Imposed self-organisation that the team came to shape itself

A team that organises itself because it wants to is something other than a team that has to because there is no one left. Here the latter applied. The reasoning on the shop floor was accordingly: cuts are being made, and the former team leader's work is landing on top of ours. On top of that, the decision scope broadened. Within their own role and responsibility, team members already took decisions, but participating in decisions beyond that, individually and as a group, was new. Procurement in a public context is moreover a domain with strict regulation, budgetary and legal risks and many parties involved, so the question of who is responsible for what was not a theoretical one. As long as that question stayed open, every file still ended up with someone else.

Start with understanding, not with structure. The general director explained in a kick-off moment what he understood by shared leadership, and the team could question him about it directly. Then came the distinction on the table between self-steering, where mandate and governance move to the team, and self-organisation, where a team works autonomously within a framework set elsewhere. The team chose self-organisation: end-responsibility for strategic and high-risk decisions stayed with the department head, which fits within this context. That choice was the first moment when the team decided something instead of having something imposed.

Next, the playing field was drawn out: the framework within which the team can work autonomously. What is fixed, what is non-negotiable, and when do you touch the boundary? Integrity and diligence, the four-eyes principle for awards and reasoned decisions, and respecting the delegation of authority were beyond discussion. If a file touches that boundary, it goes into consultation or to the department head.

Alongside that came a decision matrix. Which questions and issues come up most often, what can a team member decide themselves, when do you ask each other, and when do you bring in the department head or an expert from another service, for example for legal advice? That way autonomy became something concrete: for every file, a team member knew immediately whether they could decide themselves, had to consult, or had to escalate.

On that basis, work, tasks and responsibilities were redistributed, with clear agreements about what stays individual and what the team takes up together. The consultation moments got a distinction between operational, tactical and strategic themes, and well-being made it onto the agenda. A two-day work session around personal styles let colleagues learn each other's user manual and let unspoken things get discussed after all. Every doubt and every objection was gone through as a team, with the department head present.

One misunderstanding was deliberately corrected: self-organisation does not mean everyone does everything together. The team members remained owners of their own procurement domain, with the depth that comes with it. What was organised together is what previously happened implicitly and in fragments: priorities, framework agreements, quality standards, knowledge sharing and mutual cover.

The shift from undergoing something to choosing something. When the team chose the form of self-organisation itself and helped draw out the playing field, the question changed from "why do we have to take this on" to "how do we organise this well". Cold feet made way for working agreements, and autonomy became usable because its boundaries were finally set.

A working framework and a decision matrix that let team members know what they decide themselves, what they discuss together and when they escalate. Alongside that, a redistribution of tasks and responsibilities, consultation that separates the operational from the tactical and strategic, agreements on cover during absence and knowledge sharing between domains, and well-being as a standing agenda item. For a tactical procurement team, self-organisation is not a revolution but professionalisation: less noise, less dependence on one person, and decisions that are carried.