Management 3.0: Naked Espresso – An In-Depth Case Study

The Case of the
Naked Espresso Café

At every workshop I facilitate, at one point or another, someone will ask, “Are there any case studies on this topic?” And my answer will ineffably be, “Not really.”

The reason for this is that, although there’s a lot of research and other material available, Management 3.0 isn’t a fixed framework like Scrum or Six Sigma and so you can’t just copy-paste it into your organization by religiously following the rules. Instead, Management 3.0 is more like an ongoing discussion on how to improve management and so organizations that implement the practices tend to pick and choose the ones most suitable for them. But can you then say they are Management 3.0 organizations? Not really.

The rationale, I think, people have for wanting to read a case study is that it’s hard to visualize Management 3.0 practices in action. The general feedback on workshop activities is almost always positive, but many attendees can’t quite get their heads around on how to successfully implement the practices they learnt into their own organizations.

There aren’t really any organizations (yet) that have gone full Management 3.0, but there are many that have implemented certain practices. Bosch Power Tools, for example, has used kudo cards and delegation poker to improve their corporate culture and the event management giant Eventbrite has experimented with moving motivators. In Italy, Agile Coach Valerio Alba has successfully introduced delegation boards and celebration grids at Vodafone.

Perhaps the most comprehensive study to date is a book written by my fellow Management 3.0 workshop facilitator Dominik Maximini, in which he describes how the German IT consulting and software development company NovaTec applied Management 3.0 practices and principles on their agile transformation journey. It’s a thorough, almost 200 pages book, but NovaTec’s field of operations is quite specialized and, as a result, I don’t think the book can really help an inexpert reader understand the strengths of Management 3.0 practices.

This is why I decided to write my own case study. To help the general public (you) visualize Management 3.0 practices in action, I present to you the case of the Naked Espresso Café.

Why a coffeehouse, you may wonder. Well, there’re a couple of reasons for this, but the main reason I chose a coffeehouse is because everyone can relate to it. I’m sure you’ve spent some time in a café, working away on your laptop, with a free refill next to you. And you’ve probably had your fair share of, “Why don’t they just…” moments when you were questioning the way the place was run.

You can imagine what it would be like to run a café and you can imagine the frustrations an underpaid barista might have to deal with, so this is why I think the story of a coffeehouse’s journey towards Management 3.0 will be easier for you to visualize than let’s say the abstract environment of a software company.

For the sake of simplicity,
I’ve divided this book into three distinctive parts.

Part one, the Versioning Backstory, is a comprehensive overview of management theory through-out the ages and an introduction to complexity thinking, which is an integral part of Management 3.0. I believe this backstory is a valuable prologue to the case study that follows it but, if you feel it adds nothing new to your existing knowledge, you could skip ahead and dive straight into part two.

Part two contains the meat of this book, the Management 3.0 Case Study. I’ve outlined this part under the six organizational points of view Management 3.0 focuses on: Energize People, Develop Competence, Grow Structure, Empower Teams, Align Constraints and Improve Everything. Each of the chapters contains a bit of Management 3.0 theory, intermixed with practical case study examples.

Part three, to conclude, is a retrospective in which I look back on the case study by means of an after-action review, an introduction to the celebration grid and a ‘playbook’ to help you implement Management 3.0 into your own organization.

Well, there you have it. I’ve written the case study I would want to read myself and I hope you’ll enjoy the story of the Naked Espresso Café as well and that it will inspire you to try out some Management 3.0 practices in your own organization.

[T]here you are.