I love hearing about insider-experiences like this.
From an outsider perspective:
1. Seems you need to have the right people for this type of thing. And most people are not good for it (at least the way they've been trained their entire lives: school + regular employment). The wrong person can really warp the experience (esp if hard to fire).
2. Seems you need to accept the good-and-the-bad. E.g. you can't have autonomy + clear career progressions; bottom-up strategy + collective clarity of strategic vision. Seems you need to stomach the downside for what you consider a better upside.
3. People seem to underestimate the role of leadership here. Seems to me, the leader needs to have a great pulse on how to maintain this structure, inserting themselves at the right times to make sure the system doesn't go off the rails (e.g. someone trying to create too much structure), but not doing so in way that feels too top-down (even if it is).
Do I sound like I'm on the right path? Anything you would disagree with there?
1. True. This is the most efficient filter of culture I've ever seen. People who end up staying are those who love self-organisation and wouldn't have it any other way. Most of the questions we got in interviews was about the governance, people were genuinely positively intrigued by it. Most applied to the company precisely because of the governance.
2. On the career progression side, most people who stay in such environments don't really care about titles. What they really want is fair compensation for their work. Self-governed businesses tend to have a variety of ways of giving out raises on top of collective profit sharing - this can be done by putting in place team feedback processes - I've even seen one company ask (annually) each team member what their salary raise should be.
On the strategy side, yes, companies like these tend to be more flexible and adaptable rather than having a top-down strategy that's set in stone for the year for example. But there is still a person/group whose remit it is to have a vision, and break it down into objectives. They either crowdsource this strategy or take full responsibility to come up with one. So self-organisation doesn't necessarily have to mean absence of strategy. It just means that people expect more of a co-creation environment rather than one person spinning it and the rest just executing.
3. 100%. This form of governance gives rise to a new form of leadership that I haven't seen anywhere; that's probably why leaders struggle so much because it's about earning the position of leader rather than it being assigned. In this specific company, leaders of each team rotated about once every year too, so leadership isn't solidified into one person, but can change depending on what the company wants to achieve, and who's best suited to carry out that vision.
Thank you for the detailed plusses and minuses of your experience. I'm interested in how any human organization works. The need for a captain stood out particularly. I read a book on Sociocracy that seems promising.
I love this story and proof that a more self-directed model can work wonders.
You mention "ship" analogies often, which reminds me of my model for a High-Performance workplace. I've written here a lot about the role of leaders as captains of the ship :)
Very interesting collection of thoughts: I’ve always thought that people should have autonomy, but there still needs to be leaders who keep things organized. Is that your takeaway as well?
Thanks for the read! I think the new leaders don't keep things organised as much as they give creative impulse and direction so the others have a sense of where to go. Also, this new type of leadership emerges from the group as the group decides who is best suited to lead the specific project. So it's more of an organic leadership that rises and falls according to the needs. So autonomy is very much still there as in there's no-one telling anyone else what to do. I believe autonomy and leadership can, and should, totally be able to co-exist. So a direction being set and then the group self-directing itself on how to get there.
That makes sense to me. A lot of small organizations seem to have a "flat hierarchy" - there are maybe two to three hierarchical layers, but no more than that. The bottom of the hierarchy still have easy/direct access to the top of the hierarchy.
In big organizations this comes undone, but I know that's why Salim Ismail says it doesn't have to if large organizations still organize as small groups.
Great article and fascinating to look inside the company you worked in! I’m involved in a business that’s basically self-organized but I think the trouble is that the founder has too idealistic of a view of how the business will run itself without having to put the work in to get there and is lacking rigorous prioritization. So there is a grand vision but way too many ideas and projects and way too few people doing them. Sounds a bit similar to what you were describing. I imagine you’d have to be even more picky in what new things gets started in a business like that.
Still, I’d love to try this way of governance in my future business 🙃
Amazing insights into what I would have very easily believed to be chaos or unproductive but you have now gotten me thinking!
I love hearing about insider-experiences like this.
