{"id":9534,"date":"2017-10-30T19:23:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T19:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adrianswinscoe.com\/?p=9534"},"modified":"2020-02-16T09:20:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T09:20:27","slug":"creating-a-culture-that-stands-for-something-and-stands-out-interview-with-tim-deeson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianswinscoe.com\/2017\/10\/creating-a-culture-that-stands-for-something-and-stands-out-interview-with-tim-deeson\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a culture that stands for something and stands out &#8211; Interview with Tim Deeson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script src='https:\/\/play.pod.co\/punk-cx\/timdeesondeeson070917.js'><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Today\u2019s interview is with Tim Deeson, the founder of the digital agency <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deeson.co.uk\/\">Deeson<\/a>, a leading European multidisciplinary digital transformation agency. Tim joins me today to talk about self-organising teams, what they\u2019ve done, what they learnt along the way, what impact it has had on them and their clients and what advice he would give to other leaders thinking about their organisational structure and how it needs to change to bring out the best in their people and deliver better outcomes for customers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This interview follows on from my recent interview \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adrianswinscoe.com\/the-best-marketing-doesnt-feel-like-marketing-interview-with-tom-fishburne\/\"><span class=\"s2\">The best marketing doesn\u2019t feel like marketing \u2013 Interview with Tom Fishburne<\/span><\/a> \u2013 and is number 238 in the series of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adrianswinscoe.com\/category\/interviews\/\"><span class=\"s2\">interviews<\/span><\/a> with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Highlights from my conversation with Tim:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s3\">Tim is the founder of <\/span><span class=\"s1\">the digital agency <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deeson.co.uk\/\">Deeson<\/a>, which he started in 2001. However, Deeson as a business has been around for a number of years and started life as a publishing company in <\/span><span class=\"s4\">the 1950s, when it was started by Tim\u2019s grand-father<\/span><span class=\"s1\">. Tim\u2019s father took over in the 1980s and developed the business into contract publishing.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Deeson recently has gone through a few evolutions in terms of how they are structured.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">As they have grown in size, they have built their understanding of what is the best organisational form for them.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">They have been heavily influenced by the Spotify pod model (featuring squads, tribes, chapters and guilds). See <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/85490944\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/94950270\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/labs.spotify.com\/2014\/03\/27\/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1\/\"><span class=\"s2\">here<\/span><\/a><span class=\"s4\"> and <a href=\"https:\/\/labs.spotify.com\/2014\/09\/20\/spotify-engineering-culture-part-2\/\"><span class=\"s2\">here<\/span><\/a><\/span> for a description of how <span class=\"s4\">Spotify\u2019s approach of Squads, Tribes and Chapters works.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">However, they have augmented the approach as they found Spotify\u2019s model too oriented towards products and they are a service business delivering projects for clients.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">As a result, they have some hierarchy in their structure but they have tried to minimise that as much as possible by being as radically transparent as possible.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">The impetus for the move to their current structure was driven by the fact that as the business grew Tim realised that he was the focal point for many decisions, that wasn\u2019t scalable and it didn\u2019t feel intuitively right to just add a layer of hierarchy to help manage and grow the business.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Whilst they did look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.holacracy.org\/\">holocracy<\/a> model and have been heavily influenced by Spotify\u2019s approach, they have learned that there are all sorts of nuance, contextual and change management issues that come with all of the different organisational models. This has meant that they haven\u2019t been able to land on a \u2018label\u2019 that describes how they are organised.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Simply put, they have adopted a system of self-organising teams, with a bit of hierarchy thrown in, which are guided overall by a clear <a href=\"http:\/\/handbook.deeson.co.uk\/handbook\/principles-and-values\/\">purpose and set of principles<\/a>. These are informed by how and why people want to work.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">The principles include elements like autonomy, intrinsic motivation, empowerment and transparency.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">They have adopted a principle of radical transparency as much as is possible. However, what they have learned is that whilst you can give everyone access to every bit of information, people are often too busy to look at the information. Moreover, whilst giving people access to information is being transparent it is not necessarily helping people understand or engage with the information. They have found that it is better to package the information in a way that facilitates that.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Many people are scared of this type of approach as they quickly start thinking about the impact of everyone knowing everything, wondering what people will think and how they will act as a result.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">In reality, however, most people are happy, in the knowledge, that things are transparent and, in reality, don&#8217;t spend a huge amount of time or effort going through the data.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">The migration to a system of self-organising teams has been a painful process featuring lots of different experiments. Some have succeeded and some have failed. It is an evolutionary process that they have been refining over the last 3 1\/2 years.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Their change was facilitated by their recognition of the challenges facing them as a company and as a management team as well as the fact that they need to compete in a highly competitive hiring market.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">To get started, one of the first things they did was around distributed and flexible working. They started by establishing core hours\u00a0 of 11am-3pm. Outside of those hours, people can work whenever they want and and wherever they want. Initially, they started with saying that people could work up to X days per week from home. This put them firmly on the path towards self-management.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">This was a big shift for them as it meant a shift away from managing time to focusing on managing outputs and outcomes.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Over the course of the last few years they have grown from 10-15 people to around 40 people and have grown their revenue at a rate of 15-30% p.a. across those years.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Commercially the shift has worked for them but it has allowed them to create a culture that both stands for something and stands out in a very competitive hiring market.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Deeson\u2019s mission is to become Europe\u2019s leading open source agency. As part of that they have made available their team handbook, processes and information <a href=\"http:\/\/handbook.deeson.co.uk\/\">online<\/a>, all of which are published under a Creative Commons license.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">When you look at organisational design and structure, you need to consider many factors including organisational maturity, the context within which you operate and whether you value innovation over stability\/certainty.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">More often than not, more experienced professionals tend to benefit from and appreciate the benefits of self managed environments more than less experienced colleagues.