Base Types

Base Types

The Base is the group where people feel safe and at home.

Purpose

It is said that the top reasons people quit companies are a lack of recognition and belonging. Humans want to feel part of a group that they care about (like a family, school class, or sports club), and they want to be appreciated for their contributions to that group. If you don't make sure that workers feel recognized and at home, they will quit their jobs, and you spend a fortune on recruitment and onboarding. (The word base signals that this is the group that people go to when they return from a mission. You could also say it is their home.)

Besides acting as a home for its workers, a Base should also be a fully self-supporting business. It may outsource some (or even all) of its non-core activities (such as infrastructure and shared services) to other bases, but its core business is the only thing it cannot delegate. Each Base has a strong alignment of everyone in the Base around one or more problems to be solved or opportunities to be pursued. The core activity of the Base is a business model focused on value for customers.

Notes

Within the Base, people work in one or more Crews, and they might participate in one or more Forums, but none of these have line managers. There is no middle management in a Base. The only management positions are in the Governance Crew.

The four types of Bases are inspired by the distinction as offered in the book Networked, Scaled, and Agile: A Design Strategy for Complex Organizations by Amy Kates, Greg Kesler, and Michele DiMartino.

Rules / Constraints

  • There is active monitoring of worker motivation related to the Base.

  • The Base has a defined business model focused on customer value.

  • There is no middle management in the Base.

  • The Base size sits between a single team and a few hundred people.

Fully Integrated Base
Strongly Aligned Base
Loosely Aligned Base
Fully Segregated Base
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“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

(Source: Maya Angelou)