From an outsider perspective:
1. Seems you need to have the right people for this type of thing. And most people are not good for it (at least the way they've been trained their entire lives: school + regular employment). The wrong person can really warp the experience (esp if hard to fire).
2. Seems you need to accept the good-and-the-bad. E.g. you can't have autonomy + clear career progressions; bottom-up strategy + collective clarity of strategic vision. Seems you need to stomach the downside for what you consider a better upside.
3. People seem to underestimate the role of leadership here. Seems to me, the leader needs to have a great pulse on how to maintain this structure, inserting themselves at the right times to make sure the system doesn't go off the rails (e.g. someone trying to create too much structure), but not doing so in way that feels too top-down (even if it is).
Do I sound like I'm on the right path? Anything you would disagree with there?
Thanks for giving this a read :) To your points :
1. True. This is the most efficient filter of culture I've ever seen. People who end up staying are those who love self-organisation and wouldn't have it any other way. Most of the questions we got in interviews was about the governance, people were genuinely positively intrigued by it. Most applied to the company precisely because of the governance.
2. On the career progression side, most people who stay in such environments don't really care about titles. What they really want is fair compensation for their work. Self-governed businesses tend to have a variety of ways of giving out raises on top of collective profit sharing - this can be done by putting in place team feedback processes - I've even seen one company ask (annually) each team member what their salary raise should be.
On the strategy side, yes, companies like these tend to be more flexible and adaptable rather than having a top-down strategy that's set in stone for the year for example. But there is still a person/group whose remit it is to have a vision, and break it down into objectives. They either crowdsource this strategy or take full responsibility to come up with one. So self-organisation doesn't necessarily have to mean absence of strategy. It just means that people expect more of a co-creation environment rather than one person spinning it and the rest just executing.
3. 100%. This form of governance gives rise to a new form of leadership that I haven't seen anywhere; that's probably why leaders struggle so much because it's about earning the position of leader rather than it being assigned. In this specific company, leaders of each team rotated about once every year too, so leadership isn't solidified into one person, but can change depending on what the company wants to achieve, and who's best suited to carry out that vision.
Thank you for the detailed plusses and minuses of your experience. I'm interested in how any human organization works. The need for a captain stood out particularly. I read a book on Sociocracy that seems promising.
I also watched this interview last night of Salim Ismail (Open ExO) at the Elysian, which spoke of similar issues: https://www.elysian.press/p/the-company-of-the-future-looks-like?r=2xryfr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you ! I just listened too, loved it! I might get his book :)
I love this story and proof that a more self-directed model can work wonders.
You mention "ship" analogies often, which reminds me of my model for a High-Performance workplace. I've written here a lot about the role of leaders as captains of the ship :)
https://behearty.substack.com/p/the-good-ship-hpo
Very interesting collection of thoughts: I’ve always thought that people should have autonomy, but there still needs to be leaders who keep things organized. Is that your takeaway as well?
Thanks for the read! I think the new leaders don't keep things organised as much as they give creative impulse and direction so the others have a sense of where to go. Also, this new type of leadership emerges from the group as the group decides who is best suited to lead the specific project. So it's more of an organic leadership that rises and falls according to the needs. So autonomy is very much still there as in there's no-one telling anyone else what to do. I believe autonomy and leadership can, and should, totally be able to co-exist. So a direction being set and then the group self-directing itself on how to get there.
That makes sense to me. A lot of small organizations seem to have a "flat hierarchy" - there are maybe two to three hierarchical layers, but no more than that. The bottom of the hierarchy still have easy/direct access to the top of the hierarchy.
In big organizations this comes undone, but I know that's why Salim Ismail says it doesn't have to if large organizations still organize as small groups.
Great article and fascinating to look inside the company you worked in! I’m involved in a business that’s basically self-organized but I think the trouble is that the founder has too idealistic of a view of how the business will run itself without having to put the work in to get there and is lacking rigorous prioritization. So there is a grand vision but way too many ideas and projects and way too few people doing them. Sounds a bit similar to what you were describing. I imagine you’d have to be even more picky in what new things gets started in a business like that.
Still, I’d love to try this way of governance in my future business 🙃