 So this is my first time in agile India. So it's amazing to see the people that have gathered here all under one roof. So a bit about myself. My name is Muhammad Ali Bakil and I'm the co-founder of Calm Achiever. And in Calm Achiever we enable organizations and businesses to become more responsive, more agile in this fast changing world. So what I love to do is I love to experiment in my own organizations, learn from it and see how I can apply that in other organizations who want to become more agile and responsive. So a lot of what I'm going to talk about today is stuff that I have done in my own organizations. Tried, experimented, we became guinea pigs, my team became guinea pigs and whatever we've learnt we are now helping other organizations take advantage of. So before we begin and since we're just walking in, before we begin I have a question for all of you. Let me put it this way. I have good news and I have bad news. What do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news? Bad news. Bad news, okay. I also, according to my slides, I also have bad news first. So let me share the bad news. According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 businesses or entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months. That means, you know, all the startups that you see out there, all the new companies that are, you know, with all this excitement coming up and with the new venture. According to statistics, 8 out of 10 are expected to fail. Here's another astonishing figure. Only 50% of the businesses with employees survive their fifth year in business. So that means even if you've crossed the first 18 months, there is still a 50% chance that your business will not survive beyond the fifth year. Finally, of the companies on the Fortune 500 list in 1955, today only 12% remain. What happened to the balance 88%? Any ideas, any guesses what happened to them? Yeah, either they got merged or they just fell off the list or they get acquired or they just shut down. So whether you're a small company, a startup, whether you're, you know, been in business for around five years or whether you're a Fortune 500 company, the threats of today's rapidly changing world are such that all companies face the threat of survival. And we're all part of companies. Either you have your own company or you're working in a company or you work with companies. Now, if that's the bad news, what's the good news? So here's the good news. There's never been a better time to be in business. In the history of humanity, there has never been a better time to be in business. Why? Because of these four reasons. And more. These are some of the reasons. The low cost of starting and operating a business. Imagine how easy it is to start a business. And one of the reasons you're seeing all these startups coming up all over the country and all over the world, in fact, is because it's now so easy to start a company. It's so much cheaper. It's easy to get a website. It's easy to, you know, get the legal papers in order to start a business. Compared to how difficult it was years ago, where you needed a legal team in order just to start a business. You can attract global talent. For whatever project that you want, the whole world is available for you in order to recruit and become part of your company. You're not limited to your town or to your city or to a physical location in order for you to run and start your business. You can attract talent from anywhere. In fact, I'm sure all of you are working in global companies where those companies have attractive talent even though their headquarters are somewhere else. How many of you here are part of some, you know, global company where, yeah, at least 50% of you. Finally, with all this change, there is actually new opportunities opening up. There are new niches opening up constantly. When, you know, if something like cryptocurrency or blockchain comes up, it opens up a whole new industry. When AI comes up, it opens up multiple industries. So there are all these new opportunities coming up, which is great for entrepreneurs to take advantage of. And finally, it's easier than ever to access funds. There was a time where accessing funds became the biggest bottleneck in order for you to start your business. Today, that's no longer the case. Capital is no longer a constraint for you to start and run your business. It's easy to access funds. What you need is a good idea and the ability to execute the idea to a market that you can access to. If you have that, that is sufficient for you to become successful. Now, the question is, right, we've got the good news, you've got the bad news. And as entrepreneurs or as people part of organizations, how do we have all the good news and none of the bad news? How do we take advantage of all this opportunity out there and at the same time save ourselves from all the threats? So what I'm going to kind of propose and share, and what's there in my title of my talk, that one of the key aspects you need to look at in organizations is how power is in a way used and organized. This is going to be my key point. The key thing I want you to take away and to explore and to expand your mind is how power is organized within an organization. And if you organize it well, you have all of the good news and none of the bad news. So let's take a step back and let's actually see what is happening in the market. What, when we think about power, right, we