Authors Red Hat Inc.
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
The Open Organization
Field Guide
Practical Tips for
Igniting Passion and Performance
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Also in the series
From Harvard Business Review Press
The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance, by
Jim Whitehurst
From Opensource.com
The Open Organization: Catalyst-In-Chief, by Jim Whitehurst
The Open Organization Guide to IT Culture Change: Open Prin-
ciples and Practices for a More Innovative IT Department, by
the Opensource.com community
Additional reading
Every week, Opensource.com publishes new stories about
the ways open principles help innovative leaders rethink organi-
zational culture and design.
Visit opensource.com/open-organization to read more.
Contents
Preface 8
Bryan Behrenshausen
Foreword 10
Brook Manville
Part 1: Stories from the Trenches
The open organization on main street 18
Brian Fielkow
What my conversation with GE taught me about open
organizations 22
Jackie Yeaney
How I learned the difference between a community
and an audience 26
Phil Branon
Measuring the performance of a community manager 30
Jason Hibbets
Everyone changes lightbulbs in an open organization 36
Pete Savage
Have you revised your goals lately? 40
Merry Beekman
Part 2: Engagements
Should open source leaders go native? 48
Brook Manville
When everything's a request for comments 54
Bryan Behrenshausen
What organizations can learn from open culture and
technologies 57
Margaret Dawson
Open organizations don't need to serve Kool-Aid 63
Rikki Endsley
Dear manager: Include me in your decisions 68
Jen Wike Huger
8 tips for creating cultural change in your organization 71
Laura Hilliger
Sometimes you have to put the moose on the table 76
Sam Knuth
Part 3: New Contexts
7 co-op business principles for the open organization 82
Jason Baker
What our families teach us about organizational life 87
Jim Whitehurst
Implications of The Open Organization in education 91
Don Watkins
Afterword 94
Jim Whitehurst
Appendix
The Open Organization Definition 99
Learn More
Additional resources 107
Get involved 108
Preface
Bryan Behrenshausen
J im Whitehurst published The Open Organization on June 2,
2015. He didn't just launch a book. He initiated a conversa-
tion.
For six straight months, that conversation has been lively
and enlightening, as readers grappled with Jim's assertion that
today's leaders could apply open source principles to the prob-
lems and practices of management to achieve astounding
results.
Of course, associates at Red Hat—the open organization
Jim leads—shared their own experiences in support of Jim's be-
lief (after all, they're living proof of it). But other voices joined
the dialogue, too. Authors, thinkers, and managers from all over
the world chimed in. They discussed and debated 5. They
tweeted6. They evangelized7.
A community formed.
Opensource.com has functioned as a proud host to that
community, publishing (every week!) new stories about the ways
our workplaces can become more transparent, more merito-
cratic, more responsive, more engaged—in short, more open.
5 https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/guides
6 https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/2015-book-club
7 https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/meet-
ambassadors
8
The Open Organization Field Guide
Those stories both affirmed and challenged Jim's ideas. They
pushed them in new directions, gave them broader purchase.
So we've collected some of the very best into this collec-
tion, which celebrates half a year of sharing and learning. It
contains three sections. The first, "Stories from the Trenches,"
features tales from managers and other leaders working to open
their organizations. They shared invaluable lessons with us. Part
II, "Engagements," features writing that clarifies, extends, and
challenges Jim's message. And the final section, "New Contexts,"
illustrates ways open principles can make a difference in organi-
zations that aren't corporations.
The result is an important extension of Jim's initial contri-
bution. Embracing the open source spirit, it builds on what he
started and enhances it, turning it into a community effort.
In open organizations, Jim writes, "feedback is a gift."
Anyone who's read his book should consider this volume a gift
from a community passionate about the power of open princi-
ples to change the way we work, manage, and lead.
9
Foreword
Brook Manville
R eading Jim Whitehurst’s The Open Organization, you can
hear the voice of a leader on a mission. Achieving a well-
described personal transformation to become the Red Hat CEO,
Whitehurst chronicles his leadership journey of the last few
years, increasingly believing that the "open organization model"
he encountered (and then further developed with other Red Hat-
ters) has the potential to become a "new management
paradigm." The book further argues that reframing leadership
as "engaging and catalyzing participative communities both in-
side and outside" has helped Red Hat better achieve all-
important performance imperatives of speed, agility, and innova-
tion, and that the open model could be applicable to other
organizations too—enabling them similarly to achieve higher
performance. The essays in this volume, plus the growing contri-
butions to the "movement building" website Opensource.com,
reflect a high level of enthusiasm and interest among many
other practitioners for exploring further the practice of "open
organization."
Tradition, progress, and key challenges
But like any movement on the rise, this one might benefit
from some cautionary context. Leaf through most management
books of the last thirty years, and you’ll find narratives similar
to those now surrounding the open organization. They tend to
10
The Open Organization Field Guide
assume this general form: "The world is now facing an unprece-
dented magnitude of change. The situation calls for wise leaders
to get ahead of the curve—by pursuing some new revolution of
organization, practice, or strategy. Let me thus describe a per-
sonal, positive experience with the new approach that I’ve had;
and let me amplify it by offering some how-to suggestions for
joining this revolution. I can also offer a few illustrative case ex-
amples to help encourage you, dear reader, to take the plunge
too."
Dismissing the open organization as just another version
of this familiar management research story might seem easy.
But we shouldn’t be too quickly cynical. After all, the standard
expositions of "new and better way of working" map to how
much of human progress actually occurs. At the same time, how-
ever, we should challenge any new version of the story with a
few hard questions. Specifically: is open management really
something new and game-changing, or just yesterday’s "revolu-
tion," dressed up in different clothes? Is its "solution" a one-shot
idea or something really applicable to a broad variety of busi-
ness challenges? And will the recommended approach indeed
bring a quantum leap of effectiveness and performance—enough
to justify adoption and (inevitably) the cost and pain of changing
how a (currently non-open) company does its business?
How new is 'open'?
As for the first question—"Is this really new?"—many open
organization ideas have popped up, here and there, in research
and best practice prescriptions of the last many years. The
"Knowledge Revolution" that Peter Drucker and others first ar-
ticulated in the 1980s started the march towards flatter, more
empowered organizations, more democratic processes (espe-
cially in services firms), and more inclusive decision-making.
11
The Open Organization Field Guide
The "discovery" of the value of high performance teams and
cross-silo collaboration has matured from anti-hierarchical inno-
vation in the 1980s and 90s to increasingly common practice in
most best-of-class organizations.
Similarly, the "open book management" Jack Stack initi-
ated during the same era has built a growing acceptance of
greater participative transparency in the workplace; self-govern-
ing initiatives in different pioneering organizations like W.L.
Gore and others have demonstrated how meritocracy produces
both higher engagement and better operating results. As Jason
Baker’s essay in this volume also points out, many of the open
management principles can actually be found in the charters of
19th century cooperative organizations. And, as Jim Collins and
others have ably demonstrated for years, the power of employee
engagement and passion in distinguishing "great" from "merely
good" organizations.
All that said, just because certain ideas have been around
for a while doesn’t mean they should be discarded or dis-
counted. Whitehurst generously acknowledges the tradition
behind much of the open organization framework, and makes no
claim for "first ever" invention of its various principles. And, of
course, open management is itself a descendant of the open
source software movement, on which companies like Red Hat
trade.
Adaptive relevance
What is perhaps new—and so Whitehurst’s book implies—
is the combination of the various principles, and their seeming
adaptive relevance as a coherent habit of practice and thought
in a world that really now differs from the operating environ-
ment of even ten years ago: more-than-ever competitive, more-
than-ever interconnected in networks, and more-than-ever
12
The Open Organization Field Guide
putting a premium on specialized, collaboration-seeking digital-
native talent who expect greater autonomy and responsibility
for their own work and decisions.
Not surprisingly, the life span of traditional organizations
and their leaders’ tenure is shrinking. In the dust and ashes of
accelerating creative destruction, new business models are ris-
ing almost weekly, most of which in some form or other point
towards—or even embrace—open management kind of ideas: en-
terprises that are "crowd sourced" and build value through open
communities (e.g. Github, Kickstarter, Wikipedia, Top Coder,
etc.); platform companies like Task Rabbit, Uber, and others
which operate as markets or communities of networked, merito-
cratically empowered entrepreneurs or volunteers; product
companies that co-create offerings with customers (e.g. network
companies like Threadless but also now many Fortune 500 com-
panies too), drawing on passion and collaboration across
boundaries; ecosystems of collaborating partners (e.g. in educa-
tion, environmentalism) that thrive on inclusive decision-making
and self-governing principles. Plenty of companies and other en-
terprises are thriving today without being really "open"—but
change is in the wind, and any new model that seems to offer
greater speed, innovation, and engagement of top talent must
be seriously weighed for its potential as a new "best practice."
Frontiers of application and performance
That said, whether this open management paradigm is re-
ally new, newly assembled, or just newly suited to a new
operating environment at a certain point becomes merely an
academic question. My own guess would be "some combination
of all three." Much more important, however, are the second
and third questions posed above: Does the approach drive better
13
The Open Organization Field Guide
performance in a wide range of applications and endeavors
across our society and economy?
Here, Whitehurst’s book and the essays of this volume
show promising signs of positive answers, but (appropriately)
with less certainty and detail than a fully developed new man-
agement system would require. The Open Organization
references several other organizations successfully working
"open," and several essays following here (e.g. by Fielkow, Bra-
non, Hilliger, Watkins) illuminate how some or several of the
open principles are changing for the better work in enterprises
beyond Red Hat. Other essays (e.g. by Hibbets, Savage, and
Wike Huger) offer more granular discussion of open practice at
Red Hat itself. But more disciplined and extended analysis, both
at Red Hat and across more non-software examples are still nec-
essary.
As a movement, open management is gaining adherents,
generating passion among practitioners, and pointing the way
towards working smarter and more agile in many arenas. But it
has not yet achieved the kind of crisp articulation and replicable
recipe that would scientifically demonstrate the kind of taken-
for-granted value that hierarchically structured business organi-
zations of the last generation have established. Yes, everybody
knows that Alfred Chandler-style command-and-control is be-
coming less and less effective in our new networked world—but
the jury is still out whether open management will achieve the
durable and unquestioned status as its widely accepted succes-
sor someday.
But neither Jim Whitehurst’s book nor this volume of es-
says is yet making that assertion. The open management
movement’s collective claim remains suitably modest—essen-
tially: "Here’s something that really seems to work in various
situations we know, and seems to fit pretty well the new way or-
14
The Open Organization Field Guide
ganizations have to work. But there’s more to learn." One of the
great strengths of this movement—true to its own principles—is
a rooted understanding that progress is evolutionary, that the
crowd, not any single or limited set of gurus, will shape the
ethos and practices of the "better way of working." Better prac-
tice will become clearer over time, but with no pre-determined
path or necessary endgame as a goal. Whitehurst authentically
acknowledges that, despite the successes of the approach devel-
oping at Red Hat, he’s also encountered plenty of learn-by-doing
failures, and that for all of his understanding, open management
remains "a work in progress."
And thus this volume. The collective spirit of the essays
that follow is consistently that of explorers and tinkerers in
search of progress, not zealots or absolutists preaching the final
sermon. Open management, as Bryan Behrenshausen’s essay re-
minds us, stands on the shoulders of the philosophy that gave
rise to the Internet itself: "everything is a request for comment."
The next success horizon for the open management movement
will be developing more case examples and analysis of perfor-
mance mechanisms—but also more detailed synthesis of the
next round of questions to be explored by active and would-be
practitioners.
With that agenda and hope in mind, please now read on.
December 2015
15
Part 1: Stories from the Trenches
The open organization on main street
Brian Fielkow
I had the opportunity to speak with Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat
CEO and author of The Open Organization, about his book.
Because I also believe that a healthy culture is at the corner-
stone of a successful business, Jim and I share a lot of the same
philosophies, and he helped me see more clearly that the con-
cept of an open organization is the model that drives employee
engagement, growth, and continued improvement.
Our conversation focused specifically on how the ideas in
his book apply to entrepreneurial and “main street” businesses,
which describes my own business, Jetco Delivery, a freight and
logistics company based in Houston, Texas. Business books too
often contain great ideas, but the ideas can be very difficult for
many companies to integrate. Talking with Jim about his con-
cepts and The Open Organization was refreshing. Red Hat's
business model is the blue print for the future company, regard-
less of an organization's size.
Bring your front-lines in
Employee passion and engagement is essentially what
leads to customer satisfaction, and the traditional “top down”
business model, centered around hierarchy and dictating from
the top, is out-of-date. I can admit that the trucking industry
(and many other “old economy” businesses) is often behind
when it comes to this kind of thinking. Many times, employees
18
The Open Organization Field Guide
are siloed—you are either an office employee or a driver—and
the two rarely interact in meetings or when it comes to making
decisions for the company as a whole.
