Trond Hjorteland

18 Sept

v1.2 of Organisational Dysfunctions is out today, and it's the final release. Twenty-two entries and essays that have been out on Bluesky since the last update are now part of the book, spread across every chapter, plus one new objection and two new perspectives.

17h

Capra fjernet ledergruppen i 2020. Likevel opplever folk fortsatt mye tilsyn. Hvordan kan dette henge sammen? Vi har undersøkt hva omorganiseringen faktisk har gjort med folkene og samhandlingen mellom dem, med samme instrument som Merrelyn Emery og jeg brukte til å kartlegge IT-bransjen i 2023.

17h

Svaret er så positivt som det nesten kunne blitt: mer tillit, mer sosial støtte, bedre helse og mer selvstyring enn i bransjen ellers. Men vi fant også noen klare spenninger vi må jobbe med for å bli den selvstyrende organisasjonen vi ønsker å være.

capraconsulting.noHistorie fra Capra: Tallenes tale: selvorganisering virker, men ikke av seg selvTrond Hjorteland: Capra har ikke hatt ledergruppe siden omorganiseringen inspirert av Team Topologies. Teamene styrer selv. Vi ville vite om det faktisk fungerer, og om folk trives. Så vi målte det, m...

17h

Kanskje det er noe å lære her for flere? Jeg tror det. Les bloggposten, og kom på frokostseminaret onsdag 4. november, der vi går gjennom funnene (sees da, sant?). Velkommen skal dere være! Frokostseminar: skjer.capraconsulting.no/event/10df8d... #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign

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Pavel

@spavel.bsky.social

In their quest for velocity, managers identified a critical bottleneck: themselves. Now they are automating away the very work of leadership - determining what is most valuable to work on, and aligning everyone around those goals. The result: worse outcomes, delivered faster than ever before.

productpicnic.com"Accelerating" alignment is anti-designCurating our workloads is also part of "design taste". Settling for low-hanging fruit is bad design.

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Jon Smart

@jon.bvssh.com

The solution to all of our Psychological Safety problems! #BVSSH

hachyderm.ioTrond Hjorteland (@trondhjort@hachyderm.io)Psychology in teams I have been curious about how important the psychology of the individuals in teams really is for their collaboration and productivity. Before I dove down the socio-technical syste...

Psychology in teams I have been curious about how important the psychology of the individuals in teams really is for their collaboration and productivity. Before I dove down the socio-technical systems design rabbit hole, I think my answer would have been that it was critical, that the solution...

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So, yesterday I delivered the premiere of my latest talk “Continuous Delivery! It is not what you think it is” at Lean Agile Brighton. Apparently I did well. Some even shared I’m an engaging speaker. Whaatt?!? 😳 Well, thank you ☺️ you make my day.

The socio-technical systems perspective has always been clear about its intent to turn the Taylorist idea of people as an extension of the machine on its head. Making us aware of the machine's role as a servant of us. People generally agree with that, but it seems AI try to convince us otherwise.

I mean, many seem to be more than happy to submit to the power of the LLMs and just accept what it produces. Are we not then back to being a servant of the machine – just doing what it tells us? Is Taylor back, hidden in the AI models?

I think the real socio-technical perspectives need to get back in the ring again.

hachyderm.ioTrond Hjorteland (@trondhjort@hachyderm.io)All teams need a manager. This is a common argument, and any attempt to say otherwise will often be met with raised eyebrows, or even headshaking and disbelief. Most people think that without a manag...

All teams need a manager. This is a common argument, and any attempt to say otherwise will often be met with raised eyebrows, or even headshaking and disbelief. Most people think that without a manager, a group can't collaborate efficiently, because someone has to handle coordination. Also,...

organisationaldysfunctions.comOrganisational DysfunctionsA catalogue of organisational dysfunctions explained through Open Systems Theory. For everyone who has felt the friction of broken structures but lacked the language for it.