often don't focus our attention on power. We often think of, okay, we need to be more responsive. We need to agile. We need to have these kind of teams. But at the underlying system of all these frameworks is how power is organized. So let's look at some of these kind of companies. Are you all familiar with some of these successful companies? And when you look at these companies, Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon, Uber, these are relatively newer companies. When they started out, they started out smaller companies and they replaced some of the larger players out there. So Netflix replaced Blockbuster, Uber replaced some of the taxi companies out there. Airbnb is today the largest hotel company in the world, even though it doesn't own any real estate. So we may have the idea that power is shifting from large organizations to smaller ones. We may get this idea. Or power is shifting maybe from east to west. Or power is shifting from larger institutions to the common man. Do you think that's a true statement? Power is shifting. If you do, can you just raise your hand? Do you think power is shifting from larger institutions to smaller ones, from, you know, big companies to smaller companies? Sorry? None of the small now, but at one time they were. So the full, though power is shifting, what I want to propose, I want to share that power is not just shifting. Power is diffusing. Power is decaying. What I mean by that is power is shifting is not the complete picture. Today power is more, it's easier to get, difficult to use and even more difficult to keep. So it's not about power shifting from big companies to small companies from east to west or institutions to the common people. Power is another, you know, phrase I like to use is power is decaying. It's more, it's easier to use power. It's more difficult to use it. And it's more difficult, even more difficult to keep it. Let me give you some examples. And this is the place that where this is most evident is in politics. Let's see some examples. 2015, Arvind Kejriwal became the chief minister of the capital of our country. No one expected him to win. He was a typical bureaucrat with no political experience in that sense of, you know, running for politics. And out of nowhere he became the chief minister of the capital of India's largest democracy in 2015. Remember power is now easier to get. However, once he came into power, right, he was more like this. It was so difficult for him to use that power, right, because of all the constraints, because power is decaying, it is diffusing, it's more difficult in today's world because the way things are changing, because it is moving so fast, because there's so much more things to deal with, right, because of all the complexity, power is now more difficult to use. Another example, right, in 2016, Donald Trump became the president of the United States. No one expected him to win. At least, you know, if you look at the media out there, no one was anticipating that Donald Trump, when he started running for president, he is going to win. And he thought it was a joke, you know, the reality started coming to run for president, right. But he did win. Remember, power is relatively easier to get in today's world. However, right, once he came into power, it was difficult to use that power, right. He talked about, you know, banning people, building walls, right, but what ends up happening quite often is the government shuts down in order to, you know, just to get his policies passed, right. So much more difficult to use. So this is just to illustrate what is happening in the world of power today. It's not just shifting that power today is now easier to get difficult to use and even more difficult to keep. We've seen what happens in politics, but how does that relate to organizations? So let's take a look. How does it affect businesses? First of all, new startups are coming into the market and that is going to make it more difficult for businesses to keep their market share, right. Because the barriers of entry are now lower, right, one of the things that businesses have to be ready for is the new startups that are coming in order to take the market share. Customers' preferences are changing. There is so much more choice in today's world, right. When you go to Amazon, amount of choice that is there, you know, even in terms of food apps is just so much to choose from, right. So, you know, because of all this choice that's available in a way, you know, that's the power the customers have today, right. Businesses have to be aware about this in order to be successful. Third reason how the change in power is affecting businesses, today most of the workforce are from the millennials that are there. And if you ask typically millennials, what do you want? You know, what is important for you? Very few are going to say job security. What are they going to say? They'll say, well, I want to work in a company that gives me more freedom, right, that gives me more autonomy in my work, that gives me a sense of purpose. This is the generation that is more used to using power and that's what companies are now facing with. So, the question is great, what do we do now? We know the good news that this is the best time to be in business. We know the bad news. You know, if we are not using power effectively, right, the chances of us failing are very high, right. So, what do we do? So, I want to kind of illustrate how