I can attest that open organization concepts helped in
transforming our business. Our drivers are our front lines,
therefore making them the eyes and ears of our company. So it's
essential that they are part of our decision-making, bring us
their ideas, and know that they are included in what happens at
the company. In 2013, we created a Driver Committee, which
consists of drivers elected by their peers. Of course we had our
share of naysayers who believed that what we were actually cre-
ating was a union. Call it what you want, but it's one of the best
decisions we've made. A representative from our Driver Commit-
tee is now present at every management and operations
meeting, and we've essentially torn down the silos. Jim's concept
of an open organization works: No matter the size of the com-
pany or the industry, and from my own experiences, it is
essential to employee-engagement and ownership.
An office filled with millennials
According to Jim, “The majority of millennials do not want
to work for large companies.” In his view, the large company is
not the problem; rather, the problem is hierarchy. I can tell you
that the trucking industry is not necessarily the most attractive
industry to join. Yet, when I look around our office, it is full of
millennials, and they're continuing to walk through our door in
search of applications. Why? Culture. We have built an all-inclu-
sive, leadership-driven, employee-owned culture, and that's
what millennials are after. Business leaders who want to suc-
ceed in hiring the best, young candidates will adapt their
business structure over time to accommodate unprecedented
demand for meaning, flexibility, and engagement in their work.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
The 20/60/20 rule
Part of my conversation with Jim focused around the fact
that we've both experienced attrition when it comes to imple-
menting fundamental change. Attrition must be expected, and
it's what allows you to weed out those who are not on board and
in-line with your values. Jim shared that when he led Delta Air
Lines through restructuring, his team was required to sign a
"Count Me In" agreement, which established the behaviors ex-
pected or offered a severance package for those who would not
sign. About 20 percent of Jim's team left during the restructur-
ing. I've gone through the same process and like to refer to it as
the 20/60/20 Rule. When you begin to embark on change, 20
percent of your team is going to be on board; they see where
you're going and they are in support of and trust you. Sixty per-
cent may not be sure about the change, but they are open-
minded. As leaders, our job is to win these 60 percent over. The
final 20 percent are not on board, and they never will be. For
those 20 percent, your job as a leader is to provide them with a
smooth transition out of the company. We must work for the 80
percent. Those are our employees who support our culture, who
understand the reason for change, and who will work to make
the company the best it can be.
Your culture will dictate who stays and who goes
Jim talked with me about old-line thinking that leadership
must weed out the bottom 10 percent of employees each year.
We agreed that the company's culture will eliminate those par-
ticular employees. I can admit that in the past, there have been
times when I brought in hired guns to fill a particular need at
my company. Although the actual need initially may have been
fulfilled, these employees often haven't lasted, particularly when
20
The Open Organization Field Guide
they are not in-line with our culture. An entrepreneurial com-
pany will groom leadership around its culture, not the other way
around. Hire for values and cultural alignment; the technical
skills can be taught.
My conversation with Jim reiterated my belief that a
healthy company culture is the foundation of a successful busi-
ness, and, as leaders, we must be prepared for change and
healthy growth while creating a team of empowered employees.
I am grateful to have learned from Jim and The Open Organiza-
tion.
Brian Fielkow is CEO of Jetco Delivery, a public speaker, and au-
thor of Driving to Perfection: Achieving Business Excellence by
Creating a Vibrant Culture.
21
What my conversation with GE taught
me about open organizations
Jackie Yeaney
M ost people are familiar with university foreign exchange
programs, where schools send their star students out
into the world to collect experiences and learn beyond their
comfort zones. Fewer people probably know that big companies
have internal "executive MBA" programs their HR departments
develop to help fast-track top performers. Red Hat, where I
worked before joining Ellucian, has its own such programs. I
once acted as a subject matter expert for a corporate executive
development program with high performing General Electric
(GE) executives. The day I spent with these leaders was one of
my favorites at Red Hat, and it dawned on me that this could po-
tentially be a sharing model that Red Hat and others could use
more broadly.
These folks were some of GE's brightest talents, tasked
with the challenge of understanding how to build "digital DNA"
into a hundred year-old company. It was a three-week project
GE set up as a tour of various organizations GE felt had mas-
tered the art of building this digital DNA and creating a culture
tailored to the millennial generation. The company wanted its
emerging leaders to learn everything they could about the way
workplaces are changing in the digital age.
22
The Open Organization Field Guide
So as part of their tour, they stopped by the Red Hat office
in Atlanta to learn more about our company's unique culture.
When I first received GE's request, I felt baffled that the com-
pany thought it had something to learn from Red Hat. The fact
that a high-profile company like GE continues to evaluate its
corporate culture and is willing to reach beyond its walls really
impressed me. It was also refreshing that these leaders were so
candid about the challenges GE faces as it evolves from an in-
dustrial goods company to something much more.
As luck would have it, I had a handy resource right at my
fingertips—my boss's new book, The Open Organization! Red
Hat CEO, Jim Whitehurst, writes about how open source princi-
ples have dramatically altered the future of management and
organizational leadership. I gave each of our visitors a copy of
Jim's book (as well as Charlene Li's recent book, The Engaged
Leader), and we began a several-hour discussion, talking openly
about the cultures of our two companies.
Sharing stories of everyday life in our organizations was a
great way to break the ice. The GE folks and I may have worked
in very different places, but we soon discovered we shared simi-
lar concerns:
• How do we ensure our companies innovate and respond
quickly enough to our fast-paced market environments?
• How can we stay agile so that decision-making doesn't
suffer as we continue to grow?
• How do we continue to attract and retain up-and-coming
workers who demand more autonomy and purpose at
work?
• How do we maintain what we're known for while also
being flexible and adaptable for what is coming?
Our conversation was enlightening for both sides. For ex-
ample, we discussed at length the place and role of metrics in
23
The Open Organization Field Guide
organizations today. We all agreed that becoming obsessed with
the most minute details of numbers was a constant danger, espe-
cially given the flood of information now available. But our
visitors were clearly shocked when I told them Red Hat doesn't
track the kinds of metrics GE does. Instead, Red Hat leaders ex-
pect associates to define their goals and corresponding metrics,
because we trust the judgment of the people closest to the prob-
lems we're trying to solve collectively. And we feel associates
can make these decisions because we've ensured that they all
thoroughly understand the company's mission, purpose, and
strategy. I was being completely honest when I told our visitors
that I've never lost a wink of sleep wondering whether Red Hat-
ters understand and embrace our mission. That's just something
I take for granted in an open organization like ours.
We also discussed the role feedback plays in our decision-
making practices. I told GE leaders how lucky I feel to be work-
ing closely with associates who'll tell me when something isn't
going well (or when they don't agree with me!). I have zero fear
that people on my team are just nodding in agreement, or that
issues will grow so large that they become extremely difficult to
fix. When we have an issue or conflict in Marketing at Red Hat,
we tend to set up quick (30-day), cross-functional "tiger teams"
to hit the problem straight on. In traditional organizations, man-
dates and solutions tend to flow from leaders down to their
subordinates, whose job is to carry out those mandates—not
question them. Today's workforce is smarter than I am; I need
their insights and creativity to find the right solutions. And they
demand—and deserve—a culture that values their input, not
simply their obedience. Open organizations tend to attract this
kind of talent, I said.
During the visit, I was actually able to demonstrate first-
hand the power of an open organization's collaborative
24
The Open Organization Field Guide
atmosphere. Red Hat CIO Lee Congdon joined me so we could
explain how we partnered together as CIO-CMO (an increas-
ingly hot topic these days). We used our joint effort of re-
launching redhat.com as a specific example. As anyone who's
built something of this size knows, constructing a website like
ours involves multiple stakeholders with all kinds of talents. A
website needs to be technically sound (well programmed and
speedy), but also easy to navigate and beautiful to look at. It
should also embody a company's voice and brand. So when we
set to work overhauling redhat.com, we formed a collaborative
working group composed of experts in both web design and
branding. It was another wonderful cross-cultural experience, as
designers learned to work according to the principles of agile
development, and developers learned to build resources that re-
flect our brand. We were proud to tell our visitors about such a
successful partnership.
In the end, our new friends from GE felt like they'd
gleaned some practical tips for continuing to evolve GE's corpo-
rate culture. They especially appreciated the way each of The
Open Organization's chapters ends with concrete and actionable
tips from Jim for making a workplace more open, collaborative,
transparent, and meritocratic—all characteristics they'd like to
foster in the GE of the future. Shortly after we parted, I received
a note from one of the attendees, who thanked me for helping
the group explore issues they otherwise "couldn't see by looking
in the mirror."
Jackie Yeaney is Chief Marketing Officer at Ellucian.
25
How I learned the difference between a
community and an audience
Phil Branon
I t's not every day that your CEO gives you a telephone ring,
so I definitely remember the day mine phoned me. He'd
called to tell me about a puzzling voicemail he'd just received.
I was a consultant for a tech community website and the
team was rolling out a major site renovation. Our goal was to
modernize the look and functionality of the site and, equally im-
portantly, better monetize it so it could survive and thrive in the
long term.
Apparently, however, not everyone welcomed the changes
we'd made. In fact, that's why the CEO was calling me: an active
and passionate member of the website's community, someone
irked by our alterations, had found his home phone number and
called him directly to protest. And he wanted me to intervene.
For some time, I'd known that working with audiences for
digital websites differed dramatically from working with audi-
ences for more traditional, print publications. In the late 1990s,
I was the publisher at InfoWorld. And after that, I worked with
the TechRepublic team, where I helped build one of the first
community-focused news sites on the Net. I did the same at IT
Business Edge, my next venture.
Now here I was again, faced once more with what I'd
come to recognize as an incontrovertible truth: When you run a
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The Open Organization Field Guide
digital publication, you're not simply serving an audience. You're
participating in a community.
And that makes quite a difference.
Changing times
In the pre-Internet era, approaching an audience was
fairly straightforward. You'd simply select a segment of the mar-
ket you wanted to reach, choose content that's important to that
segment, tailor it for them, and then serve it to them. Publishing
veterans know this as the "controlled circulation" method. It's
rather scientific and "top-down." Over the years, we'd gotten
pretty good at it.
But digital audiences can be vastly different. The ones I'd
helped build certainly were. Communities gathered around web-
sites often take responsibility for generating not only the sites'
content, but also their rules, norms, and etiquette. They feel in-
tensely invested in the websites' offerings, cultures, and
reputations. And they react strongly when they feel something—
or someone—has threatened these things.
Many years of working with the communities that sur-
round high-profile online media have taught me several
important lessons about leading them:
• Authenticity is key. Communities of readers can tell
when you're working with their best interests at heart.
They can also tell when you're not. They'll question your
motives, and they'll debate whatever agendas they think
you have. So be yourself, own your decisions, and put
the community first. If you don't, your audience won't
just desert you—they'll burn the building down on the
way out.
• Check your ego. Individual personalities can run ram-
pant in traditional publishing. Pundits reign, and rock
27
The Open Organization Field Guide
star authors command the spotlight. But publishing on-
line to a community means forgetting the cult of the
author. Here, you're not so much an editor as you are a
facilitator, someone who works to coordinate the wishes
of the group. If you do this the right way, you'll essen-
tially become invisible—and that's as it should be.
• Be transparent. When making decisions, involve the
website's community. Always. If people feel like they're
not involved in the publication's direction or destiny—or,
worse, if they feel like they're being duped in some way
—they're not going to remain part of your site's audi-
ence. Turn decision-making over to your community and
allow them to help you construct the site's rules and
norms. Transparency works in two directions: you must
not only listen (really listen) to the feedback your com-
munity gives you, but also be clear and candid when
explaining your decisions and the reasons you've made
them.
Lesson learned
That last point is especially crucial. I wish I'd taken it to
heart when working on that website redesign—because I called
that angry reader back. We talked for quite a while, as a matter
of fact. And the more we chatted, the more something became
clear to me: We'd failed to help our community understand the
context for the changes we wanted to make.
The reality was this: the website needed to be economi-
cally viable so it could sustain itself and remain the place its
readers knew and loved (after all, running servers costs money).
But we should have communicated this to our community and
asked for their help developing a solution. We should have
drawn key contributors into our planning process and made
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The Open Organization Field Guide
changes even more incrementally, continually checking in with
our community along the way. Instead, we temporarily forgot
the difference between serving an audience and assisting a com-
munity, and our readers let us know it.
The call ended well, but I still haven't forgotten about it. It
continues to remind me just how much audiences today are dif-
ferent from audiences of the past. For one thing, they're
certainly not afraid to tell you what they think—even if you're
the CEO.
Forget that, and you'd better be ready to spend some time
on the telephone.
Phil Branon is a digital media and data services executive, en-
trepreneur, and advisor. He is actively involved in today's
dynamic digital media and data services industries—as an oper-
ational executive, advisor, and angel investor—focusing in
particular on the areas of data services, performance-based
marketing, lead generation, and behavioral targeting. Phil is
currently vice president of sales for the technology market at
Dun & Bradstreet.
