Anyone who has accompanied transformation projects knows the discussion: How do we organize change correctly? Do we invest in clear processes, standards, guidelines? Or do we prioritize agility, personal responsibility, self-organization? Both sides argue convincingly. And both meet resistance.
This tension is often a core challenge of many transformations – and those who resolve it incorrectly will either fail to adequately address the complexity, overwhelm their stakeholders, or lose agility.
The Process Camp: Order as a Safety Net
Processes naturally serve an important function in organizations: they make knowledge explicit. Those who know how something is done don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. Established processes ensure quality, create reliability, and enable new employees to become productive quickly.
Especially given today's complex challenges, this is worth its weight in gold. When four teams are involved in a project, processes for recurring tasks ensure that everyone speaks the same language and doesn't spend too long on it.
The argument of the process camp is therefore: consistency protects against chaos, saves time, and reduces errors.
The Self-Organization Ideal: Freedom as an Innovation Engine
On the other side stands an equally valid argument. Rigid processes can be overtaken by reality and stand in the way of creativity. What holds true today may be outdated tomorrow – especially in today's rapidly changing world of work. Self-organized teams can react faster, make decisions more quickly and closer to the problem, and develop creative solutions that no process manual anticipated.
Self-organization fosters personal responsibility, strengthens motivation, and makes organizations more resilient. Those with the competence to decide for themselves don't wait for approvals – they act.
The self-organization argument: flexibility and creativity emerge where people are given trust and room to maneuver.
Where Both Approaches Reach Their Limits
So far, so convincing. But in practice: neither approach holds up on its own.
Too many processes create bureaucracy. They slow down decisions, demotivate employees, and in the worst case even lead to rule sets being applied to situations they were never designed for, or acting as a brake. Anyone who has to fill out three forms for every request loses sight of the essentials – and eventually the desire to contribute.
Too much self-organization overwhelms. Not everyone works equally well without structure. Disorientation, contradictory approaches within the same team, and inefficient duplication of effort are the result. When everyone goes their own way, no common outcome emerges – only friction.
Both extremes are dangerous. And yet they appear surprisingly often in transformation practice – usually well-intentioned, rarely well-executed.
The Balance: A Framework That Enables Freedom
The answer does not lie in the middle between the two approaches – it lies in a different question:
What needs to be regulated so that the unregulated can function?
Processes should not control – they should liberate. A well-designed process answers precisely those questions that without it are repeatedly asked anew and never answered consistently. It creates reliability where reliability is needed, and leaves room where room is needed.
In concrete terms, this means:
- Processes for recurring tasks: Onboarding, quality assurance, reporting, compliance – wherever consistency creates value and errors should be systematically avoided.
- Self-organization for situational tasks: Problem-solving, innovation work, customer communication, agile team and project work – wherever the situation demands quick judgment and creative answers.
- Clear guardrails instead of detailed regulations: Values, principles, and goals define the framework. How a team works within that framework is up to them.
And What About the People? Change Management Accompanies Both
An often underestimated aspect: change management is always also cultural work. Even the most intelligent process framework fails if the people behind it don't understand why it exists – and aren't truly free or able to move within its boundaries.
That's why the question is not only: how many processes do we need? But also: how do we create a culture where processes are perceived as tools rather than control instruments? Where self-organization is not seen as a sign of leadership failure, but as a deliberate strength?
In addition to the core measures for introducing efficient processes and spaces for self-directed flexible work, the organization must also be appropriately prepared for handling this approach.
Transparency, communication, organizational development, training, and further measures help to enable all employees – depending on the situation – to benefit maximally and win together.
This requires leaders who can let go – and employees who want to take on responsibility. Both must be desired and enabled.
Conclusion: Structure That Breathes
The formula is simple; the implementation is not:
"As many processes as necessary. As much self-organization as possible!"
What that means in practice must be assessed individually for each organization – depending on its maturity, culture, size, and the pace at which it is changing.
"Good processes liberate. Bad processes paralyze. Self-organization without a framework confuses. Self-organization with the right framework unleashes."
Those who want to successfully shape transformation must learn to recalibrate this balance again and again – not once, at the kick-off, but continuously, in ongoing operations. Because transformation is not a project. It is a state of being.