The best company that i have heard of that does a similar thing is a company called SEMCO in South America, run by Ricardo Semler, every decision taken by the organisation is down to all employees involved, they can even chose when they go to work and how much they get paid. Check it out if your interested. Thanks again for your post, i have an essay to write on leadership now and how important management and leadership is, so this will help argue a point.

Dave

I couldn’t agree with you more.

Kevin: I always appreciate your perspective on these things. It’s interesting to imagine how investors and employees might have a common case here. Unfortunately, you don’t see many investors demanding that the company give more power to the employees – even though many cases and studies do show this to be profitable.

OA5 is pretty cool, and quite similar to what we did.

I’m not letting the big stockholders of the hook, by any means, because they really do rely on government-enforced privilege to collect monopoly returns on their equity.

But that being said, the hired management probably screws over workers at least as much as the absentee owners do, and without doing the owners much good in the process.

The big stockholders and workers would actually have a common interest in drastically scaling back or eliminating much management, switching over to some version of the Coventry self-management system, and putting management salaries into a worker profit-sharing plan instead.

Despite the myth of management downsizing, the total percentage of the workforce involved in supervisory work is higher than it was in the ’80s, and the percentage of compensation going to supervisors is at a near high of around 40% (compared to 20-something back in the ’70s).

Ever see Scott Adams’ proposed management system, OA5 (out at five)? It required eliminating all positions and spending that weren’t directly involved in creating value (people who write mission statements are right out the door), eliminating most meetings, and expecting everybody to leave on time in return for being productive while they’re actually at work.

One of the pitfalls that we regularly run into that is not mentioned above is the lack of resource management. My plate will often overfill with work from two or three different people who are completely unaware of what the other is loading up for me. When I have to delay their work because I’m simply out of capacity, they get jealous or angry, or have already made promises to the customer about delivery time lines. These situations are generally followed up by long periods where I’m struggling to find enough work to fill an eight hour day.

Just a thought.

anonymoustroll: Thanks for the reality check on SAIC!

Justin: I’ve read about St. Lukes, and they’re an inspiration.

Brian: It IS a risk, but I’m not sure the risk is bigger in our type of organization. It’s true that more freedom means more risk of abuse, but so does tight control and a demotivating organization.