29
Measuring the performance of a
community manager
Jason Hibbets
I n an open organization, measuring performance for particu-
lar roles like community managers may not
straightforward, especially when comparing those roles to oth-
be
ers with more defined success metrics, goals, and outcomes. In
my experience over the past six years, I've worked closely with
my manager to make sure that we are in sync with my objectives
and what I need to do in order to maximize my impact in my role
as a community manager.
In "Managing Performance When It's Hard to Measure"
from Harvard Business Review8, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst
explains how to capture difficult-to-measure output and reward
influence in an organization. The key points in the article res-
onated with me as I thought about my role with
Opensource.com. I know not everyone has the same experience
at Red Hat, but I'd like to take a look at how the work I do com-
pares to Jim's assessment of how we measure performance in
our organization.
Measuring the unmeasurable
First, Jim talks about measuring unpredictable output:
8 https://hbr.org/2015/05/managing-performance-when-its-hard-to-
measure
30
The Open Organization Field Guide
"What about the kinds of jobs where measuring
someone's "output" isn't about counting the number
of widgets they produced, but rather it's about how
they managed a team or influenced others or helped
people collaborate better?"
In my role as a community manager for Opensource.com, I
don't directly manage people. I play an "influencer" role with
both my internal team and our extended team of community
moderators9 and contributors10. I do not have the managerial
power to give someone a direct order. However, my leadership
style incorporates this knowledge and I will often suggest tasks
and objectives that would benefit our community. I strive to ex-
plain the larger benefit and try to make the connection to what
I'm asking and how it's part of our larger mission.
For example, we provide social media training to our com-
munity moderators. We fire up a video conference for an hour,
share some of the best practices and techniques we're using,
and teach our key contributors to maximize their social media
impact. Those able to join have gained crucial experience learn-
ing how to use social media to further the website's mission. I
can't demand that all of our community moderators participate,
but I can ensure that those who do receive tremendous value
from the sessions, where we share knowledge and strategy
honed over the past few years of running Opensource.com's var-
ious social media accounts.
How do you measure the impact of a training session like
this? We don't have time to follow each of our moderators
streams on various social media outlets and track what they do
on a daily basis. Instead, we measure the number of attendees
9 https://opensource.com/opensourcecom-team
10 https://opensource.com/should-be/spotlight
31
The Open Organization Field Guide
at the training and continue to monitor the overall social media
numbers we already track (followers, engagement, mentions, in-
coming traffic). Anyone who works with social media knows that
measuring its impact depends on what you're trying to achieve.
Measuring a community manager's influence with social media
is about as unpredictable as you can get.
The fact of the matter is, community managers do many
little things beyond social media. They have so many interac-
tions with their community members that can be difficult to
track—which is why finding ways to measure our impact is re-
ally important. My manager and I both recognize that so many
one-on-one interactions—emails, Tweets, and private messages
—go uncaptured in the daily grind. This is why we focus on big-
ger objectives like recruiting new community moderators or
bringing new authors into our community. It's my responsibility
to map those smaller interactions to larger goals.
Staying in the same chapter
In his article, Jim also talks about how to stay in sync with
your manager:
"We've found that it's essential to make sure that as-
sociates and their managers are on the same page
when it comes to the responsibilities and expecta-
tions for the role."
My manger and I use two mechanisms to accomplish this.
First, we have a one-on-one meeting every week. In this meet-
ing, I am free to raise questions, concerns, objectives, or bring
forward new ideas. My manager also brings a list of things to
check on. More importantly, we use this time to discuss any ob-
jectives that may be changing or need adjustment—which
happens more often than you may think. Sometimes, it's more
32
The Open Organization Field Guide
like making sure we're in the same chapter and then navigating
to the same page.
The second mechanism is a weekly 30-60-90 meeting with
the entire team. We use this time to check in on medium- and
long-term objectives—things that we normally wouldn't be able
to accomplish because of our daily grind. We set reasonable ob-
jectives that we want to accomplish, such as creating a new
resource page (think, "What is Linux?"11) and set a target date.
We use our weekly meetings to check on our progress, share our
results, and make adjustments.
A general example of being “in sync” may be trying to
capture how I spend my time. I will often speak at various open
source conferences or attend local meet-ups in the Raleigh-
Durham area. My manager and I jokingly talk about giving me a
GPS tracker—not to track where I am at each moment, but to
try and capture all of things I do and places I go as a community
manager that aren't easy to keep track of in a "normal way" for,
say, performance reviews.
And when it comes time for performance reviews, the 30-
60-90 goals are captured and documented throughout the year.
Doing this makes it easy to go back and look at those medium-
and long-term objectives to help tell the story of the bigger pic-
ture around performance.
Seizing the opportunity
The last thing I'll discuss is something for which I really
respect my manager. Jim writes the following final point:
"Managers focus on opportunities, not score-keep-
ing."
11 https://opensource.com/resources/what-is-linux
33
The Open Organization Field Guide
This is very true in my role; however, I only recently rec-
ognized this was happening after being with my manager for
several years.
After celebrating Opensource.com's fifth anniversary, I
had a chance to reflect on some of our accomplishments and the
various roles I've played over the years. What I realized is that
my manager was always looking for the next opportunity and
pushing me, in an encouraging way, to explore and execute.
A recent example is a project I've been working on for
about a year. We've had many discussions about updating the
main navigation for Opensource.com. The teams felt like the old
menu had outlived the site's original mission to organize content
around limited topic areas (business, education, government,
health, law, and life). Since the launch of Opensource.com,
we've expanded into many other topics such as open hardware,
HFOSS, DevOps, and much more—and it wasn't easy to rip out
the menu and drop in some new code. Change is hard, right?
We've been working on updating the site architecture and
navigation for months, thinking about how we match the current
content with future needs. I've had many discussions with my
manager about changing this, and I was finally able to make the
case about why this was important. I was able to bring this op-
portunity to my manager, who let me pursue the changes that
needed to be made and work with my team to make the right de-
cisions.
Jim talks about managers focusing on opportunities—and I
know this is true in my situation. Over the years, I've learned
that associates also need to have the confidence to present op-
portunities they see that warrant further exploration to their
managers. Don't be afraid to share your thinking and ideas for
constant improvement.
34
The Open Organization Field Guide
How do you measure the impact of a community
manager?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to measuring the im-
pact of a community manager. And that's the point Jim is trying
to make when he writes that "a traditional performance review
rating could never capture the kind of influence [someone] has
built inside our organization and the communities we participate
in."
There is only one constant: change. If associates are
aware of this and stay in sync with their managers, then perfor-
mance reviews shouldn't be a surprise during the annual review
process. Why? Because constant communication is key, and giv-
ing people like me freedom to make front-line decisions is what
makes an open organization thrive. Those one-on-one meetings
are a great time to check in to get direction, clarification, and
even confidence.
When setting goals, don't stretch beyond what is achiev-
able. Our 30-60-90 is flexible enough to capture bigger goals
and allows us to adjust along the way. In making those adjust-
ments, be willing to open up a discussion on what
measurements make sense for performance reviews and team
objectives. Flexibility, communication, and collaboration are es-
sentials for thriving in an open organization.
Jason Hibbets is a senior community evangelist at Red Hat,
where he is a community manager for Opensource.com. He has
been with Red Hat since 2003 and enjoys surfing, running, gar-
dening, and traveling in his spare time.
35
Everyone changes lightbulbs in an open
organization
Pete Savage
A t a previous organization, I had a good relationship with
the administration staff. I purchased large amounts of
goods, and that staff helped my team with our purchase orders.
In turn, we'd help the staff with other tasks—such as changing
burnt-out lighting tubes in the office. One day, another member
of the organization was visiting when a call for me came in. It
was my good friend from the front desk, asking me to help her
change one of those lighting tubes.
"Sure," I said, and I explained to our visitor, who was
checking her emails, that I would be back in a few moments. I
returned to the adjacent office, ladder in hand, and within a few
moments we switched out the tube.
A few weeks later, I was on the phone with our visitor's
manager. He started joking about the lighting tube incident, but
was also seriously questioning why I'd bother getting involved.
He insisted that it wasn't my job, that I had more important
things to do, that someone else could have handled it. What he
failed to see, of course, was the relationship I'd built—and the
hours of time that relationship saved me when I had purchase
order problems that had to be resolved immediately.
This was just one example of something people in that or-
ganization didn't comprehend. But for the past two years, I've
36
The Open Organization Field Guide
worked at an open organization—Red Hat—and I'm surrounded
by people who do comprehend that special something.
Associates here do help each other out; we work as a com-
munity to achieve our goals. We're not isolated as individuals or
teams; we come together as a truly organic workforce, focused
on achieving our goals, and we're not afraid to get our hands
dirty to help each other when needs arise. That is the power of
collaboration. That is the power of an open organization.
I strongly recommend reading Red Hat CEO Jim White-
hurst's book, The Open Organization, which discusses Jim's
transition from leading a traditional, hierarchical organization
(Delta Air Lines) to an open source software company. As I read
the book, a smile kept creeping across my face. I've read a few
books on similar subjects, but this one is different. I don't know
Jim personally, and because I have no real interaction with him
on a daily basis, as I read I kept thinking, "Gee where does this
guy work again? I want to work there—oh wait, I do!" Cue more
grinning.
What was so refreshing for me was the fact that Jim's
many thoughts about Red Hat, its culture, its direction, and its
strengths were in complete alignment with my own. In other
companies at which I've worked, I've always felt a disconnect
between the way I view the company and the way senior man-
agement sees it. I always found this frustrating, but after two
years at Red Hat and one trip through the book, I can honestly
say that Red Hat management not only shares my feelings about
the company, but also works to guard the things that make it
special. This is very powerful.
Sharing with others, collaborating, and working together
are what make Red Hat what it is. Our ability to "give back"
gives us an edge that many other companies don't have and
never want. Truly, the best part of my day occurs when I can
37
The Open Organization Field Guide
click a button and share what I've done with others in my team,
my company, and ultimately (and most importantly) the rest of
the world. This is what I tell people who ask me "What's the best
thing about working at Red Hat?"
The communication, the debates, and the constant drive
to excel at what we do is also refreshing. While I was working at
a previous company (and was much younger—and probably
quite naive), I was in a meeting with the management of the in-
formation technology organization, to whom I voiced an opinion
about the way a particular project was going. The person in
charge of the project wasn't really giving answers, and in my
naivety I couldn't understand why. So I pressed further. Instead
of receiving answers, I received a subject only email from my
boss. It read: "Stop talking ... now!"
He later he told me that I'd done no harm, and that all was
well. I apologized profusely for voicing my concerns, but in the
back of my head was a little voice that wanted to know why cer-
tain topics had been off limits. (Even funnier: when I spoke to a
good friend who worked as a manager in Germany, she told me
not to worry because, in her words, I was "just like the little
puppy that pees on the carpet and everyone laughs and thinks
it's cute"—gee, thanks!)
Here's what I love about Red Hat: although the debates do
often get heated, though they are passionately fuel-injected, we
actually have them! We actually ask, publicly, "why!" Yes, our
discussions can be crazy, and sometimes they go off the rails,
but the community nearly always swiftly steers them back on
track, and we end up in a place where everyone is better off for
having them.
One final thought: open organizations like Red Hat under-
stand how important finding one's "sweet spot" can be. I love
the fact that if associates are not happy in their roles, then Red
38
The Open Organization Field Guide
Hat does its level best find somewhere for them to be happy.
Other organizations can seem entirely uncompromising, like
places where people are treated as cookie cutter resources.
There, if you're a gingerbread baker who doesn't like baking
anymore—well, then, tough cookies (pun intended)!
Being part of an open organization means embracing a
certain ethos. Every day, I see people around me embracing that
ethos—an ethos that's been part of Red Hat since the company's
first days. And it remains something for which I'm truly thankful.
Pete Savage is an open source advocate who has been active in
the open source community for more than 10 years. He now
works for Red Hat as a quality engineer for the CloudForms
product.
39
Have you revised your goals lately?
Merry Beekman
P ablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential
artists of the 20th century, once said, "Our goals can only
be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fer-
vently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is
no other route to success." It's true: today, having a goal strat-
egy is one of the most important leadership tools you have for
achieving professional success.
Recently, in support of Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst's
book, The Open Organization, several blog posts on Open-
source.com and a Harvard Business Review article 12 have
discussed performance management. These writings prompted
me to think about my own experience at Red Hat and, more
specifically, about how being goal driven is an essential ingredi-
ent to one's professional career as well as company success.
An 'a-ha' experience
From 2004 to 2005, I was fortunate to be part of a Red
Hat leadership program called Brave New World (BNW). Led by
the company's People team, the program required each partici-
pant to chose a company-wide initiative for a year-long
assignment. With guidance from a coach and an executive spon-
12 https://hbr.org/2015/05/managing-performance-when-its-hard-to-
measure
40
The Open Organization Field Guide
sor, each project team researched the area, developed recom-
mendations, gained executive approval, and executed an
improvement plan for their respective programs.