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">But, business still needs to recruit and develop younger talent.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">The challenge, therefore, is squaring that with their size and distributed and flexible way of working.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Self organising teams can lack emotional\/social intelligence and, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adrianswinscoe.com\/marrying-self-organising-teams-and-customer-obsession-interview-with-andrew-lawson\/\">like Zopa\u2019s experience<\/a>, Deeson have had to invest in people management skills and training to make their approach work.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">No amount of adoption of new models or ways of working is going to do away with the need for emotional\/social intelligence, leadership and good people management skills.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Self-organising teams can also suffer from being too internally focused and can become disconnected from what is going on outside their team or in the external environment.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">This reminded me of Stafford Beer\u2019s VSM model and how self-organising teams could lack <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Viable_system_model\">System 4<\/a>, which is \u2018made up of bodies that are responsible for looking outwards to the environment to monitor how the organization needs to adapt to remain viable.\u2019<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Tim hasn\u2019t seen a democratic organisational model that is effective at monitoring and responding to the external environment such that it remains viable.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">This also reminded me of my own time at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shell.com\/energy-and-innovation\/the-energy-future\/scenarios.html\">Shell and how they used Scenario Planning<\/a> as a way of exploring the future and deepening their strategic thinking.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Interesting how when a company comes under pressure that type of department can be the least valued and, therefore, the first to go in an organisation that is driven by an annual\/quarterly reporting cycle.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">But, that department or function can also be the one that keeps you connected to the external environment and pushes you to evolve over time.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">When thinking about organisational challenges and different operating models it is useful to first examine what are you own motivations for proposing those changes, is their something about your own role and the organisation that you don\u2019t like and is this the best way to achieve that.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">We must be careful that we don\u2019t go looking for \u2018the answer\u2019 when there is no such thing or no &#8216;one size fits all&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">All of these models have pros and cons so selecting which pros and cons you are most willing to live with or are the most appropriate to your goals is probably the right way to go<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">For many people <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace\/dp\/0712678867\/\">Ricardo Semler\u2019s book: Maverick!: The Success Story Behind the World&#8217;s Most Unusual Workplace<\/a> is the original place of inspiration.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Because the technology industry is so competitive, particularly when it comes to the demand for talent, they tend to work harder in terms of the experience that they deliver to their employees. That is driving a lot of thinking and change in terms of how these companies are organised and operate. This is not as true in industries that do not face as much competition for talent.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">If you are considering changing your organisational structure then Tim recommends doing as much reading as possible, particularly case studies and war stories from firms that have gone through similar changes.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Try reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Reinventing-Organizations-Illustrated-Invitation-Conversation\/dp\/2960133552\/\">Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations<\/a> by Frederic Laloux.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Conduct a Situational Awareness exercise to start to address: where do we want to get to, why do we want to get there, where are we now and what does that journey look like?<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">This does not always require whole organisation transformation but can be conducted in small autonomous teams as a starting point.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/agilemanifesto.org\/\">The Agile Manifesto<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/agilemanifesto.org\/principles.html\">the principles that lie behind it<\/a> are a good place to start as a set of principles.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Taking a manifesto approach is a great antidote to a textbook approach to get started with this type of stuff.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Writing your own organisational manifesto or set of principles should be uneasily done in workshop in an hour with your leadership team.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">This really is all about principles.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Wow service\/experience for Tim is when an organisation understands his needs in ways that even he didn\u2019t understand. Wow service is all about giving more than has been asked for.<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\">Check out Tim\u2019s new venture: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenshootlabs.com\/\">Greenshoot Labs<\/a>, where in the light of these future of work trends and building on the big work messaging platforms (Slack, Facebook at Work) they will be developing some clever products that aim to help teams be happier and more productive.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span class=\"s1\"><b>About Tim<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\"> Tim Deeson is the founder of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deeson.co.uk\/\">Deeson<\/a>, a leading European multidisciplinary digital transformation agency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Tim&#8217;s focus at the agency is culture and growth, including new services and technologies. Recent work has centred on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deeson.co.uk\/blog\/evolving-our-culture-deeson-facilitation-over-management\"><span class=\"s2\">self-organising teams<\/span><\/a> and how the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deeson.co.uk\/blog\/white-men-digital-our-privilege-blinding\"><span class=\"s2\">digital sector can become more inclusive.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">He is one of three founders of DrupalCamp London which runs the largest (600+ attendees) community organised Drupal event in Europe.He has a degree in software engineering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">His digital strategy work includes Future Publishing, BRIT Awards, Medtronic, Jimmy Page and Open University.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">You can find out more about Deeson at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deeson.co.uk\/\">www.deeson.co.uk<\/a>, <\/span><span class=\"s3\">check out Tim\u2019s new venture: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greenshootlabs.com\/\">Greenshoot Labs<\/a>, <\/span><span class=\"s1\">say Hi to Tim and the folks at Deeson on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/timdeeson\"><span class=\"s5\">@timdeeson<\/span><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DeesonAgency\"><span class=\"s5\">@DeesonAgency<\/span><\/a> and do connect with Tim on LinkedIn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/timdeeson\/\">here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/7815007@N07\/12123654966\/\">Ken Whytock<\/a> Flickr via <a href=\"http:\/\/compfight.com\">Compfight<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/2.0\/\">cc<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s interview is with Tim Deeson, the founder of the digital agency Deeson, a leading European multidisciplinary digital transformation agency. 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