BOSSA Nova: A Synthesis of Management Concepts

This article is the fifth and final article in a planned series prepared from our new book: Company-Wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy. The first four articles summarized each of the BOSSA nova core values: Self Organization, Transparency, Constant Customer Focus, and Continuous Learning. This article summarizes the four values. We would like to turn it into a poster for hanging on an office wall:

Self-organization: Use accountable cross-functional teams that select themselves and follow their passion with responsibility.

Use accountable cross-functional teams
At different levels of abstraction
With a common aim (meaning clear purpose, measures, and targets) that
Govern through shared values and ideals not through rules.

They

Select themselves (for a meaningful duration),
Follow their passion with responsibility for whole and meaningful pieces of work, and
Hold retrospectives and align them across the enterprise to optimize the whole.

Transparency: Create transparency for all involved in two directions by providing information and lowering the barriers to those seeking information:

Provide information
On progress and delivery related to common aim;

Lower barriers

To information needed for
Making informed decisions
Self-regulation, innovation, and learning.

Constant Customer Focus: “Focus wide” on every aspect of the company: product & process, structure and strategy, and individual contributions and people.

Product & Process

Common aim as, for example, summarized in a minimum viable product;
Narratives capturing the ideas of personas in user stories;
Feedback on each production step as, for example, made transparent by a value stream analysis.

Structure & Strategy