I chose to join the performance management team. Al-
though it didn't seem as glamorous or creative as other projects,
it was one aimed at a very tangible outcome: empowering Red
Hatters (associates) to achieve goals and align their contribu-
tions to the company's vision. During that year, I had the
incredible opportunity to bond with a bright and passionate
team. I learned not only about the benefits of a world-class per-
formance management system, but also about valuing teams,
championing ideas, and achieving goals. How I thought about
goals changed significantly. It was an "a-ha" experience.
Even today, these five steps to more specific, inclusive,
and actionable goals remain an essential part of my leadership
strategy. You can use them whether you work in an open organi-
zation like Red Hat, a Fortune 500 company, or the next big
startup.
1. Setting goals, walking the walk
I found having a goal strategy in a flexible performance
management system (like the one at Red Hat) is important to
thriving in an open organization's culture of transparency and
participation.
First and foremost, you alone are in charge of setting your
goals. You must take steps to understand what the team, the de-
partment, and the company are trying to achieve, then
determine how your role aligns with those goals. If you are regu-
larly accountable for setting, executing, communicating, and
assessing your goals, you can be very effective as a leader of a
project or team. Do you walk the walk?
41
The Open Organization Field Guide
2. Goals are change agents
Goals introduce an accountability factor. Smart goals are
those that act as change agents. You set them for yourself with
guidance and approval from your manager. The role of the peo-
ple manager, then, is identifying goals, simplifying them,
managing regular discussions, and keeping everyone account-
able when the daily whirlwind starts to compete with them.
Here are three focus areas I use in setting goals:
Business-focused goals
Responsibilities are what you do every day, but a business
goal is one focused on a value add—something aligned with your
team, department, and company's goals. For example, "keeping
the website from experiencing unplanned downtime" is a re-
sponsibility, but "creating and executing a multi-level plan for
100 percent web site resiliency by Sept. 1" is a business goal re-
lated to that core responsibility.
Team initiative goals
Team-wide initiative goals focus on improving productiv-
ity, introducing innovation, or solving a problem. Once they
select an initiative, team members work together to set goals,
develop a plan, and execute that plan in (typically) a six-month
time frame. For example, a significant product launch is happen-
ing later in the year, and it affects both your team and the
stakeholders you support. In the past, confusion and misinfor-
mation have impacted your team's productivity and
effectiveness. As a people manager, your goal is to streamline
communications so your team receives the most accurate infor-
mation and the product launch team receives valuable feedback.
Once you assign an initiative to a team, that team identifies
42
The Open Organization Field Guide
needs and goals, creates the action plan, and gains approval
prior to execution.
Professional development goals
This goal is related to applying what you learned while
completing training, attending a conference, or reading books.
Don't stop with being a better subject matter expert. For exam-
ple, let's say you want to become Hub Spot inbound marketing
certified13. That's a partial goal. A more valuable goal is building
a marketing campaign based on specific, repeatable best prac-
tices that you can share with your team.
3. Smart goals adapt to the business
Having a flexible and repeatable goal framework has
many benefits, including recognizing individual achievement,
building highly capable teams, enabling collaboration, and
transparency within an organization. The teams I lead rarely
have one goal for more than two quarters. To be effective, rele-
vant goals have a short life span and we accomplish, retire, or
sometimes cancel them on a regular basis.
When setting annual goals (even with a six-month review
process), consider how effectively your goals will drive project
success and professional development on a "30-60-90-day" ba-
sis14. What would make them more effective? Do some goals
need to be updated, retired, or cancelled? In my experience,
short-term, simple goals are more effective for building confi-
dence, learning lessons, and responding to changes in business.
13 http://academy.hubspot.com/certification
14 https://opensource.com/open-organization/15/6/measuring-
community-manager-performance
43
The Open Organization Field Guide
4. Goals are collaboration tools
How informed are you about your colleagues' and team's
goals? How about the goals of other departments? To be a suc-
cessful, you must align your goals with other teams in your
department—as well as the long-term company vision. Doing
this empowers you to break down any communication silos and
enable your team and department to have a broader impact. It
can also lead to higher job satisfaction. Start by sharing your
goals, learning about others, and finding places of overlap
where you can collaborate for even bigger success.
5. Next steps
Look at your personal goals and those of your team. Are
they aligned well with your organization's overall direction? Do
any goals need to be updated, retired, or canceled? If you lead a
team, what incremental changes are necessary in the next six
months to help your team be more collaborative, more produc-
tive, and accomplish their goals? How knowledgeable are you
about your colleagues' goals?
Pablo Picasso was an exceptionally gifted artist and was
universally recognized for his revolutionary accomplishments,
not only because of his very special talent but also in large part
because he was goal driven. Don't underestimate the power of
goals. Specific, inclusive, and actionable ones are your most im-
portant vehicles for leadership success. As a result of your
mastery, you will be rewarded by having your ideas accepted, by
seeing your teams accomplish their goals, and by being valued
for your efforts.
44
The Open Organization Field Guide
Merry Beekman is an information technology and services mar-
keting executive with expertise in strategic planning, demand
generation and marketing operations. She has been recognized
for increasing alignment with sales, marketing, and business
units to achieve objectives, and distinguished for building highly
skilled and empowered teams.
45
Part 2: Engagements
Should open source leaders go native?
Brook Manville
A nthropologists who traveled to the jungle to study various
tribes would debate (half jokingly) whether to "go na-
tive "—that is, whether to adopt the lifestyle of the people they
15
were trying to understand, or to keep their distance (and scien-
tific objectivity). It was a research design choice, but also a
fundamental choice about one's identity as a more-than-inter-
ested visitor.
Leaders in the new world of networks and virtual commu-
nities face a similar identity choice. With more leaders taking
advantage of informally connected talent, the "wisdom of
crowds," and open source innovation, how much should they try
to "go native"? Should they operate as members of the networks
they want to work with them? Or should they somehow try to
manage them from the outside?
Networks, communities, and Joy's Law
At first, it might seem like a false choice. Common wisdom
says networks can't be managed, that they're allergic to leader-
ship of any kind. But today many leaders clearly take advantage
of informal and open source networks for achieving their strate-
gic goals. In some cases they take the "native" route and act as
"members," using their personal influence or relationships to
15 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go_native
48
The Open Organization Field Guide
mobilize other talented "colleagues" to pursue a project with
them. In other instances, they stand apart but offer soft and
hard incentives to engage a network or community of volunteers
to come on board. In both cases, they are (in some sense of the
word), leading a network. It's a challenge more and more lead-
ers are taking on, realizing that a decade ago Bill Joy 16 got it
right: in the talent-rich but more loosely organized and hyper-
connected world, "most of the smartest people don't actually
work for you." But as a leader you still have to figure out how to
make them part of what you're trying to do.
Red Hat is Exhibit A for Joy's Law. Many of the smartest
people in the Linux software movement don't work for Red Hat,
but the company depends on networks of volunteers to pursue
its strategy of providing value-added integration products. And
that's presumably why the culture there echoes many of the
same freedom-loving, self-governing, open source values of the
movement itself. Both movement and corporation are comprised
of networks of people with knowledge, experience, and critical
relationships keyed to the success of Linux. They share methods
for working and seeing the world that old-time anthropologists
might call positively tribal.
Going native (or not) at Red Hat
So unsurprisingly, the question of whether to "go native"
was an early threshold choice for Jim Whitehurst, as the Red
Hat CEO recounts in his lively leadership meditation, The Open
Organization. The book is a fascinating case study of leadership
in a network-centric world. From the day Whitehurst started in-
terviewing, he saw that to get the CEO job (and thrive in it) he
would have to become part of open source culture—a culture
16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy
49
The Open Organization Field Guide
radically different from the one he previously commanded-and-
controlled (as COO of Delta Air Lines). Gone were the privileged
parking, corner office, and habitual employee deference of the
gentile airline company. Welcome to networks of initiative, any-
where/anytime debates, meritocracy regardless of position, and
strong community-style values.
And Whitehurst embraced them all with the increasing
zeal of a missionary. The book features anecdote after anecdote
of the wisdom of going native. It praises the ways opinionated
Red Hatters have taught him how a contrarian idea can yield a
better result; it reflects on how a deeply experienced engineer
persuaded him to reverse a major software decision; it rumi-
nates on how designing programs with mass participant
involvement creates more value for all involved. Jim White-
hurst's glass overfloweth with the people-centric Kool-Aid 17 of
network and open source thinking: when those with knowledge
and stake in a major new direction help design it, the change al-
ways goes more smoothly.
The world already contains plenty of management lore
about the benefits of "empowered workplaces 18." The more in-
teresting question is how best to achieve that objective when
one is still CEO with a certain obligation to "control" people who
do, well, ultimately report to you. How, in fact, does a leader of
networks keep from "turning the zoo over to the animals" (to
borrow one of Whitehurst's own phrases)? When and how does
one need to stop "going native" and return to one's identity as
The Boss?
17 https://opensource.com/open-organization/15/7/open-organizations-
kool-aid
18 http://www.managementexchange.com/
50
The Open Organization Field Guide
Experimenting with role and identity
Here Whitehurst's book is less expansive than one might
wish. But clearly his leadership journey has involved the con-
stant experimentation with role and identity typical of someone
who is sometimes in charge and sometimes only barely so. His
stories are full of paradoxical reference to both hierarchical po-
sitions in the company (head of this or that function; "senior
leadership team") and leadership based on community meritoc-
racy. He sometimes describes himself as CEO and other times
simply "a leader" (singular, i.e. one of many at Red Hat); still
other times he just seems like one of the crowd.
But The Open Organization does offer valuable insights
about managing the inevitable native and non-native tensions of
someone attempting to foster networks and communities while
also leading a public corporation. Sometimes Whitehurst simply
has to step out of the community role and be CEO for reasons of
external accountability (e.g., to shareholders or regulators). The
"leader," as this CEO also writes, must ensure that all the com-
pany's great engagement company gets "scaled up" (e.g., by
creating platforms of communication). That leader, more than
any member of the community, must also ensure that energetic
debates about work don't become personally toxic or chaotically
spin out of control; he or she must channel the cultural passion
and purpose of the organization in ways that actually drive com-
pany success. CEO, not community native, must set limits to
how much "creative time" associates spend on "what-if" projects
that might not yield real ROI.
This Red Hat leader is most explicit when he discusses the
classically hierarchical concept of "setting direction for the or-
ganization." Here Whitehurst insists his role is not like Jack
Welch at GE (or most other CEOs, for that matter); rather, he
acts as a "catalyst: an agent that provokes or speeds change or
51
The Open Organization Field Guide
action." Sometimes he's just one more native helping to foment
a productive revolution; other times he's curating and gently
controlling the ever-creative crowd.
Leadership and boundaries
Whitehurst's identity as a leader (one he humbly concedes
remains a "work in progress") is full of tension, and the real
source of this tension is clear: Though this CEO defines the
"open organization" as one that engages "participative commu-
nities both inside and out," he still references a boundary
between internal and external communities. Even though he em-
braces open source culture, Whitehurst is actually overseeing
one community of networks (Red Hat) within a broader collec-
tion of even more networks (like the Linux movement, over
which he has little control). Both must be engaged—Red Hat
services are dependent on the broader "product" of the move-
ment—but the CEO's ultimate loyalty must be to the more
immediate stakeholders of the corporation: employees, share-
holders, and formal partners of Red Hat. Red Hat (the
corporation) ultimately does require more traditional supervi-
sion than the open movement would ever allow.
The high wire act
Judging by the company's performance, Whitehurst must
certainly be managing the native/non-native identity question.
As an outsider looking in, I'd guess he's finding just the right
balance between joining the tribe and making sure it achieves
the right kind of accountable collaboration to grow and thrive.
It's a high-wire leadership act that bears further observa-
tion. In the new open source and hyperconnected world, leaders
must practice managing concentric circles of collective commu-
nity production—and navigating the balance between "freedom"
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The Open Organization Field Guide
and "accountability." Joy's Law will become ever more true. The
need for leaders to reinvent their mindsets and behaviors will
only become more critical. Network leaders everywhere should
hope for a second volume of The Open Organization.
Brook Manville is Principal of Brook Manville LLC, a research
and consulting practice in metro Washington DC. Brook serves a
variety of mission-focused organizations on issues of strategy,
organization, and leadership. A former partner of McKinsey &
Co, he's the author of books and articles related to leadership
and knowledge-based strategy. In addition to blogging for Open-
source.com, Brook writes regularly for Forbes.com and
HBR.org.
53
When everything's a request for
comments
Bryan Behrenshausen
T he Internet's foundational documents are called "requests
for comments" or "RFCs." Published by the Internet Engi-
neering Task Force (IETF), the organization whose stated goal is
"to make the Internet work better," RFCs define and explain 19
the operational standards by which our worldwide network of
networks functions. In other words, they specify the rules every-
one should follow when building and implementing new Internet
technologies. Engineers working on the Internet discuss poten-
tial RFCs, debate their merits, then post their decisions online
for anyone to read.