we approach this problem by presenting something on a graph over here for us to observe and look at. If we plot on the y-axis, how effective an organization can be, right, the y-axis, the effectiveness of the organization and on the x-axis, the diffusion of power. So, 0, power is concentrated, 100, power is totally diffused. You can't use it because it's totally decayed. x-axis, sorry, that's the x-axis, y-axis, you're not effective at all. On the top, you're super effective. So, on the left-hand corner, right, where power is concentrated, can you give me examples of organizations or types of organizations where power is concentrated? Sorry, Prime Minister's office government, okay, but what type of government or what type of system, right, where power is concentrated? Yeah, in hierarchical organizations, in autocratic organizations, right, in the dictatorships, those are examples where power is concentrated and in those organizations or those countries, do you think they can be effective in today's Bukka world? What do you think? Unlikely, they're going to be effective in today's world, right? So, on, if you chart, if you plot a graph on the bottom left-hand side, if power is concentrated, you're not going to be effective. Yeah, I think that's a, I think if you see China, it has, if you see the trends, it's not becoming more concentrated, it's becoming relatively less concentrated, right? And because it is relative to China's, how concentrated it was earlier, I think that's in a way allowed them to be, you know, relatively successful. If they had continued to remain how they were before, it's unlikely they would have stayed that way. Let's see what happens on the other end. Can you think of examples where power is completely diffused, completely decayed, where in what maybe countries or what organizations where power is completely diffused? Any thoughts or ideas? Anything comes to mind? If on the, on one hand, power is concentrated, on the other extreme, power is completely diffused. Can you think of times in your organization where, you know, everyone had equal power and because no one had the authority to make decisions, things were not moving? Yeah, sometimes in open source software, sorry. Sometimes in cooperatives, yes, right? And sometimes, you know, when a government system breakdown, this anarchy, power is completely diffused, right? Sorry, well, well, we're going to come to holocracy in a bit, right? But holocracy is not an example where power is completely diffused. We're talking about where power is diffused to extend that it is no longer effective. And there's a term that is used, right? It's called vitocracy, right? That you cannot make effective decision because someone vetoes you and you cannot move forward. And because of that, again, you are not effective. So, the key here is how do we find that sweet spot, that balance, right? Where the power is not totally concentrated where all the decision-making is on with one person and, you know, because that person is overwhelmed, that CEO is overwhelmed, they cannot make effective decisions, right? And on the other end, because power is diffused, right, people cannot, there's no authority or there's no way to make decisions because everyone kind of has equal power and they veto things out and nothing moves forward. How do we find that sweet spot between these two? So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to share with you an example of one way that at least I found in my experience, right? Where you can balance between the two for organizations and become effective, where it's not either autocratic nor it is totally consensus-based. And one of the examples that I'm going to share today is from holocracy. Five ways how power is organized in an organization practicing holocracy so that they are more effective. Now, what is holocracy? So, we had a talk today. Morning, Brian gave a keynote speech. So, I'm not going to spend too much time in terms of what is holocracy, but just to give you an introduction since it's still a new topic. And a way, an analogy is in a dictatorship power or in a monarchy, power is with people. However, in a democracy, power is in the constitution, right? And people in a democracy, they fill roles and the roles give them that power. Today, you know, Modi is the prime minister after the election, whether he remains prime minister or not, I don't know. But if there's another prime minister, that person now holds the power, right? Because the power really is in the constitution that gives it to different positions. Similarly, that's how power works in holocracy. It's not with people. Power is given to a constitution which has a governance process on how power can be distributed to roles. That's the key idea on how power works in holocracy. So let's see, right? Let's see new ways to organize power so that it can be more effective. First, let's take a look at the structure, right? What kind of structure does holocracy have or organizations practicing holocracy? Let me start by saying what it is not. So it is not hierarchical. It is not a command and control management hierarchy. Those kind of structures that you're very familiar with is a structure of people, right? The person on the top has the most power and he delegates some of his power down to his middle managers and they delegate it down to the people below. It's not that kind of structure. Those kind of structures, well, they're effective