If you have read the book and maybe even liked it, I would appreciate it if you let others know. For someone with zero marketing budget, a review on Leanpub or a recommendation on social media carries a lot of weight. Thanks! 🙏 www.organisationaldysfunctions.com

kandddinsky.comKanDDDinsky - The art of business software

Preparing for what is my most ambitious talk to date, and perhaps most controversial. And what better place to do it than my second home, professionally, than KanDDDinsky! We know that all models are wrong. It's obvious. We say so all the time, nod at Box, and move on. We are less clear about...

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kandddinsky.comKanDDDinsky - The art of business software

Building the system, on the other hand, is mechanistic, requiring commitment, reduction, and exclusion. This is not just a different approach. It is epistemologically another thing. Thinking in systems is not the same as designing them. Conflating these destroys both what we seek to understand...

kandddinsky.comKanDDDinsky - The art of business software

...and what we wish to create. Hope to see some of you at 10:30 on Wednesday. kandddinsky.com/2026/session...

kandddinsky.comKanDDDinsky - The art of business software

kandddinsky.comKanDDDinsky - The art of business software

what "wrong" means, especially in complex domains. Any model must exclude something, and what we leave out does not disappear. It keeps interacting with the rest of the system in ways we cannot predict, as the system and its environment develop over time.

kandddinsky.comKanDDDinsky - The art of business software

This is especially important in the transition from thinking in systems to designing them. When exploring a domain to understand it, we bring in as many perspectives and information as possible – even normative. It is a contextual activity, being provisional, open, and even speculative.

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Jake Grumbach

@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

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Einar W. Høst

@einarwh.bsky.social

So much talk about getting on the AI train, not enough about who's laying down the tracks.

Updated blog post: I see people starting to adopt the OST thinking and approaches, which is very pleasing. A question that comes up now and again, though, is how to scale the self-managing teams to a large organisation. I do get into this a bit in the Dysfunctions book, but go deeper in an old post

linkedin.comHow a large organisation can be self-managingSelf-managing groups seem plausible in small organisations, like a start-up. Less so in large ones, like enterprises.

But I find it hard to share it now, as my learning and experience have changed since then, so I thought an update of it was in order. Hope you find it useful. #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-la...

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Grady Booch

@booch.com

The first computers were human. Now, as computing has been woven into the very fabric of civilization, we are compelled to ask what it means to be human.

Trond Hjorteland reposted

hachyderm.ioTrond Hjorteland (@trondhjort@hachyderm.io)Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Deskilled by AI Context: The calculator took mental arithmetic. GPS took a sense of direction that used to build itself through years of navigating without hel...

1 Sept

Replying to @trond.hjorteland.com

Organisational Dysfunction of the Day Deskilled by AI Context: The calculator took mental arithmetic. GPS took a sense of direction that used to build itself through years of navigating without help. Neither loss announced itself; the skill just stopped being exercised, then stopped being...

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ill-boo-mi

@yallchemist.bsky.social

lol one of our website designers used our organization's entire monthly claude credits yesterday and now half the company doesn't know how to do their jobs. it's october 2nd.

Trond Hjorteland reposted

Unsolicited Advice is Critique - @trond.hjorteland.com Checkout the full podcast: youtu.be/Xq9NcnVD7v0 #leadership #systemsthinking

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linkedin.comThe map nobody knows aboutIn 1977, Fred Emery published a map of how organisations, and societies, respond to environments they cannot control. It sets out eight recognisable patterns of failure, and four ideals that offer a w...

New blog post: This article has been brewing for years, and it was not really until I dug into the organisational dysfunctions that the importance of values and ideals became apparent. Training as a natural scientist and years of practising software engineering primed me to look at the laws that...

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The Tyranny of the Majority! Listen to @trond.hjorteland.com on who should design the work... Checkout the full episode here: youtu.be/Xq9NcnVD7v0 #leadership #systemsthinking

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...keeps shifting. And the mechanism underneath it is not soft at all. It comes straight from 1950s biology: a concept called directive correlation, the same theory of active adaptation used to explain how living systems shape their environment instead of just reacting to it.

I spent a long time not seeing why any of this mattered. This week, I think I finally got it. www.linkedin.com/pulse/map-no... #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign #ideals

...govern how systems behave, then predict from them. So when I first read Fred Emery on organisations, one word baffled me completely. Ideals. Not values. Ideals. Homonomy, nurturance, humanity, beauty. It read like something out of a self-help book, the kind of soft, unfalsifiable language...