People have been publishing RFCs for decades (Steve
Crocker wrote the first one20 in 1969). By maintaining a common
set of rules (technical standards the group typically calls "proto-
cols"), the IETF ensures that the Internet continues to work the
same way for everyone—and that everyone can participate in its
evolution. Even though the process for ratifying RFCs has
changed throughout the past four decades, the name of these
documents never has. Since the early days of ARPANET, people
have been making requests for comments.
19 http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-index.html
20 http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt
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The Open Organization Field Guide
I've always liked this convention. Calling the Internet's
founding documents "requests for comments" reinforces the
idea that the Internet—this thing that facilitates so many partici-
patory projects worldwide—is itself an ongoing collaborative
effort, something open to continual re-evaluation and revision.
As the IETF notes21, the name "expresses something important:
the Internet is a constantly changing technical system, and any
document that we write today may need to be updated tomor-
row." The group doesn't dictate "standards." It doesn't mandate
"policies." It just makes "requests for comments." What could
function as a definitive declaration instead becomes an invita-
tion. And so the conversations continue.
I often think about RFCs when I'm going about my work in
an open organization. Every day, I find myself closing emails and
conversations with phrases like "let me know what you think"
and "feedback welcome." I often tell people I "want to know
what you think about this," or that I "could use your opinion on
something." In fact, because so much work in open organiza-
tions is collaborative, I find myself doing this more often than
not—so often indeed that I've recently begun to wonder if I'm
being redundant.
Like each IETF technical specification, every communica-
tion in an open organization should be an invitation to refine, re-
work, and ultimately improve the project at hand. No one needs
to include the phrase "feedback welcome" on an official RFC;
the nature of the document itself simply implies the solicitation.
Regardless of whether I explicitly ask someone for input, I must
certainly expect to receive it—because in an open organization,
every gesture should be inclusive by default.
21 http://www.ietf.org/newcomers.html
55
The Open Organization Field Guide
It's not always an appealing prospect. As Jim Whitehurst
writes in The Open Organization, working inclusively can slow
decision making, as incorporating multiple perspectives re-
quires precious time and energy. But being inclusive can
actually speed up implementation, making change management
easier. When people aren't surprised by a decision you've made
(after all, they helped you arrive at that decision), they more
willingly help you carry it out.
So I plan to save myself a few keystrokes, recognizing in-
stead that in open organizations everything is a request for
comments. As always, I welcome your feedback. (Ed: Redun-
dant)
Bryan Behrenshausen has been a writer and editor at Open-
source.com team since 2011.
56
What organizations can learn from open
culture and technologies
Margaret Dawson
T hey say life imitates art. But, I believe life imitates tech-
nology. Look at distributed systems, decentralized
computing, open source, and lean principles. With these and
other technical initiatives, we've pushed boundaries and im-
proved our applications, our networks, our companies, and our
lives.
We can develop and deploy new applications in minutes
rather than in weeks or months.
We can communicate with strangers and loved ones
around the globe in milliseconds.
We can create random crowds of investors, who together
can fund a person's dream.
We can secure our data without having to lock down our
networks.
Today, our lives and our work have all the ingredients to
be decentralized, distributed, open, and agile.
And yet, while our lives often imitate the very technolo-
gies that enable us to do these amazing things, one aspect has
not changed for most of us: organizational culture.
Most organizations today remain highly centralized and
hierarchical, with minimal flexibility and speed, and with deci-
sions following a waterfall top-down process.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
No wonder most people remain unhappy at work.
Open culture, open organization
However, just as many companies and countries at-
tempted and failed to stop the inevitable flow of information the
Internet brought, so will companies fail if they continue to ig-
nore the possibilities of being an open, agile organization.
This topic of running organizations differently has been on
my mind lately, as several books and articles I've read all started
to come together around these themes. Some of these include:
• The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries
• Lead with Respect, by Michael Ballé and Freddy Ballé
• The Open Organization, by Jim Whitehurst
• An article in Forbes on Thai Lee 22, the founder and CEO
of SHI, the largest female-owned business in America.
All of these stories depict a corporate culture nirvana, one
that is both respectful and intense—a seeming dichotomy. As I
was reading Lead with Respect, I kept thinking, "this is great,
but does any company actually function this way?"
My initial response was "no."
I have experienced more than my share of leadership by
yelling, companies struggling with what Jim calls the "elephant
in the room" problem (where everyone tiptoes around the CEO
and is afraid to tell the truth just to try to keep the leader
happy). In these, organizational title is more important than ac-
countability.
However, few companies and leaders appear to truly ex-
emplify openness, transparency, and respect. In The Open
22 http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2015/05/27/thai-lee-shi-
international/
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Organization, Whitehurst refers to several, like Whole Foods,
Starbucks, and, of course, Red Hat, where he is CEO.
While none of these organizations professes to getting it
all right, their stories share common principles.
A few key principles
The same is true of the articles and books I mention
above. Each illustrates this new organizational paradigm differ-
ently; however, they discuss several key concepts.
Empowerment
Hire great people and give them ability to make decisions.
For example, in lean organizations, management remains, but a
manager's job is helping his/her team figure out solutions to
challenges, and to make decisions in real time. It's not assuming
everyone has the answers or that leadership isn't needed, but
it's leading by enabling everyone to be the best they can be, and
allowing them to make mistakes along the way. Empowering or-
ganizations also provide opportunities for everyone to share
opinions or have a voice and do new things. Costco, for example,
is known as a great place to work, and one of the few companies
where you can "work your way up" and have a career, even if
you start at the lowest level.
Managing by example
The trappings of executive titles, offices, and entourages
are typically the sign of success in today's corporations. But
open and lean organizations turn this trend on its head. One can
see executives in cubicles or simple offices, hierarchy is minimal
and not emphasized, and, oftentimes, major decisions are "so-
cialized," not dictated. The culture of SHI, for example, dictates
no executive parking, no special executive compensation plan,
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The Open Organization Field Guide
and everyone feeling "valued." Many companies like to say they
have a "flat" organizational structure. I don't think any organiza-
tion is "flat"; however, open organizations don't use title to
assume privilege. It reminds of me of the early lean movement
in the Japanese automotive industry, where managers worked
alongside the "blue collar" workers, and shared their successes
and challenges. (Speaking of automotive, I should add here that
I was often reminded of Deming and his quality principles when
reading these books.)
Fast innovation
In the tech space, we think of innovation in terms of new
products or features or design; that is, innovation for these com-
panies is a holistic approach to business. Organizations
encourage innovation across all parts, from the factory floor to
human resources to sales—and everywhere else. The idea is to
be creative, push the boundaries, and get these innovations out
to "market" quickly. Often, this cultural trait is combined with
the authority to take risks.
Incremental improvement
This really goes hand-in-hand with fast innovation. You in-
novate, knowing it will not be perfect when you "launch," so you
create processes to ensure ongoing improvement. In agile soft-
ware development, this is typically based on data or clear input,
so you know where and what to focus on. There is always the
joke about version 1.0 of a new piece of software being rough or
buggy, but imagine the freedom of doing everything with not
only the understanding but the expectation of a few bugs, along
with the encouragement to keep making it better.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Collaboration
Everybody talks about "teamwork," and even the most hi-
erarchical organizations refer to groups as "teams." But few
teams or companies are truly collaborative. Collaboration, in
this case, does not mean decision by consensus or joining hands
and singing Kumbaya. That would directly interfere with fast in-
novation. It's more about not making decisions or working in a
vacuum, bringing others into the process, sharing ideas, creat-
ing teams from different parts of the business to ensure success
or accelerate action, and just working as teams. In lean organi-
zations, this can be a literal process, as daily standups or project
boards, where ideas are shared, challenged and prioritized. In
other cultures, collaboration is more just a way of doing busi-
ness, as at Red Hat, where collaboration is not only encouraged
but expected.
I would add a couple others (implied but not stated):
"No jerks" rule
While you would assume that a collaborative culture auto-
matically results in people treating each other more nicely, that
is not always the case. This is really about learning to disagree,
debate, and challenge each other with respect. Too often, title or
role give people the "right" to be jerks. What is implied in a lean
or open organization is that everyone at every level deserves re-
spect.
Being "real"
Something about the people in these organizations is dif-
ferent. Look at Howard Schultz (the CEO or Starbucks) or
Richard Branson (the founder and CEO of Virgin). They are hon-
est, emotional, and imperfect. What you see is what you get.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
This instills a culture of employees also feeling they can be true
to themselves, in whatever form that is. This concept is more
than respecting diversity. A company can be doing a great job
hiring women or minorities and still not embrace the "realness"
I'm describing. You know a company is real when the CEO or a
senior executive treats the janitor the same way he or she treats
the board of directors.
What's incredibly powerful to me is how an organization
can become more open or agile, regardless of what the culture
or organizational reality has been. As technology continues to
push both literal and figurative boundaries, we should look to
the core attributes these technologies and systems possess—
openness, decentralization, distributed, fast—and move our
management and culture in the same direction.
Margaret Dawson is a frequent author and speaker on cloud
computing, big data, open source, women in tech, and the inter-
section of business and technology. She is a proven
entrepreneur and intrapreneur, having led successful programs
and teams at several startups and Fortune 500 companies, in-
cluding Amazon, Microsoft, and HP.
62
Open organizations don't need to serve
Kool-Aid
Rikki Endsley
R ed Hatters tend to be enthusiastic about the company and
our projects, so I occasionally run into somewhat-snarky
comments about us "drinking the Kool-Aid," as if we're members
of a cult, repeating what we've been told to say. The truth is that
any open organization fosters this kind of enthusiasm. The ideas
Jim Whitehurst shares in The Open Organization aren't new to
me—Red Hat isn't the first "open org" I've worked in—but Jim
does a great job of explaining this business model to anyone
who hasn't yet benefited from it.
When I joined Red Hat in February 2014, I had reserva-
tions about how well I'd like the company. I'd been happily self-
employed as a tech journalist, editor, and community manager
for The USENIX Association since 2011, so I was nervous about
making the transition from being my own boss, working with a
small group of people I know and like, to being a new kid, way
down a corporate ladder in a rapidly growing international tech
company.
Prior to becoming self-employed, I'd worked at Linux New
Media for several years. Back then, Linux New Media was a Ger-
man-owned tech publishing company, with locations in several
countries, and a small portfolio of print publications and digital
products in a handful of languages. At Linux New Media, I
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The Open Organization Field Guide
worked with editors and writers around the world, and most
closely with a small team I helped build up in our newest loca-
tion, an office in Lawrence, Kansas. Most members of our
Kansas team were colleagues—and friends—I'd had since start-
ing my career in the late '90s, when I worked as an editor on
Sys Admin magazine. Although we didn't call Linux New Media
an "open organization" back then, it certainly was. Working at
that company prepared me for the culture at Red Hat.
Passionate people
I'd known about Red Hat my entire career in tech publish-
ing, and I'd watched it evolve over the years. Because I worked
on publications that covered a variety of Unix, Linux, and open
source technologies and news, I didn't have loyalties to any of
the tech companies, but I did have contacts and sources in many
of them, which meant I also got both an outsider's and an in-
sider's perspectives. By 2013, I knew more than a dozen Red
Hatters, and I'd had several long-time friends who worked at the
company send me links to open positions. I didn't apply, and I
joked that I had no intentions of giving up my sweet self-em-
ployed gig because I worked for the best boss ever. But then I
started reconsidering (...not the part about me being my own
best boss.)
I noticed a pattern among friends who were recommend-
ing Red Hat positions to me: All of them were highly
experienced, extremely connected, outspoken (and fairly criti-
cal), and they had strong personalities with plenty of other
career options. But they chose Red Hat. They were happy here,
and they were inviting me to join them.
Jim writes, "Every day, the passion of the people who work
at Red Hat bubbles up to the surface. Take, for example, Jon
Masters, a technology architect, who once gave a keynote
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The Open Organization Field Guide
speech at the industry-wide Red Hat Summit while riding a bike
that was powering the computer server he was using to give his
presentation." I burst out laughing when I read this part. (And
I'm pleased to see that Jim appreciated the bicycle presentation
and gives it a shout-out in the book, because Jon put a lot of
work and energy into it.)
I've known Jon since 2006, because he wrote a Linux com-
munity column for one of the magazines on which I worked at
Linux New Media. In fact, I visited him in Boston when I at-
tended a 2012 USENIX event23, and he was working on that
bicycle-powered ARM server24 presentation. As Jim says in the
book, "It's impossible to be around people like Masters and not
be infected by the passion that pervades this place."
Jim's right. When I decided to apply for a position at Red
Hat in late 2013, I considered the contacts I already had in the
company, and Jon's enthusiasm for his job and the company was
one deciding factor. Feedback from another long-time contact,
Joe Brockmeier, also played a huge role in my decision to join
Red Hat. Our friendship dates back to the beginning of my ca-
reer, when I was an editor at Sys Admin and he wrote for us.
Whenever I want a brutally honest opinion, I know I can count
on Joe, even if we don't always agree. So when Joe told me
about an open position that sounded like a great fit for me, I ap-
plied. And then came the interviews.