in their own ways. However, they're not, in a way, they've run its course because in today's fast-changing world, they cannot adapt quickly. Another structure that holocracy is not, it's not a flat structure. It's not a structure of one person on the top that power and, you know, you have a line of people reporting to that person, everyone with equal power, right? It's not that. Both these are examples of the two extremes I talked, I showed you earlier, right? One is command and control, the other, in a way, is flat consensus-based. You have a question? Yes, yes, yeah, yes, yeah. I would say what I would sort of invite you, be aware of the different options available and use, select what is most suitable for you at that moment. I would say at times for certain organizations, perhaps hierarchy is better because you need to go ahead and, you know, that works best based on your team, right? But be also aware that there are other options and sometimes those can work better based on, you know, how things are changing in your environment. So finally, what holocracy is, it's a whole, large, quick structure. It's not a structure of, you know, people and where they fit in the organization. It's not a flat structure. It's a structure where the purpose of the organization is now broken down into roles, right? And each role has clarity as to what that role filler is responsible for, what are the accountabilities and what are the purpose. And I think it's best to kind of see what that looks like. So let me show you how my organization looks like in this structure. So we've implemented holocracy. Let me see if I can actually show you. Okay, great. Maybe it's not totally clear because of the color scheme, but notice it's not a hierarchical structure. It's, if you see closely, you see role names, but not people names, right? You see finance monitor, you'll see finance gatekeeper, you'll see facilitator, you'll see finance strategist, you'll see holocracy coach, you'll see OKR master, right? It's a breakdown of the work into smaller roles that are used to get work done. And then you can kind of go in and see this is another sort of circle, another team, and within that you have roles like webmaster, awesome photographer, database sorcerer, et cetera. Now, one of the key features or the key differences between this and the management hierarchy is that anyone filling a role in this organization, they have the full authority to do whatever is necessary to get the job done as long as it does not violate the rules of the governance or the constitution, which is usually typically the opposite in management hierarchy. Do only what you're supposed to do if you want something else, go ask for permission. While over here is the opposite, do whatever is necessary to fulfill the purpose of your role as long as it doesn't violate any other boundaries or any other rules of the game. So some of you might be wondering, I'm sure you're wondering, right? If there are no, in a way, bosses, right, there are no managers, right, and everyone is filling roles and they can do whatever is necessary in the role to get done, so who's the boss? You know, how do you, you know, where do you align to or, you know, how do you kind of get clear? The constitution is a standard constitution, right, and in a way it's an open source document that is, in a way, revised once in a while. Rather than the constitution, what we often refine is the governance of the organization. The constitution is just a set of rules, right, that say how to make decisions within the organization, but this adapts much quicker and much faster, and I'll talk about that. So you might be wondering in an organization practicing allocracy, who's the boss? If there are no managers, there are no CEOs, who's the boss? Anyone want to take a guess who's the boss? Because I have the answer in the next slide. I don't kind of see, curious to know what comes to mind. You are the boss, okay, any other answers? No one is the boss, okay. The one who holds a share, okay. One more. Role definition? True? True, each role is responsible, but let me put it another way. Who's the boss of the organization? And I would say, meet your new boss, right. The purpose of the boss really dictates who the boss is and how decisions are made. The way the governance process is designed is that every decision that is made, it's done in order to serve the purpose. When you fulfill your role, you have to serve the purpose, not some human being or not someone who's the boss over there, you are serving the purpose. Purpose? Yeah, why does the organization exist? The answer to that is the purpose. Yes, yes? True? True? Yeah, it's true. In a management hierarchy, also there is purpose. But the problem is the purpose gets diluted in that bureaucratic structure. The boss has one interpretation of the purpose, then you have your middle level manager and you are maybe there below and though you are connected with the purpose, though you want to get something done, because you have those layers, your purpose gets diluted. While with holocracy, you have a direct relationship to the purpose. You are joining the organization because you have an attraction to the purpose and you have a direct relationship to it. And I like the phrasing of this. I have a direct purpose to purpose relationship with the organization. My purpose relates, the purpose that I want to fulfill relates to the purpose of the organization