Skip to content

MECC

Managing so Everyone Can Contribute

These are notes I took as I worked through the MECC certification in 2022.

Handbook: MECC

The four pillars of MECC:

Informed Decisions

The 🔑 key question is (now):

How does the organization create a system where everyone can consume information (self-serve) and contribute, regardless of level or function?

Fast Decisions

  • Optimize for speed of knowledge retrieval, instead of speed of knowledge transfer

Many Decisions

  • Bias for action

Executing (on) Decisions

  • Execution is not a one-time event.
  • Decisions must be executed on.

MECC aims to create an atmosphwere where everyone is empowered to lead.

  • MECC describes an ideal state.
  • There are prerequisites for MECC, like:
    • the right tools
    • communication guidelines
    • shared set of values
    • focus on Results
    • culture of belonging

Informed Decisions

Public by Default

Permit informed decision-making by rejecting "need-to-know" and embracing "public by default" instead.

Instead, the onus is to educate team members on how to add information in a systematized manner and how to search for data within the system.

The system must still be used.

Single Source of Truth (SSoT)

Low-context communication

  • explicit over implicit
  • direct over direct
  • simple over complex
  • comprehensive over narrow

Situational leadership

It depends.

Inclusivity

In MECC, a bias for asynchronous communication fosters inclusion. By defaulting to written, asynchronous sharing, everyone contributes in the same size font.

Shared values

Segue: Informed decisions enable fast decisions...

Fast Decisions

Iteration

Short toes

Proposals

Remember that everything is in draft.

DRI (Directly responsible individual)

Informal communication to build trust

Two-way door decisions

Two-way door decisions should be easy to reverse. (Not just possible.)

Many Decisions

Collaboration is not consensus

Challenge the idea that consenseus is productive, says MECC.

  • 👍: many small teems iterating quickly (in the open)
  • 👎 large team moving slowly as they work towards consensus

Consider:

  • collaboration allows everyone to contribute
  • consensus requires everyone to agree*

Push decisions to the lowest possible level

Decisions should be made by the person doing the work, not by their manager or their manager's manager.

Reduce politics

Say why, not just what

👁️: this promotes Transparency and builds trust.

Bonus: this is how institutional memory is created -- without needing to rely on the memory of individuals or copies of their inboxes.

Asynchronous workflows

Boring solutions

Simple (and boring) solutions are best.

Only healthy constraints

Executing on Decisions

Above we had the tenets of MECC: here we have a key output of MECC.

  • Give agency
  • Bias for action
  • Transparent OKRs and KPIs
  • Iteration enables execution
  • Prioritize due dates over scope