Culture, not Kool-Aid
Like the interviews I'd had at Linux New Media in 2006,
and at Sys Admin magazine in the late 1990s, I spoke with sev-
23 https://www.usenix.org/conference/fcw12
24 http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/02/arm-server-running-on-pedal-
power-demoed-at-red-hat-summit/
65
The Open Organization Field Guide
eral people during the process, and whether I'd fit in with my
new team was part of the discussion. I still remember an inter-
view question Lori White, Sys Admin's production editor at the
time, asked me: "There's one Cinnamon Fire Jolly Rancher left in
the candy bowl. What do you do?" The correct answer was:
"Leave it for Lori, because they are her favorite." Fortunately,
I'm not such a fan of that flavor, so I passed that part of the in -
terview, which was more about having a sense of humor than
sharing hard candy. (Eighteen years later, we're still friends, and
I still don't take the last Cinnamon Fire Jolly Rancher.)
I spoke with several people on the Red Hat team I was
joining, and with one technical recruiter who thoroughly ex-
plained the company's open organization culture. I assured him
that I thrive in open organizations, but I was more concerned
with long-term career prospects. Was Red Hat a place in which I
could see myself 10 years from now?
"Red Hat works to enable careers of achievement as well
as careers of advancement. In conventional organizations,
though, it's all about advancement—how far you can climb the
corporate ladder in order to gain the kind of power an influence
you crave. But what often happens is that some of the best peo-
ple may not want to advance in that way," Jim explains in the
book. He adds, "That notion is turned on its head in open organi-
zations like Red Hat by promoting the idea that people can excel
and achieve what they are best at and still build influence, with-
out necessarily having to do a job that they may not like as much
or be as good at doing."
The Red Hat recruiter and I talked about my desire to
help create my future position, among other details, and I re-
ceived an offer that I eventually accepted. Even then, I wasn't
sure I'd like Red Hat enough to stick around for a year, let alone
10. Because my new job didn't require me to work in a Red Hat
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The Open Organization Field Guide
office, I moved to Austin, Texas, where I'd have other tech com-
panies to fall back on if things didn't work out. But within a few
months, I'd settled in and began picturing myself at Red Hat in
the future. In fact, I wanted to work more closely with col-
leagues in the Raleigh office, so I decided to relocate from Texas
to North Carolina at the beginning of my second year.
The idea of "drinking the Kool-Aid" seems ironic to me, be-
cause from my perspective, Red Hatters tend to be our own
biggest critics, rather than people who "toe the line." When you
work on projects you're proud of, with people you like and re-
spect, and feel invested in a company that allows you to control
your career, being enthusiastic is easy. No Kool-Aid required.
Rikki Endsley is a community manager for Opensource.com. In
the past, she worked as the community evangelist on the Open
Source and Standards (OSAS) team at Red Hat; a freelance tech
journalist; community manager for the USENIX Association; as-
sociate publisher of Linux Pro Magazine, ADMIN, and Ubuntu
User; and as the managing editor of Sys Admin magazine and
UnixReview.com.
67
Dear manager: Include me in your
decisions
Jen Wike Huger
R ed Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, begins the sixth chapter
his book, The Open Organization, with a sentence that
perfectly summarizes a crash course in making inclusive work-
place decisions:
"The conventional approach to decision making cen-
ters around equipping the responsible person with
the information needed to make an informed deci-
sion. ... But in the end ... the responsible executive
makes the decision."
The keyword here being executive.
Throughout the book, Whitehurst focuses on changing our
thinking about executives and top-down management, asking us
to consider how associates of all levels can participate bottom-
up decision making instead. In the book's first five chapters, he
tells stories and presents compelling ancedotes to this effect.
Then, in chapter six, he delivers the one-two punch: He explains
how to make it happen.
What your associates want
• Respect
• A voice
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The Open Organization Field Guide
• To be heard
• Participation in the decisions
What you want to do
• Change (yes, you, the manager must change first—then,
you can catalyze change in your associates)
• Build understanding, trust, and buy-in
• Include your associates
• Listen (and listen more)
• Be open to a wide variety of ideas
How you want to do it
• Read The Open Organization
• Take notes
• Talk to the associates with whom you work; ask them,
"What do you think?"
• Explain your thought process and reasoning for wanting
to make changes or particular decisions
• Acknowledge people's concerns
• Implement methods for input and feedback cycles (it's a
continual process)
• Allow people to try different approaches
Change management and inclusive decision making may
be something you've heard about but have never felt you had
the capacity to do in your company. Or maybe this is all brand
new and eye-opening. Either way, Whitehurst points out that de-
cision making processes at your organization are pivotal sites
for change.
"At Red Hat, we do things differently. We strive for
change management to happen during the decision
making process, not during execution. […] Asso-
ciates feel more ownership in the changes needed
69
The Open Organization Field Guide
when they are involved in making the decision be-
hind them."
You make decisions every day. Your associates make deci-
sions every day. Today—even within the next few moments—you
have a chance to try something different.
Jen Wike Huger works at Red Hat as the content manager for
Opensource.com. She manages the publication calendar, coordi-
nates the editing team, guides new and current writers, and
speaks for Opensource.com.
70
8 tips for creating cultural change in
your organization
Laura Hilliger
W hen working to open up organizations or projects, I've
learned that one of the most difficult things to do is to
get people out of their comfort zones. We adults have spent a
lifetime learning and refining our personal processes for produc-
tivity, creativity, and thoughtful exchange. One person's
workflow might not work at all for someone else. We've learned
that our workflows are highly personal, and I believe they are.
However, in the case of "workflow," I see a massive difference
between the terms "personal" and "private."
Let me explain that: Open means anyone can have a voice
and get involved, but in order to truly encourage people to use
their voices, the first thing they have to know is that they're be-
ing invited. We call this "designing for participation." A project
or a community has to set up infrastructures, design workflows,
and structure feedback to be that invitation all the time.
Producing a cultural shift (which is what "opening up an
organization" really means) is about changing the trajectory and
image of an organization so that it becomes more "open."
Culture is two things:
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The Open Organization Field Guide
1. A shared space25 and "the prevailing beliefs, values, and
customs of a group; a group's way of life," and;
2. What people do in that shared space 26, or "a set of prac-
tices that contain, transmit, or express ideas, values,
habits, and behaviors between individuals and groups";
practices define organizational cultures.
Leaders must model the behavior they want to see in the
world. So, in order to spark organizational change, leaders must
start designing for participation.
Here's some practical steps you might take to design your
team or project for participation.
Utilize existing structures
Email lists, Facebook pages/groups, newsletters, forums,
corporate social networks—the people are somewhere, commu-
nicating already. You have to meet people where they are, so
make a list and plan to utilize those structures. Use surveys and
conversations to gather this information from people in your or-
ganizations. These should include questions like:
• How are you working together? What's a typical day
look like for you?
• What tools do you use? What tools does your team use?
• What backchannels are you using?
• Where do you push information? Where do you pull in-
formation?
• What are your inside jokes? Favorite memes?
• What things are you loving this week?
25 http://revolutionsperminute.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/Making-Waves-The-Culture-Group.pdf
26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede
%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Questions like these can help you demystify communica-
tion tactics.
Find an ally or three
Showing what open collaboration looks like is essential to
creating cultural change. Remember: people are comfortable
with what they're used to and change is essentially uncomfort-
able. Showing what the end goal—openness—looks like will
inspire most people to invite change. However, in order to truly
demonstrate open collaboration, you need collaborators! From
the beginning, you're likely to find people who are excited to try
something new. Artists, creatives, and makers are usually accus-
tomed to this kind of openness. Work with them, get them
comfortable with being open, and then you'll have a posse of
change agents.
Recognize personal flow
By getting to know your allies and how they prefer to
work, you can set up methods that allow people to plan and pub-
lish openly. Encourage your allies to document, plan, publish—
work—in a way that is suitable to them. Have open conversa-
tions to negotiate tools and processes, and leave the door open
for renegotiation. If a tool isn't working for your team, find an-
other one! You don't have to force the workflow; you just have to
put the structures in place to allow work to flow. Test multiple
collaboration tools27.
Model, model, model
You can initiate cultural change by modeling behaviors.
You and your posse need to model behaviors to establish trust.
27 http://dougbelshaw.com/wiki/Team_Collaboration
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The Open Organization Field Guide
You can only control your own behaviors, so start implementing
open practices: Plan openly (using an open, online task manager
and open meetings), publish openly (using blogs and social me-
dia), evangelize openly (end posts with prompts for
involvement), embed creativity and play (because play allows us
to explore the impossible).
Plan in the open
Start meeting weekly with a conference call and an open
planning document. Your agenda might include:
• Standups (what people are working on)
• Feedback
• Report outs (what people worked on last week)
• Demos and celebrations
Putting your plans into the open will help people feel own-
ership over projects. Think about using a wiki to keep an
overview of team activity that includes goals, roles, deadlines,
and so on. Use a task manager so that everyone knows what's in
process, where there are challenges, and what is actually hap-
pening. You can use documentation as part of your team
process, thereby creating fodder for individual blog posts. En-
couraging people to write public reflections on why an idea does
or does not work; this way, you're designing a culture that in-
vites feedback.
Publish in the open
To foster engagement and keep people posted, publish,
and share both individually and as a team. Setting a schedule is
difficult, but you should try to publish at least one reflective post
per month (I do one a week). Pre-populate tools like Tweetdeck
or Hootsuite during meetings. Utilize tools like IFTTT, Zapier,
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Buffer, etc. There are easy ways to share ideas around the Web.
Use them!
Evangelize in the open
Instead of thinking abstractly about engaging a global
community of people, be nimble, try things out, have ideas, and
model open behaviors. Play and prototype and share loudly. As
people begin to take notice, you'll have every opportunity to
evangelize openly. Don't forget to highlight the rock stars in
your community.
Reach out
Those of us who believe in the open organization are al-
ways willing to give advice and help out. Don't be afraid to reach
out!
Laura Hilliger is an artist, educator, writer, and technologist. Af-
ter five years at Mozilla, where she advocated for open and
helped spread web literacy, she's now an Open Organization am-
bassador at Opensource.com and working to help Greenpeace
become an open organization. She's all over the Web. Use your
favorite search engine to learn more about Laura and what she
does.
75
Sometimes you have to put the moose
on the table
Sam Knuth
R ed Hat is known for its open culture. People openly share
their opinions, give each other positive and constructive
feedback, and make better decisions through collaboration. Jim
Whitehurst has written about28 how to foster a culture like ours
—one that supports honest (and sometimes difficult) conversa-
tions.
So it might be surprising that in a recent meeting of Red
Hat managers, where our CFO Frank Calderoni introduced him-
self to the team, one of the questions from the audience was:
"How will you change the passive aggressive habit of many at
Red Hat to say 'yes' in the meeting but 'no' in practice?" The au-
dience offered sympathetic sighs and knowing smiles. But isn't
this Red Hat, where we have open conversations, tell people
what we really think directly, and avoid this kind of "say one
thing, but do another" dynamic that plagues other companies?
Yes. But as different as the Red Hat culture is from that of
other companies, it has one big thing in common with them: it's
made up of people. For most people, it's easier to avoid con-
frontation than to tackle it head on, even if your organizational
culture values transparency.
28 https://hbr.org/2015/08/create-a-culture-where-difficult-
conversations-arent-so-hard
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Frank's answer was quick and simple: "Call them on it."
After a brief pause, he followed by pointing out that we all
demonstrate this behavior once in a while. No matter how much
we each think we're different, we all have some of these tenden-
cies. In addition to calling others on it, you have to call yourself
on it as well.
Avoiding factions
Recently, I've been in a situation where, in one-on-one
conversations with different people on the same team, I've kept
hearing the word "factions." It makes me cringe. We have fac-
tions? Why?
What I'm observing is exactly the kind of behavior that ev-
eryone claims to hate: a group of people meeting together, sort
of agreeing, then breaking out into side conversations afterward
saying things like "what are they thinking?"
I find three things helpful when I sense either my col-
leagues or myself are straying into this "let's just agree to get
out of this meeting and then we'll figure out what we really want
to do" territory.
First, remind everyone (including yourself) what the ulti-
mate goal is. We're not here because we want to prove that our
way of doing something is better. We're here (in the case of my
team) to enable customers to learn about, deploy, and use Red
Hat products to solve their business problems. Stepping back
from whatever issue is causing the tension (often just having a
different approach or style) and focusing on the real goal can
help clear the air.
Second, as our new CFO Frank says, call them on it. Or, as
a lot of people in Red Hat like to say, "put the moose on the ta-
ble." This can be hard, and it is better done in person than over
the phone or video conference. You also need to be careful with
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The Open Organization Field Guide
your phrasing. Don't turn it into an accusation, and stick to the
facts of the situation and the impact those facts are having.
Here's an example from a recent interaction on one of my
teams: "We're all doing different things to try and get our heads
around this bigger goal, but I feel like we're not making
progress. Rather than each trying to go our own way, often con-
flicting with each other, can we step back and figure out a short
term and long term plan that is workable?"