and that's why you're joining. It doesn't get filtered through layers of bureaucracy. And my purpose finds expression with the purpose of the organization. Yeah, you had a question? Yes. Let me touch that towards the end because I have a few slides to cover and perhaps that addresses it. So let me ask you another question. So if the purpose is like the boss over there, what happens to leadership? Who's the leader of the organization? Leadership is such an important topic in organization and there's so many books published. How does that work in an organization practicing holocracy? Leadership becomes everyone's role and I like the phrase, I heard Brian use it for the first time yesterday. It's not a leader-less organization. It's a leader-full organization. Everyone's a leader. However, the difference is you are not leading people like in a management hierarchy. You are leading your roles. So you could be filling multiple roles. And you lead your role. This is your place in your organization to lead and to do whatever is necessary to fulfill the purpose of your role and the larger organization. And let me just quickly show you how that looks like. So in my own organization, I fill several roles. One of my roles is, well, one of my roles is holocracy coach. And you can see over here as a role, it has a role title, it has a purpose. Enabling organizations to adopt and practice holocracy, conducting holocracy training, supporting feedback teams to practice it, coaching organizations in holocracy. And that's not my only role out there. If I click on, well, my profile here, what you will see that these are all the other roles that I fill. I fill the role of bonus architect. I fill the role of OKR master, people. And in the Bravo circle, I have these roles. And similarly, other people fill other roles. If I go to, let's pick up another, let's pick up someone else. Finance gatekeeper. Okay, so here's someone called Vishal. That's his role as finance gatekeeper. And if I click on his profile, I see these are all the roles he's filling in the organization. He is leading these roles. And he has the full authority to do whatever is necessary to get the job done within his roles. He's the boss, he's the leader of his roles. You can make notorious, is that what you said? You can take notorious ways to... Yeah, yeah, so it's a good question. What happens if people misuse their power or if people kind of, you know, if there's a conflict, right? Marketing is sort of making big promises about what the products can do and because of which customer engagement is like frustrated that why is marketing, you know, making all these promises? Which brings me to my next slide, which is if you're in a conflict, what do you do? If you're in a conflict, what do you do? Now, in a management hierarchy, you would need to go to your boss. Maybe you need to play some politics. Maybe you need to complain, et cetera, et cetera. Go to the HR and use that to get your problem solved. That's the best way we have, so we deal with it. In holocracy, you have the freedom, everyone has the freedom to use the process that is given in the Constitution to get their needs met, their role needs met. So in this case, right, if someone is either misusing the power either intentionally or unintentionally doing something that is harming the purpose of the organization, anyone can use the governance process in order to build in constraints, right? Maybe by creating a new role, maybe by creating a policy, maybe by deleting a role, right? Making some change, some small change within the organization so that that constraint is built in order to protect the organization from harm. So now you can do that in management hierarchy but it's just so much more difficult, right? But because power is distributed to roles and anyone has the authority to do it for their team, they can use the process in order to move forward. I saw a hand go up there. You had a question? Yeah. Both is possible. One person can fill multiple roles and one role can have more than one person if it's suitable. Yeah, so then you would kind of specify, and there are examples here where there's more than one person filling a role and we kind of say for this person, the focus area is on X and this person, right? So if it is customer care, you can say this person's focus is on coaching services, this person is on workshops, for example. Yeah, so the biggest organization that we know that is doing this is Zappos, right? 1,500 or so people. And it's working well for them. So that's one case study where at that size it still works well. And because it has this fractal structure, right, inspired by nature, there's no reason to see why it cannot scale. But yeah, it does. And finally, as a result, what happens is you end up having a more responsive organization. You saw the organization structure I showed you from my organization, Karma Achiever. When we started off, we just had one circle with few roles. That was it. And based on tensions that were sensed in our roles, we used the process to build in constraints, to build in more roles. And based on that, the organization evolved. And I kind of like this graphic where maybe the text is kind of smaller let me kind of show what it says. You do work in your roles. You lead your roles. And when you sense tensions, either challenges or opportunities, you use the governance process in order to evolve the structure of the organization. And when