision is made in the context of a "desired outcome" that is to be achieved.
- When something is given “careful thought” by someone, this is indicative of this something not being fully transparent.
- If someone comes to a conclusion or resolution in a situation which is not fully transparent, the impact it will have on the desired outcome is uncertain.
Reformulated, a “decision” is a choice not fully substantiated to contribute to achieving a desired outcome.
From the reformulated definition, it immediately becomes clear how to go about minimising decision making. One: the desired outcome must be transparent (understood the same by all involved), and two: you need experts to be able to substantiate what needs to be done. And three: you need an environment where experts will bring their expertise to the table. And four:….
Suddenly vision, mission, aims, culture, recruitment, and also rules, procedures, best practices and checklists (typically the result of past decision making) have to be looked at in a different way. With everything an organisation does and how it operates, the question becomes: Is it contributing to creating a decision-free environment? Are the conditions in place for high organisational performance?
This is the paradigm shift. Buurtzorg's structure and performance will be explained through this lens. Beginning with what Jos de Blok as Buurtzorg's founder set out to achieve, and how he shaped his leadership-role in an organisation void of managers making decisions.
The convictions and experiences of Jos de Blok lie at the root of Buurtzorg's success
As expressed by Jos de Blok himself, the way Buurtzorg operates today — with its open, inclusive and safe culture — is very much a reflection of the founder’s convictions and character. Learning about his journey helps understanding what Jos set out to achieve.
Jos de Blok was born and raised in Zeeuws Vlaanderen, the Netherlands. His father was a labour unionist with a critical attitude towards authority, and his mother a family carer with an unshakable positive outlook on life. He was raised to look out for one another, and asked himself early on why, and to what aim, people wanted to be the boss over others.
Jos started out studying economics, but he got disillusioned with its narrow focus on financial gain and growth. He switched to nursing, and started working in a hospital. But the hospital turned out to be an inward-looking organisation, focusing not on patients but on numbers. It was when Jos de Blok joined a self-managing team of neighbourhood nurses, in 1987, when he was finally free to take responsibility and to exploit his talents and creativity in resolving what were often challenging situations.
This freedom, however, was gradually taken away. Jos de Blok’s experienced first hand the importance of enabling employees to let them make the choices as they saw fit. But from the early nineties, Dutch politics introduced the concept of “market forces” into healthcare. “Providing care” turned into a dizzying array of different products. Specialisation and economies of scale were supposed to increase efficiency. Instead a growing number of costly directors, managers, superiors and departments tried to steer and control this development. It spawned a parallel world of structures, systems, processes and targets which had less and less connection with giving actual care.
In various roles, from staff member of a care organisation till "group director" of two large neighbourhood nursing organisations, he got to know the failing system's intricacies inside out. As he was unable to do away with managers making decisions from within, he left the organisation in 2006 and started Buurtzorg.
A key conviction Jos de Blok took with him to Buurtzorg, was the need to prevent managers from having too much to say. All this does, is take away the potency and motivation of professionals doing the actual work. The traditional model of hierarchical decision making and rampant bureaucracy — pretty much the one model everyone is familiar with — had to be broken. At Buurtzorg, still today, Jos de Blok considers preventing bureaucratic tendencies — which keep on cropping up — as one of his main responsibilities.
In other words, Jos set out to create the conditions to utilise expertise. Which meant building an organisation without managers making choices — typically without recourse — they themselves could not substantiate were going to contribute to achieving the desired outcome.
One key condition in creating a decision-free environment, is a different approach to the leadership-role. This also requires different behavioural characteristics from those taking on the leadership-role.
Jos de Blok's leadership role
Traditional models of leadership rely on the authority the position in the hierarchy vests in them. This allows leaders, solely based on their position in the hierarchy, to make decisions without the need for substantiation, without recourse and without treating them as a potential risk.
This model breaks down when “making decisions” is to be avoided (all the more so when there no longer is a discernible hierarchy, as is the case in Teal organisations).