Until somebody puts this on the table, it's hard to talk
about. Instead of confronting the problem, individuals (or "fac-
tions") spend time talking about how their way is better and how
they wish the other guys would stop messing things up. That
kind of behavior is wasted energy. It doesn't benefit anyone—
and the big losers end up being our customers.
Finally, in addition to calling people on the bad behaviors,
thank and reward people when they have the courage to bring
the team together and solve problems constructively. Putting the
moose on the table is hard; make sure you publicly acknowledge
people who do it.
All about communication
Ultimately, communication is the most important—and one
of the most easily overlooked—tools we have. If you see some-
thing that is bothering you (or something that is really great),
say so. Here's what I've found works best:
• Begin by stating the facts
• Let those facts tell the story that explains the impact the
situation and behaviors are having
• During meetings, make sure every attendee has a
chance to comment on that story
• If someone disagrees with the way that story's been
framed, ask for clarification
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The Open Organization Field Guide
• Leave the meeting with a firm action plan—one that's
written down
Because everyone needs to be moving in the same direc-
tion, everyone needs to be part of the process of getting there.
After all, do you really think you can get an entire moose on the
table all by yourself?
At Red Hat, Sam Knuth leads the Customer Content Services
team, whose goal is to provide customers with the insights they
need to be successful with open source technologies in the en-
terprise.
79
Part 3: New Contexts
7 co-op business principles for the open
organization
Jason Baker
W hat makes the concept of an open organization so great
is not its novelty, but rather of the ways it borrows from
already tried-and-true business and organizational practices. In
other words, what makes an open organization an interesting
concept (and one I think could be a model for others) isn't some
unique secret. The notion of an "open organization" is really a
compilation of many ideas—related to openness, collaboration,
and sharing—that have proven successful time and time again,
along with a simple commitment to intentionally follow them.
As I read Jim Whitehurst's The Open Organization, I
couldn't help but reflect on my first job out of college. I had
taken a position in a local food co-op, working in the marketing
department and primarily managing events for three retail loca-
tions. But about three months in, when a co-worker left to head
to graduate school, I began managing owner services and out-
reach. I was managing relations with our owners, who happened
to be our employees and customers. As a big chunk of my job be-
came both answering questions from existing owners, educating
new owners about cooperatives, and serving as executive secre-
tary to our board of directors, I quickly tried to learn as much as
I could about cooperative business structure and operations.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
When I say cooperative, I don't mean just "an organization
that cooperates." Cooperatives are a type of business with very
specific criteria defining what they are and how they operate;
many countries have their own laws and regulations which lay
this out.
Cooperatives come in all shapes and sizes, from insurance
and banking cooperatives (think: credit unions) operating at a
national scale, to regional farming and rural electrification coop-
eratives banding together resources to help people for whom
other business models failed, to small businesses who want to
focus on serving the needs of their employees and customers
first and foremost.
The ideas behind cooperatives are hundreds of years old,
but most references to how co-ops define themselves date back
to the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers 29, an early con-
sumer cooperative dating back to the 1840s in Great Britain.
From the Rochdale Society came seven principles for what coop-
eratives are and how they operate—what people refer to as
either the "Rochdale Principles 30" or simply the "7 Cooperative
Principles."
The decision to organize a project or business as a cooper-
ative depends on a number of factors, but I think even more
"traditional" organizations can learn many things from them.
Does every organization need to be organized as a cooperative
to benefit from some of the things that make cooperatives suc-
cessful? Of course not. Whether an organization is a traditional
for-profit corporation, or even a nonprofit, there are a lot of con-
cepts which can be learned from co-ops. The more I thought
29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_Society_of_Equitable_Pionee
rs
30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_Principles
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The Open Organization Field Guide
about what an open organization meant to me, the more I
thought back to my time at a local co-op and how some of the
things I saw there were starting to resurface in the corporate
world when businesses saw the advantage of "going open."
So let's look at those seven cooperative principles and dis-
cuss what they might mean for an open organization:
Open and voluntary membership
This is an important part of most open source project defi-
nitions: Anyone can contribute, so long as everyone follows the
community guidelines. Some projects take a slightly stricter ap-
proach, requiring some formal agreement or membership in an
organization before they'll accept pull requests, but the lower
the barrier to entry, the more people can participate.
This concept is even more important from a user's per-
spective, and it's one of the fundamental parts of what it means
to be free, open source software. Anyone can use make use of
the project's outputs for any purpose they see fit, and, just as
importantly, as the controllers of their own machines' destinies,
they should have the right to choose not to run a piece of soft-
ware if they so choose.
Democratic member control
Democratic member control in open organizations speaks
to the importance of meritocracy—that the best ideas come
about when everybody can fully participate and judge sugges-
tions on their own merits (rather than simply looking at the
relative rank of the contributor). This doesn't mean some sort of
structural management hierarchy doesn't exist within the orga-
nization; it just means that everyone has an equal right to
participation and to be heard.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Members' economic participation
The concept of economic participation is the element most
unique to cooperatives, but many organizations (regardless of
their type) may benefit from making sure that all participants
have some "skin in the game." Whether this takes the form of in-
centive-based pay or a shared pool of rewards to be distributed
from the organization's profits, economic participation is an-
other way to build loyalty and trust.
Autonomy and independence
Simply put, an organization can best control its own work
when it gets to make decisions about the outcomes of the
projects on which it works. People can make decisions at the
most local levels possible, whether in the form of developers' de-
ciding how to design a particular section of a project's
architecture or a staff's choosing the tools that best enable them
to do their own jobs. These principles also speak to the impor-
tance of open source projects maintaining control of their own
destinies; if a strong faction feels they aren't being heard, they
have the full right and ability to fork the code.
Education, training, and information
As much as we might like to believe that openness itself
breeds the free flow of information, education is still an impor-
tant part of any open organization. It ensures that newcomers
are able to get up to speed and become full participants as
quickly as possible, and it helps create a flow of information
which allows other organizations to see the benefits that come
from openness.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Cooperation
Open organizations have much to learn from one another,
regardless of the sector in which they operate. In the open
source world, we frequently see developers from competing
companies working side-by-side to build a superior project from
which everyone can benefit.
Concern for community
Finally, any organization must recognize that it's not the
totality of the world in which it operates, and that it must give
back, in a meaningful way, to the community around it. Whether
this contribution is code, employee time, or making environmen-
tally and socially conscious decisions about how to operate,
giving back builds trust.
***
Cooperatives and open organizations have much to learn
from each other. You need not be one to be the other, but plenty
of their characteristics naturally overlap, and those interested in
building successful participatory organizations would do well to
study both.
Jason Baker is a data analyst, marketer, technical editor, and oc-
casional coder who has worked on staff at Opensource.com
since 2013.
86
What our families teach us about
organizational life
Jim Whitehurst
I n October I appeared on the 100th episode31 of The Dave
and Gunnar Show32, an independent podcast about open
source and open government issues hosted by two members of
Red Hat's public sector team. We spoke at length about The
Open Organization (one of my all-time favorite topics!), and the
interview gave me a chance to address an important question.
That question actually came from Paul Smith, Red Hat's
VP of Public Sector (you might recognize him as the guy who re-
cently photobombed me33 at a book signing), who asked:
How can you apply the open organization principles
to your family life?
This wasn't the first time someone had posed this question
to me. In fact, I'd been mulling it over for quite some time. The
truth is, people who succeed in leading open organizations em-
brace open principles in multiple aspects of their lives—not just
in the workplace.
31 https://dgshow.org/2015/10/100-a-president-and-ceo-we-like/
32 https://dgshow.org/
33 https://twitter.com/pjsmithii/status/614207083785883648
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Emotions matter
When we're with our families, we recognize that emotions
matter—and we express them. We laugh. We cry. We have im-
passioned debates. We're frank with one another, because we
recognize that our deep relationships will outlast any single in-
teraction (even a turbulent one). And we recognize that the
people in our lives aren't entirely rational; they're motivated by
more than their left-brain impulses. But we tend to check our
emotional selves at the door when we enter the workplace.
Why?
Emotions are a sign that we're deeply invested in what
we're doing. Good leaders know how to read and gauge them (as
I say in The Open Organization, outstanding emotional intelli-
gence is pivotal today). Emotions are indicators of employee
passion, something open organizations must harness if they're
going to be successful today. Family life forces us to confront,
embrace, and channel emotions. Life in an organization should
do the same.
Engagement in the home
Trust me: I'm speaking from experience when I say that
participating in a family requires cultivating engagement. Fami-
lies tend to work best when everyone has sufficient context for
understanding the group's goals (not to mention the resources
the group has for achieving those goals).
In fact, family goal setting should be a collaborative effort.
I'm not sure too many families sit down at the beginning of a
new year and have frank discussions about their goals for the
coming months. But more should. After all, families tend to rec-
ognize the importance of having everyone on the same page,
working in the same direction. Questions like "What charities
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The Open Organization Field Guide
will we support this year?" or "Where will we vacation this sum-
mer?" are too often questions that individuals try to answer
themselves when they should be bringing these to the group for
a more robust discussion.
Inclusive family decisions
When goal setting becomes collaborative, it immediately
becomes inclusive: Family members suddenly have a stake in
family decisions, and they feel tied to the outcomes of those de-
cisions. They embrace the group's objectives, and they work to
help achieve them.
Imagine the difference. You might come to a decision pri-
vately, then communicate that finalized decision to your family
in the hope that they'll accept it, understand it, and help enact
it. But have you ever taken this approach with your kids? It
doesn't end well (actually, it typically ends with confusion and
hurt feelings). But you might also consider involving family
members in decisions from the start, gathering feedback and ad-
justing your expectations accordingly. In the end, family
members will not only better understand the implications of big
decisions, they'll also feel more invested in the process of carry-
ing them out. My experience at Red Hat has taught me this,
because the company works with so many passionate open
source communities, and issuing orders to a group is simply not
as effective as drawing that group into a dialogue.
So in response to Paul, I'd say: You might be asking the
wrong question.
The real question is not about how principles of open or-
ganizations can apply to life with a family. It's about what our
family relationships can teach us about creating more open, in-
clusive, participatory, and humane workplaces.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Jim Whitehurst is President and CEO of Red Hat, the world's
leading provider of open source enterprise IT products and ser-
vices, and author of The Open Organization.
90
Implications of The Open Organization in
education
Don Watkins
W hile I read Opensource.com article "Goodbye Henry
Ford, hello open organization34," a line describing tradi-
tional organizational structures as "rigid and slow to adapt" with
"silos and lack of communication" caught my eye. Those words
could well describe the PK-12 education sector, where I spent
many years.
You see, public education is run by benevolent bureau-
crats, most of whom never set foot in a classroom. Policy is
passed from federal and state legislatures to local boards of edu-
cation and eventually to schools through administrative teams
who oversee teachers and students. All communication in the
system is top-down—there is no effective communication that
goes in the opposite direction.
There was a time when such a system might have made
sense (in the industrial age). Today we live in a post-industrial
society, and in a marketplace where communication and collabo-
ration are essential to survival. Therefore, education needs a
new model for management. I think the ideas Jim Whitehurst
outlines in The Open Organization could have implications in ed-
ucation.
34 https://opensource.com/open-organization/15/8/goodbye-henry-ford-
hello-open-organization
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Early on in the book, Jim tells a story:
I issued what I thought was an order to create a re-
search report. A few days later, I asked the people
assigned to the task how things were going. "Oh, we
decided it was a bad idea, so we scrapped it," they
told me in good cheer."
I cannot imagine that sort of a scenario playing out nicely
in an educational organization. The PK-12 education system mir-
rors the Henry Ford model of top-down management. Most of
what I observed over the course of my career was stratification
with administration at the top, teachers in the middle, and non-
teaching staff at the bottom. All policy originated at the top and
trickled to the bottom.
The open organization that Jim writes about fosters coop-
eration and collaboration. This is frequently spoken of in
education circles, and many speak of cooperative learning, but
that only involves teachers and students. Since the purpose of
education is to prepare students to be productive in our society,
it makes sense that we ought to be preparing them for the fu-
ture which will include much more open organizational
structures.
As an educator, I believe that the sharing and open culture
of Red Hat marks a welcome paradigm change that invites repli-
cation in the education sector because it points forward.
Education is essentially about leading others and instilling val-
ues and practices that benefit the learner and—we hope—
society over the long run.
In the recent past, students came to school and were told
that working hard, getting good grades, and college admission
led to employment. Now most students and their parents know
that this formula no longer works. However, the educational bu-
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The Open Organization Field Guide
reaucracy continues to put students through the Henry Ford
model, which produces easily counted widgets but results in
dysfunction and dystopia.
The current emphasis on raising standards in education
misses the point. We should raise standards, but more impor-
tantly we need to change the paradigm and fundamentally
change how students are educated. We need schools where cre-
ativity is celebrated and the principles outlined in The Open
Organization do provide ideas and principles which could be ap-
plied to education from pre-kindergarten to college.