you can do that, now you can go back to doing work in your roles. And as you do that, the organization is evolving. New roles, new circles, and maybe removal of some roles that are no longer needed. But the organization is constantly evolving based on tension sensed. I want to sort of kind of get to an end by going back to this graphic, right, that today power is easier to get, difficult to use, and even more difficult to keep. Now we are often stuck between these two extremes, either by the management hierarchy or consensus-based system. But I want to invite you to explore newer ways to organize power within your organizations. And there's a great code we all know in Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility. You all have more power now. At the same time, you have more responsibility to make use of this in more effective ways. So I invite you to explore holocracy. Holocracy can learn more about it at holocracy.org. And if you're interested to learn more from us, if you need help, contactcomachiever.com, and we'll be happy to do that. We have a few minutes. Four minutes. I'll take some questions. I see some hands being raised, yeah. So a couple of thoughts, which might end up into questions, hopefully. So the traditional model and the agile leadership model, whenever we look at it, it's sort of hierarchical or borderline flat or anything of that sort. But still, there seems to be alignment at a team level, individual level, group leader level, and an organization level, if you sort of climb up the ladder of power. Now, over here, when you explain to me, what I want to believe is, in science, there's something called as a Brownian motion. So if you sort of suspend pollen particles in the water, they tend to jump around, but it has a pattern of jumping around, though the movements seem to be random. So when I saw all those circles and sub-circles inside it, there seems to be a lot of chaos introduced in the existing systems because all of a sudden now you are completely exposed to a traditional mindset, so you're challenging a lot of mindsets there. So you're going into a known territory where you're now saying that you're just fulfilling a role. It's sort of role-based people-filling those roles rather than the other way around. So that's what I could make out of it. So it's essentially electrons moving into the empty orbits of the whole thing. So my thing is, when it comes to an organization vision as to its purpose and everything, in a traditional model, you had probably four or five different versions of it at an organization level, group level, and team level. But now if you have a 250-member organization, now every person is free to interpret the purpose in his or her own way. So all of a sudden now the purpose becomes 250 different versions of it. So any practical examples or any practical things that you have actually faced it, wherein you have multiple versions of the same purpose because you have more minds now to be aligned rather than probably five or six. So I'm just trying to kind of get the question. So your question is for a larger organization where people will have multiple perspectives, how do you get alignment? Yeah, the beauty about this system is as you get kind of more understand how that system works, there are specific roles that help to create alignment. And one of that is a sub-circle, for example, is not totally independent of the rest of the organization. There is a lead link that holds the purpose of the circle, which is given by the broader circle. And there is, for example, a rep link that channels issues from the smaller circle, from the sub-circle to the broader circle. And any time there is a tension, for example, oh, the purpose is not clear, oh, there is no alignment, oh, we need to update it. And that often happens. That is then used in order to, in the governance process to go ahead and get more clarity so that there is more alignment. And then you have checklist, metrics, et cetera, in order again to create that alignment within the organization. Any one more last question? Yeah, it's a good question. And there is no one right standard way of doing it. And typically if someone says, how do I do performance appraisal? I would say, I don't know. But I would invite you, please bring it as a tension. Please propose something. Let's see if it harms the organization, maybe we can do it in a way that benefits the organization. Good question. I'll tell you how, yeah. Right, right. Typically, yeah, typically in our organization as well as others that follow, there is a peer review sort of system that is in place that it is not one person doing it for, you know, for their team. It is more like a group of people doing it for each other. And that result of that then becomes a performance. So I'll give you a quick example how we do bonus systems in our organization. And one of my roles is bonus architect. Is we have a sheet, right? We have currencies. And we allow, in the beginning, everyone has a certain number of credits that they can use to give each other in order to show their appreciation of their work. In the end, there is a gatheration of points. And based on that points, there's a certain value that is assigned to it which they can redeem in order to get their bonus. I'm just giving an example of a peer review system that is put into place that works well with a structure like this. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.