Culture Follows Structure — Why Some Teams Self-Destruct By Design | Aimé Flemm

Aimé Flemm: Culture Follows Structure — Why Some Teams Self-Destruct By Design

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

"Culture follows structure. The destructive tendencies of a team are the consequence of how the organization is actually structured." - Aimé Flemm

Aimé doesn't blame teams when they go toxic. He looks at the org chart. At his first gig, the UX-only team grew bitter — making screens nobody used, blocked from talking to customers, drowning in dependencies. The team's behavior wasn't a coaching problem. It was a structural one. At his current company, building backend software for EV charging stations, he watched the opposite happen: leadership flipped seven component teams (backend, billing, etc.) into seven end-to-end feature teams with one Product Owner. Two-week sprints. Switching costs collapsed — they could decide on Wednesday to change direction, refine on Thursday, and have all seven teams pivot together by the next sprint. The org became truly adaptive. Aimé's question to every Scrum Master listening: is your organization fit for purpose? If the work is predictable and specialism-heavy, component teams can work. If you need adaptability, the structure has to match. Don't coach behavior that the structure forces.

In this segment, we talk about Larman's Laws of Organizational Behavior, the Star Model by Jay Galbraith, and Org Topologies.

Self-reflection Question: Look at the team you're coaching. Which of their "destructive habits" might actually be a rational response to the structure you've put them in?

Featured Book of the Week: Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman

This week, Aimé recommends two books that complement each other. First — and his "holy bible" — is Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman. "I remember reading this for the first time. It took me two weeks, the whole book. And I was just constantly texting people — 'this is it! It all makes sense now. I finally know what to do.'" For the how of organizational change — workshop ideas, possible structures, change tactics, and the people side — LeSS is the book. The companion book Aimé pairs with it is 10x Organization by Alexey Krevitsky, Roland Flemm, and Craig Larman — strong on the what and the why, with a 2x2 visual map that helps you explain to management where you are today, where the market needs you to be, and what should change. (You can also listen to our episode with Bas Vodde and our BONUS episode with Roland Flemm for a deeper view.)

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About Aimé Flemm

Aimé Flemm joins us from the Netherlands. Our guest is an organizational design coach who starts where most agile transformations stop. He works at the structural level: redesigning the incentives, reporting lines, and systems that either enable or quietly kill agility. His belief: you can't coach your way out of a broken org design.

You can link with Aimé Flemm on LinkedIn.