Imagine schools where passion and engagement drive the
learning and assessment equation. Typically, students who excel
are rewarded while those who don't do well are discouraged to
say the least. Part of the Red Hat culture is "fail fast," which is a
recipe for real learning because it celebrates failure, the true
key to success.
It's okay to fail in an open organization, and people are
encouraged to own their failures and be accountable for them.
That's an invitation to integrity and character education. Real
learning involves cognitive dissonance. Tinkering and making
are meta-cognitive skills that celebrate this type of learning. We
learn to walk, to ride a bicycle, to program a computer by trial
and error.
Don Watkins is a community moderator at Opensource.com. He
is an educator, social entrepreneur, and open source advocate
who holds an M.A. in Educational Psychology and an MSED in
Educational Leadership.
93
Afterword
Jim Whitehurst
W hen I was pitching The Open Organization, publishers
always asked me the same question: "Is this a book
about management or leadership?"
And my answer was always the same: "The Open Organi-
zation is a book about management." After all, it's about the
ways Red Hat, the open organization I lead, uses a networked
organizational model (one we adopt from the open source world)
to make decisions and coordinate, and those are management is-
sues.
But as the book took shape, its eventual publisher, Har-
vard Business Review Press, insisted otherwise. "So much of this
book is about leadership," people at the press told me. "It talks
about are things you're asking leaders to recognize and do to
motivate associates."
So I took a step back and really thought about what they
were suggesting. And that prompted me to reflect on the nature
of the question at the heart of the matter: "Is this book about
management or about leadership?"
It's the "or" that struck me—the assumption that manage-
ment and leadership are in fact two isolated, separate domains.
I struggled to understand how their division had become so
deeply entrenched, because it seemed to me that open organiza-
tions in particular don't embrace this distinction.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
The key to the conundrum, I realized, is emotion. As I ar-
gue in The Open Organization, classic management theories try
to pretend that emotions don't exit in organizational contexts.
It's one of the assumptions they make in order to justify their
models of the way the world works. In order to better under-
stand management as the "science" of distributing decision
rights, developing control functions, budgeting, capital plan-
ning, and other detached, disinterested activities like these,
management theories "abstract away" humanity. They presume
people are entirely rational and that hierarchies always function
the way they're supposed to. (Incidentally, they do this because
they owe much of their thinking to work in classical economics,
which performs the same simplifying maneuver: assume people
are rational, that they have perfect information, and that mar-
kets are in equilibrium—and only then can you "make the math
work"!)
We're beginning to learn that these assumptions are seri-
ously misguided. New research in behavioral economics is
constantly teaching us how patently false they are. They may
have been necessary at a certain point in time—for example,
when management dealt mostly with uneducated workers per-
forming relatively rote tasks, when work environments were
essentially static, and when information was scarce rather than
abundant—but they no longer apply. Our age requires a new
management paradigm, one that taps the passion and intelli-
gence of a workforce motivated by something other than a
paycheck.
I believe the open organization is that model. But a man-
agement model based on something other than the assumption
that all people are like Star Trek's Spock is practically unheard
of today. Talking about ways to tap and mobilize people's emo-
tions, how to get people to act in ways that transcend
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The Open Organization Field Guide
themselves, and how to understand what motivates them to ar-
rive at the decisions they do—all that is the province of
"leadership" studies, not "management." We've always known
these practices exist. We've just cleaved them from management
"science" and relegated them to their own territory: the "hard"
science of management over here, and the "soft" skills of leader-
ship over there. And there they've stayed for decades.
But when you think about management and leadership,
you immediately realize that they're both essentially attempting
to understand the same thing: How can we get people to work
together, in a coordinated fashion? They shouldn't be separate.
Truthfully, they aren't separate. They only seem separate be-
cause we've thought about them this way for years.
So is the book about management or leadership? I'd argue
it's about both management and leadership: two arts of coordi-
nating people's efforts, finally reunited.
Six months of conversations with managers, leaders, and
readers in the Open Organization community have taught me
this important lesson. And those conversations almost inevitably
raise the following question: What's next? How can we begin
putting open organizational practices in place? Where will open
thinking eventually lead us?
The truth is that I don't know. But I do know this: We can
look to open source communities to show us the way.
Open source communities demonstrate participatory orga-
nizational principles in their purest form. Red Hat has been
incredibly lucky to work with so many of these communities—
which are essentially fertile and fascinating petri dishes of ex-
perimentation with cutting-edge management and leadership
ideas. We learn from them every day.
And we'll continue looking to them for guidance on our
journey, because they represent our greatest hope for making
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The Open Organization Field Guide
workplaces more inclusive, more meritocratic, and more hu-
mane. These communities are constantly innovating by
questioning tradition, and that's precisely what any organization
must do if it wants to remain viable today. I've begun question-
ing the "traditional" distinction between management and
leadership—but this entire volume is evidence that people every-
where are overturning deeply-held beliefs in search of fresh
insights and new directions.
Six months of community conversation have proven that.
97
Appendix
The Open Organization Field Guide
The Open Organization Definition
Preamble
Openness is becoming increasingly central to the ways
groups and teams of all sizes are working together to achieve
shared goals. And today, the most forward-thinking organiza-
tions—whatever their missions—are embracing openness as a
necessary orientation toward success. They've seen that open-
ness can lead to:
• Greater agility, as members are more capable of work-
ing toward goals in unison and with shared vision;
• Faster innovation, as ideas from both inside and out-
side the organization receive more equitable
consideration and rapid experimentation, and;
• Increased engagement, as members clearly see con-
nections between their particular activities and an
organization's overarching values, mission, and spirit.
But openness is fluid. Openness is multifaceted. Openness
is contested.
While every organization is different—and therefore every
example of an open organization is unique—we believe these
five characteristics serve as the basic conditions for openness in
most contexts:
• Transparency
• Inclusivity
• Adaptability
• Collaboration
• Community
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The Open Organization Field Guide
Characteristics of an open organization
Open organizations take many shapes. Their sizes, compo-
sitions, and missions vary. But the following five characteristics
are the hallmarks of any open organization.
In practice, every open organization likely exemplifies
each one of these characteristics differently, and to a greater or
lesser extent. Moreover, some organizations that don't consider
themselves open organizations might nevertheless embrace a
few of them. But truly open organizations embody them all—and
they connect them in powerful and productive ways.
That fact makes explaining any one of the characteristics
difficult without reference to the others.
Transparency
In open organizations, transparency reigns. As much as
possible (and advisable) under applicable laws, open organiza-
tions work to make their data and other materials easily
accessible to both internal and external participants; they are
open for any member to review them when necessary (see also
inclusivity). Decisions are transparent to the extent that every-
one affected by them understands the processes and arguments
that led to them; they are open to assessment (see also collabo-
ration). Work is transparent to the extent that anyone can
monitor and assess a project's progress throughout its develop-
ment; it is open to observation and potential revision if
necessary (see also adaptability). In open organizations, trans-
parency looks like:
• Everyone working on a project or initiative has access to
all pertinent materials by default.
• People willingly disclose their work, invite participation
on projects before those projects are complete and/or
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The Open Organization Field Guide
"final," and respond positively to request for additional
details.
• People affected by decisions can access and review the
processes and arguments that lead to those decisions,
and they can comment on and respond to them.
• Leaders encourage others to tell stories about both their
failures and their successes without fear of repercus-
sion; associates are forthcoming about both.
• People value both success and failures for the lessons
they provide.
• Goals are public and explicit, and people working on
projects clearly indicate roles and responsibilities to en-
hance accountability.
Inclusivity
Open organizations are inclusive. They not only welcome
diverse points of view but also implement specific mechanisms
for inviting multiple perspectives into dialog wherever and
whenever possible. Interested parties and newcomers can begin
assisting the organization without seeking express permission
from each of its stakeholders (see also collaboration). Rules and
protocols for participation are clear (see also transparency) and
operate according to vetted and common standards. In open or-
ganizations, inclusivity looks like:
• Technical channels and social norms for encouraging di-
verse points of view are well-established and obvious.
• Protocols and procedures for participation are clear,
widely available, and acknowledged, allowing for con-
structive inclusion of diverse perspectives.
• The organization features multiple channels and/or
methods for receiving feedback in order to accommo-
date people's preferences.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
• Leaders regularly assess and respond to feedback they
receive, and cultivate a culture that encourages frequent
dialog regarding this feedback.
• Leaders are conscious of voices not present in dialog
and actively seek to include or incorporate them.
• People feel a duty to voice opinions on issues relevant to
their work or about which they are passionate.
• People work transparently and share materials via com-
mon standards and/or agreed-upon platforms that do not
prevent others from accessing or modifying them.
Adaptability
Open organizations are flexible and resilient organiza-
tions. Organizational policies and technical apparatuses ensure
that both positive and negative feedback loops have a genuine
and material effect on organizational operation; participants can
control and potentially alter the conditions under which they
work. They report frequently and thoroughly on the outcomes of
their endeavors (see also transparency) and suggest adjust-
ments to collective action based on assessments of these
outcomes. In this way, open organizations are fundamentally ori-
ented toward continuous engagement and learning.
In open organizations, adaptability looks like:
• Feedback mechanisms are accessible both to members
of the organization and to outside members, who can of-
fer suggestions.
• Feedback mechanisms allow and encourage peers to as-
sist one another without managerial oversight, if
necessary.
• Leaders work to ensure that feedback loops genuinely
and materially impact the ways people in the organiza-
tion operate.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
• Processes for collective problem solving, collaborative
decision making, and continuous learning are in place,
and the organization rewards both personal and team
learning to reinforce a growth mindset.
• People tend to understand the context for the changes
they're making or experiencing.
• People are not afraid to make mistakes, yet projects and
teams are comfortable adapting their pre-existing work
to project-specific contexts in order to avoid repeated
failures.
Collaboration
Open organizations are communal. Shared values and pur-
pose guide participation in open organizations, and these values
—more so than arbitrary geographical locations or hierarchical
positions—help determine the organization's boundaries and
conditions of participation. Core values are clear, but also sub-
ject to continual revision and critique, and are instrumental in
defining conditions for an organization's success or failure (see
also adaptability). In open organizations, collaboration looks
like:
• People tend to believe that working together produces
better results.
• People tend to begin work collaboratively, rather than
"add collaboration" after they've each completed individ-
ual components of work.
• People tend to engage partners outside their immediate
teams when undertaking new projects.
• Work produced collaboratively is easily available inter-
nally for others to build upon.
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The Open Organization Field Guide
• Work produced collaboratively is available externally for
creators outside the organization to use in potentially
unforeseen ways.
• People can discover, provide feedback on, and join work
in progress easily—and are welcomed to do so.
Community
Open organizations are communal. Shared values and pur-
pose guide participation in open organizations, and these values
—more so than arbitrary geographical locations or hierarchical
positions—help determine the organization's boundaries and
conditions of participation. Core values are clear, but also sub-
ject to continual revision and critique, and are instrumental in
defining conditions for an organization's success or failure (see
also adaptability). In open organizations, community looks like:
• Shared values and principles that inform decision-mak-
ing and assessment processes are clear and obvious to
members.
• People feel equipped and empowered to make meaning-
ful contributions to collaborative work.
• Leaders mentor others and demonstrate strong account-
ability to the group by modeling shared values and
principles.
• People have a common language and work together to
ensure that ideas do not get "lost in translation," and
they are comfortable sharing their knowledge and sto-
ries to further the group's work.
Version 2.0
April 2017
The Open Organization Ambassadors at Opensource.com
github.com/open-organization-ambassadors/open-org-definition
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Learn More
The Open Organization Field Guide
Additional resources
The Open Organization mailing list
Our community of writers, practitioners, and ambassadors
regularly exchange resources and discuss the future of work,
management, and leadership. Chime in at www.redhat.com/mail-
man/listinfo/openorg-list.
The "Open Organization Highlights" newsletter
Get open organization stories sent directly to your inbox.
Visit opensource.com/open-organization to sign up.
Discussion guides
Want to start your own Open Organization book club?
Download free discussion guides for help getting started. Just
visit opensource.com/open-organization/resources/.
#OpenOrgChat
Our community enjoys gathering on Twitter to discuss
open organizations. Find the hashtag #OpenOrgChat, check the
schedule at opensource.com/open-organization/resources/twit-
ter-chats, and make your voice heard.
107
The Open Organization Field Guide
Get involved
Share this book
We've licensed this book with a Creative Commons li-
cense, so you're free to share a copy with anyone who might
benefit from learning more about the ways open source values
are changing organizations today. See the copyright statement
for more detail.
Tell your story
Every week, Opensource.com publishes stories about the
ways open principles are changing the way we work, manage,
and lead. You can read them at opensource.com/open-organiza-
tion. Do you have a story to tell? Please consider submitting it to
us at opensource.com/story.
Join the community
Are you passionate about using open source ideas to en-
hance organizational life? You might be eligible for the Open
Organization Ambassadors program (read more at opensource.-
com/resources/open-organization-ambassadors-program). Share
your knowledge and your experience—and join us at
github.com/open-organization-ambassadors.
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