Yeah, the title says it! And it applies not only to Team Topologies, but also to other sets of principles and practices that any company tries to adopt. Team Topologies is centered around flow and concepts of team cognitive load, where the team’s set-up and team interactions can enable or block flow.

However, many companies worldwide are trying to apply Team Topologies without the promised success. They are missing a critical point: their management model.

This is the first part of a series of seven blogs; this year, I had the luck to deliver a talk with the same title at FastFlowConf NL, and I got good feedback about it. Folks also asked for more examples, and I’m writing about those as an introduction to my hands-on at DDD Europe, where we will explore these concepts in more detail.

Why are you pointing to the management model? Shouldn’t changing the teams be enough?

Short answer, no! And if we are old enough, we saw precisely the same with the previous waves of technology and process changes. Organizations focus on the mechanics of a given process, approach, or technology rather than taking a contextual approach to unlock the firm’s full potential.

Suppose an organization wants to adopt a humane and flow-centric approach. In that case, the whole management model needs to be revamped: target setting, financial forecasting, resource allocation, performance management, rewards, and coordination.

Now, let me tell you a little secret…

The six dimensions of a management model are not new. The folks from Beyond Budgeting have been researching for 20+ years what leadership principles and management practices companies use, beyond the traditional budget.

Yes, the little secret is that companies use and abuse a management tool called the budget to manage very different aspects of an organization. Team Topologies is not enough to unlock the full potential of any given company. Sure, it is a crucial practice to enable flow, but it is limited if companies do not change their management practices.

There are organizations out there that don’t use budgets as a management tool, and they are successful. Some of those are the leaders in their industries, where people are truly happy to work.

The dysfunctional organizational behavior when the budget is your only management tool

Today, we consider the budget a necessary evil. Everyone does that, right? Right?! No, wrong. We should step back and try to understand the system around us. The budget, as a management tool, was formalized around the 1920s as an instrument to help companies be more efficient.

It was an important tool for firms; however, the world has evolved, and today’s needs are different. Organizations need to be adaptive and effective to cope with the pace of change, whether in user needs, competitors, or the rate of innovation – you name it!

Having a single number that stems from the budget to govern all the six dimensions of the management model leads to dysfunctional behaviors. Think about behaviors like sandbagging department goals or sending inflated budgets above because they know those will be cut. Finance departments spend their time discussing budget deviations because people are not spending too fast or they are spending above the budget line… And, if you don’t spend all of your budget, you won’t receive as much next year.

Do you already have a bingo? We can continue for hours. People behave based on the systems they operate in. And if the system (a company) gives people tools that are useful for an ordered surrounding environment and predictable future, but the environment is turbulent, and the future is unpredictable, what is the usefulness of those tools? It leads to some of the behaviors described above.

I’m not advocating ditching the budget tomorrow (or maybe I am). What I’m writing is that we should invest in researching and adapting the practices and tools that support an adaptive and effective organization where people are truly happy to work in such an environment. A humane organization!

In the following six blogs, I will detail each of the management model dimensions. And yes, those will have Team Topologies diagrams (and a bit more). 🙂