People Operations in a Teal Organization: Tools and Techniques from a Real Journey
The Lithespeed team first read Frederic Laloux's "Reinventing Organizations” in 2015. We immediately said ‘Hell yes, we are doing this - we should never work any other way!’ Fast forward 4 years, a couple conference presentations and a lot of trial and error. On our journey to Teal, we have undergone many transitions. We will share some of our challenges moving towards a deeper teal culture and our goal of developing tools for creating a system of organizational development and self-management. We will share our real-world experience using distributed decision making and organizational structure, self-management for the whole organization, People Operations, peer to peer feedback/engagement/performance reviews, financial transparency, open salaries, managing the business, and giving voice to the organization. Amanda Geary and Arlen Bankston walked away from earlier presentations with attendee feedback and some new ideas and spent a year doubling down on our commitment to a ‘teal’ workplace. Some might say we aren’t there yet…our response? We are ‘teal enough’! Attendees will leave with an understanding of People Operations and Teal Organizational Models, as well as specific tactics we used and what went well.
Amanda Geary started her career as a research analyst at 4th Wave, a technology consulting firm specializing in research on trends in the IT and communication industry. She then moved on to Freddie Mac and worked with development & testing to analyze market needs and implement product offerings and enhancements within Freddie Mac’s automated underwriting system, Loan Prospector. Within Single Family Offerings Management she helped to develop Home Possible affordable products. After taking a break and starting a family, Amanda joined LitheSpeed in December 2012 to help with Sensei product testing and development. Her role has evolved over the past couple years and she's currently in charge of invoicing/finance. She also help to organize LitheSpeed’s two annual conferences, Lean+Agile and the Agile DC Executive Summit.
Arlen Bankston is an established leader in the application and evolution of Agile software development processes such as Scrum, Kanban and Extreme Programming, as well as process management methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma. He is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Certified ScrumMaster® Trainer and Certified Scrum Product Owner. He has sixteen years of experience, beginning in product design, where he leveraged principles of information architecture, interaction design and usability to develop innovative products that met customers’ expressed and unspoken needs. Arlen has led Agile and Lean deployment and managed process improvement projects at clients such as Marriott, Capital One, Neustar, CCP Games, T. Rowe Price, Freddie Mac, and the Armed Forces Benefits Association. Arlen led novel work to combine Lean Six Sigma process improvement methods with Agile execution to dramatically improve both the speed and quality of business results, as well as early integration of interaction design and usability practices into Agile methodologies, presenting and training frequently at both industry conferences and to Fortune 100 clients.