...a physicist is trained to distrust. It took me a long time to see what he actually meant. These are not aspirations bolted onto a structure for morale. They are structurally necessary, the thing that lets people with radically different values still cooperate when the ground itself...

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Organization Dysfunctions - with @trond.hjorteland.com! In this episode, we explore how dysfunctional organizations' over-focus on metrics (like DORA) and frameworks (Agile/Scrum, Team Topologies), strips away context, prompting gaming, “everything is fine” reporting, and burnout.

Trond Hjorteland reposted

youtu.beOrganizational Dysfunctions: Trond Hjorteland (Part 1)YouTube video by Laksh Raghavan

Replying to @laraghavan.bsky.social

Listen to @trond.hjorteland.com talk about a survey in which only 3% claimed to be DP2 and the reality was much smaller than that. Checkout the full podcast: youtu.be/HoB606zVS5I #leadership #systemsthinking

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kode24.no

@kode24.no

21 Sept

– Mange ledere forventer en voldsom akselerasjon med KI. – Men det de fleste organisasjoner faktisk ser når de bare innfører verktøy, er en liten økning og så en flat kurve. 🥲 Forskerne mener at de som gjør størst suksess, er de som først tillater seg å jobbe *saktere*:

kode24.no– De som virkelig får til KI, jobber først tregereUtviklere må få tid til å lære seg teknologien skikkelig, sammen, konkluderer Sintef og Knowit etter lang forskning.

Trond Hjorteland reposted

22 Sept

One Question to Ask About Work - @trond.hjorteland.com For me, this resonates with: “𝗜𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴.” - 𝗥𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗔𝗰𝗸𝗼𝗳𝗳 Watch the full podcast here: youtu.be/HoB606zVS5I #leadership #systemsthinking

An absolute honour and privilege to be back on the Cyb3rSyn podcast, with Laksh's insightful questions and insights. Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did!

Laksh Raghavan@laraghavan.bsky.social

Organizational Dysfunctions! The latest episode of the Cyb3rSyn Labs Podcast features one of my favorite sociotechnical practitioners, @trond.hjorteland.com, who explores why modern organizations remain plagued by dysfunction despite decades of research and what the data shows.

hachyderm.ioTrond Hjorteland (@trondhjort@hachyderm.io)In 2008, de Guerre, Emery, Aughton, and Trull published a study tracing a causal chain from organisational design principle to mental health outcome. Structure came first. Trust, autonomy, and low dep...

In 2008, de Guerre, Emery, Aughton, and Trull published a study tracing a causal chain from organisational design principle to mental health outcome. Structure came first. Trust, autonomy, and low dependency on others followed from it. Mental health and sick days followed from those. The...

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thinkinglabs.ioBeyond the Shades of Conway's Law - Strategy: Reversing the Law

Debunking the Inverse Conway's Manoeuvre ... It has its merits for greenfield systems. However, it often fails for mature systems. Here's part 4 of Beyond the Shades of Conway's Law - Strategy: Reversing the Law #conwaysLaw thinkinglabs.io/articles/202...

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thinkinglabs.ioThriving in complexity

Published my notes on @trond.hjorteland.com 2022 #KanDDDinsky talk "Thriving in Complexity" in preparation for the upcoming part 4 of Beyond the Shades of Conway's Law. /cc @kandddinsky.bsky.social thinkinglabs.io/notes/2026/0...

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wrongtom

@wrongtom.bsky.social

16 Sept

Arguably the greatest song to be recorded 4 times by 3 iterations of a band under 3 different names and in 2 languages, and then remixed once before it reached number 2 (eventually scoring a number 1 when it was covered by my mate's little brother's band a decade and a half later)

WHAT A FUCKING RECORD@whatafuckingrecord.bsky.social

41 re

18 Sept

18 Sept

Clocked in at 97 dysfunctions, which is a nice place to end. The material didn't run out, but I think I managed to finish saying what needed to be said. This is the last planned update. www.organisationaldysfunctions.com #OpenSystemsTheory #SocioTechnical #OrgDesign

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