Articles on Management & Organizational Design

Corkboard with sticky notes: on the top row, three red notes reading ".EXE", "TEST" and a smiley face; below, blue notes with handwritten tasks

Management & Organizational Design13 NOV 202410 min

The management style at Ateliê de Software (part 4)

Results, recognition and challenges of the Ateliê de Software Way: autonomy and transparency drive engagement, but people and clients must adapt.

A hand holding a green marker writes on speech-bubble-shaped sticky notes stuck to a wall

Management & Organizational Design05 NOV 20248 min

The management style at Ateliê de Software (part 3)

The structure and management practices at Ateliê de Software: autonomous networked teams, emergent leadership, decentralized decisions and transparency.

Panel on an office wall with the Portuguese word "auto-organização" (self-organization) in large letters, surrounded by the words transparency, learning, collaboration, autonomy and excellence

Management & Organizational Design29 OCT 20247 min

The management style at Ateliê de Software (part 2)

The six values, four premises and nine principles that form the essence of the management style at Ateliê de Software and guide its decisions.

Management & Organizational Design21 OCT 20249 min

The management style at Ateliê de Software (part 1)

The Ateliê de Software Way is a management style, not a model to copy: transparency, autonomy and collaboration, inspired by Semco, BetaCodex, Teal and Agile.

A woman sitting at her office desk, looking exhausted with her hand on her face, while two colleagues talk in the background looking at her

Management & Organizational Design02 AUG 20233 min

On harassment and discrimination in organizations

Reporting channels and training are only the starting point. How does your company's management model encourage or discourage harassment and discrimination?

A red-haired woman in glasses relaxes with her hands behind her head in an office, with colleagues working in the background

Management & Organizational Design10 JUL 20233 min

The quiet revolution in the world of work

Remote work changed our relationship with work. Autonomy depends on self-knowledge, which comes from experience, builds awareness and creates learning.

Woman with curly hair and closed eyes, smiling, with her hands around a coffee cup, surrounded by colorful sticky notes

Management & Organizational Design27 JAN 20236 min

Agile HR - Far beyond adopting agile methods

Adopting squads, Scrum or Kanban in HR is not enough if command and control stays intact. A truly agile HR bets on peer feedback, autonomy and transparency.

Six members of the Ateliê de Software team on a video call, each from their own home, with an "Office Less" badge below

Management & Organizational Design09 APR 20203 min

Remote Work: an opportunity for self-management

Remote work imposed by the quarantine can be the chance to swap supervision for trust and develop autonomy, collaboration and self-management in teams.

Two giant figures handle two business professionals in suits like marionettes on strings

Management & Organizational Design19 AUG 20183 min

Autonomy to transform organizations

Heteronomy sustains command and control; autonomy requires self-knowledge, trust and transparency. How do we move past the power structures inside companies?

The Feedback Canvas template: columns for competency and activities, a scale from 1 (Novice) to 7 (Master), and boxes for positive points, negative points and improvement actions

Management & Organizational Design04 APR 20186 min

Feedback instead of performance reviews

If performance is collective, does it make sense to evaluate each person in isolation? Why trade performance reviews for feedback cycles within the team.

A group of people standing and talking in a circle in an office, with a notebook on the table in the foreground

Management & Organizational Design30 NOV 20174 min

Managing people or the system?

People and organization are not separate parts. A company is a complex adaptive system, built every day through the relationships between its agents.

The Webgoal team working at shared desks in an open office, with walls covered in sticky notes

Management & Organizational Design14 NOV 20173 min

Webgoal's management style

Without copying models, Webgoal built its own way of managing, with autonomy, collaboration and transparency. Every management style is a fingerprint.

A woman with a frightened look peeks over the partition of a cubicle in a blue office

Management & Organizational Design26 SEP 20174 min

Fear-driven management

Two interchanges with few accidents: one safe through fear, the other through design. Is management at your company driven by fear or by trust?

A murmuration of thousands of starlings forming a huge cloud against an orange sunset sky

Management & Organizational Design16 MAY 20162 min

Order and disorder in companies

Traditional management seeks balance and efficiency as if the company were a machine. Complexity calls for imbalance in order to learn, innovate and adapt.

A soccer goal net in the foreground, with green grass and blurred, glowing floodlights in the background

Management & Organizational Design01 APR 20159 min

What a pickup soccer game can teach us about management

A pickup soccer game shows the difference between constraints that guide the system and rules created to control and punish people.

Hands of several people in suits and dress shirts stacked on top of one another, seen from above

Management & Organizational Design06 JUN 20143 min

Let's get rid of bosses and the new hierarchy

Getting rid of bosses or creating a new hierarchy is not enough. Knowledge work calls for autonomy, transparency, trust and situational leadership.