Running a business without managers
January 9th, 2007 by Robert
A couple of weeks ago I asked Alexander of the Chief Happiness Officer blog about a post where he mentioned running an IT company that didn’t use any managers. He was kind enough to elaborate on this in this post.
The approach was very democratic and apparently worked well for his small company. I can imagine what some of those meetings were like. Being in the IT industry, I know how strong willed technical people can be and a lot are quite passive-aggressive in nature. The idea that every vote counted could have the potential to be a strong motivational factor not only for those that want to perform tasks that needed to get done, but also for those that would like to see tasks get done a certain way, but not necessarily do those tasks themselves.
As Alexander eluded to, some of these meetings could easily get out of control. I’ve witnessed this myself on many occasions where the details start to get debated and all kinds of tangents get started. I believe it would take good moderation to keep this kind of process on track and get decisions made in a timely fashion, but the end results could really be great.
Along with employees being benefited with more motivation and a sense of empowerment, a benefit to the company would emerge as employees would express ideas for the business that might otherwise never be heard. Everything from operational improvements to other revenue streams could be presented from anyone in the company that never would have spoken up before because of the all to common practice that upper management makes those decisions and never hears what anyone else has to say.
Alexander has many other good articles as well as a new book on workplace happiness. Check it out.
Like what you read? Don't miss anything, subscribe by RSSl!
0 Responses to “Running a business without managers”
Leave a Response