Cell Expo: The day a decentralized cell structure becomes reality
At one Red42 client, patterns of autonomy and team-based self-organization started to emerge during one of the transformation's key events
A couple of weeks ago, a client of ours held its Cell Expo. In the process of adopting a decentralized, consistently self-organized structure, the Cell Expo is the gathering of representatives from the newly formed cell teams that takes place a few days before the Go Live of the organization’s Cell Structure Design. It’s a one-time thing. One might say that the Cell Expo is the culmination of a Beta transformation: An event in which the organization can, for the first time, fully recognize itself in its new form.
This particular company’s Cell Structure Design contains 45 cells - around 35 in the periphery and 10 in the center – with teams of 4 to 9 individuals, or team members in each cell. During the Cell Expo event, the full group of cell representatives, executives and specialists that were present amounted to 60 people. Attendants came from European countries as varied as the UK, The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Italy and Germany (where the company has its headquarters). Some cell representatives flew in from as far as the USA and Australia to attend the special day.
The Cell Expo is not just a meeting: It’s a big and indispensable rite of passage for an organization undertaking Beta transformation, leaving departmental structures and functional differentiation behind, for good.
Periphery cells become responsible businesses, cells of the center start providing internal service infrastructure
The group of participants at a Cell Expo has a serious task to fulfill: To review and discuss the complete set of cell constitutions. The one-page documents written up by each cell team during the weeks prior to the Go Live. The expo allows for a thorough, joint review of all documentations, and reflection about the realization process of the decentralized structure at large. How did each cell’s constitution process go and what is left to do in the weeks ahead? What are the issues that the new periphery cells will have to solve? How about the overall infrastructure and the services provided by cells of the center?
In the case of this client company, some aspects stood out during the Cell Expo. For example, in spite of the company being very geographically distributed, all cell teams had come together in person (not just virtually) as recommended, for their constitution conversations. All teams had done a fine job discussing their thoughts and business needs in earnest. The 1-sheet posters were testament to the seriousness with which the conversations had been undertaken. Impressively, cell teams had taken the initiative to come together among their respective clusters of cells: cells families that were in similar businesses or markets. The encounters had happened voluntarily - without top managers or us as consultants expecting so, and the insights gathered during those additional conversations had led to further insights and even better quality of the documentation. We consider all of this especially remarkable, since the company had previously struggled for a while in its efforts to become decentralized and consistently self-organized.
Silke Hermann who accompanied the Cell Expo as an external consultant, certainly felt a breath of fresh air during the event, as she could witness new patterns of entrepreneurial consciousness and responsibility emerging. We will keep you updated on the company’s progress.
Further recommended reading
Check out the two BetaCodex Network research papers on Cell Structure Design patterns No. 1 and No. 2
Disclosure: This article was written without the help of A.I. tools, except for research and translation purposes.