A generic and universal definition of the role of leadership — which is explained at length in the article "The Role(s) of Leadership Explained; What it is, What it takes, How to identify one, and how to close the Gender Gap" — is the following:
The leadership-role is to create, sustain and communicate the conditions required to achieve the organisational unit’s desired outcome at minimal risk.
In a decision-free environment, this leadership-role (also called "Decision Free Leader") exists throughout the organisation. E.g., at Buurtzorg, Jos, coaches and meeting facilitators all take up leadership-roles. In each leadership-role, the purpose is the same. How it is achieved, depends on context and the task at hand.
In the case of Jos de Blok, as the organisation's founder and standard-bearer — incorrectly using the term "CEO" going forward — Jos has several important responsibilities in creating, sustaining and communication the conditions to utilise expertise.
One import responsibility any CEO has, is ensuring that the organisation’s overarching desired outcome (often expressed in a vision and mission statement) is non-ambiguous and known to all. This will help the rest of the organisation to substantiate their choices with this desired outcome in mind. At Buurtzorg, the organisation’s vision and mission is reflected in its unique community-based philosophy, which Jos lives, and is clear to all involved.
A second important responsibility, for any CEO, is to communicate the organisational principles. Jos communicates in many, often subtle ways, that there is no power-wielding decision making management in place. This is communicated explicitly in publicly accessible interviews and presentations. It is communicated implicitly by avoiding hierarchy-related status symbols. To name just a few examples, Jos does not wear suits, doesn’t have a fancy office or “executive desk,” and on his LinkedIn profile his “current position” is not “CEO,” or “founder,” but just — — two dashes.
The third, and most important responsibility, is to contribute to a open, safe and inclusive work culture in which employees feel safe to take responsibility and share their ideas. The absence of hierarchy- and status-related symbols is an important part of this. At Buurtzorg, Jos, at the earliest stage, contributed to a safe and functional internal communication platform. Through using this platform to ask questions and share important information, the CEO showed himself to be both accessible as well as “levelling” with the work force. Furthermore, Jos consistently resists the creation of "rules" or "protocols" for the teams, emphasising that he trusts/relies on the employees’ ability to resolve challenges between themselves.
How to identify the right managers for a decision-free environment?
Any leader or manager in a high performing hierarchical organisation has a leadership-role. In organisations minimising decision making, not just managers, but most employees find themselves in situations where they take on a leadership-role: creating, sustaining and or communicating the conditions required to achieve the organisational unit’s desired outcome at minimal risk. For example, those actively contributing to the culture, or ensuring every opinion is welcomed in a meeting, are also taking on leadership-roles.
In most leadership-roles, perhaps especially in hierarchical leadership-roles, change has to be dealt with. And "people skills" are also of great importance when creating the right conditions for everyone to bring their expertise to the able. Next to experience (which is not always relevant, but always easy to identify), the ability to perceive the ever changing environment becomes key. So how to identify the best people — the most perceptive — to take on leadership-roles?
In the previously mentioned leadership article, it is explained that someone's level of perceptiveness is linked to plainly observable behavioural characteristics. These are grouped in four categories:
- No decision making/Decision making
- No control and influence/Control and influence
- Steadiness/Erratic and emotional
- Caring/Lack of caring.
The table below lists the related behavioural characteristics (text continues below).
How important is Jos de Blok to Buurtzorg's high performance?
Jos de Blok can clearly be identified as a perceiver. Combined with his hands-on experience in the field of neighbourhood care, Jos is a key element in Buurtzorg’s success. And his role may even be more important than recognised.
Unless the organisation as a whole recognises the importance of both Jos de Blok's tangible and intangible contributions — and ensures these contributions will continue to be made, even when they can’t all stem from one person — Jos leaving the organisation may, over time, have a much larger impact than perhaps already imagined.
Recognising his many contributions through the lens of the tasks of a "Decision Free Leader" may help Buurtzorg in ensuring it stays on the path Jos de Blok helped pave.
In the next article — Hierarchical support instead of hierarchical decision making — it will be shown that decisions come in different guises, and it will be explained how Buurtzorg’s organisational structure (and its IT platform) is set up to minimise decision making from top to bottom.
