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No CEO: The Swedish Company Where Nobody Is In Charge (bbc.com)
Katie Hope, reporting for BBC: Three years ago, Swedish software consultancy Crisp decided that the answer was no. The firm, which has about 40 staff, had already trialled various organisational structures, including the more common practice of having a single leader running the company. Crisp then tried changing its chief executive annually, based on a staff vote, but eventually decided collectively that no boss was needed. Yassal Sundman, a developer at the firm, explains: "We said, 'what if we had nobody as our next CEO -- what would that look like?' And then we went through an exercise and listed down the things that the CEO does." The staff decided that many of the chief executive's responsibilities overlapped with those of the board, while other roles could be shared among other employees. "When we looked at it we had nothing left in the CEO column, and we said, 'all right, why don't we try it out?'" says Ms Sundman.
No upper management. And no board. Now that is a scary thought. How would companies run without people in charge? We need someone there don't we? /s
I have yet to meet someone in upper management who knows more than his underlings. The reality is that most of the companies would actually run better and make more money if not for idiots in charge. Any time the boss isn't around the company things work smoother and clients are more satisfied. We even joke about it. But these are sad depressing jokes knowing you can't fire the moron who founded the company, even though it would be more successful if we did so.
Small communal companies; where everyone is in agreement on the company's focus and direction can run without senior management keeping a hand on the tiller. Once the company size grows beyond 50-60, it will either factionalize based on the differing visions for the company, implode, or strictly stay below the size where factions occur, it will grow and senior leadership/management will be needed.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Most of the time the herd will wander around and graze peacefully, get fat, and have lots of offspring. Then comes the storm and the herd runs off a cliff wiping most of them out.
Interesting concept in a way, but leadership is not just checking boxes. Leadership is being able to react to situations and provide guidance to people to keep them no track.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Why do people insist on living in idealist land even when the real world clearly doesn't work that way?
How often do CEOs get their "asses kicked"?
Ridiculed, sure. Left destitute and without prospects (let alone send to jail) after driving a company into the ground and ruining the workers and investors? Rarely.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I don't think you're quite right about that. Working in the US, I've worked for a few small businesses (less than 100 employees) where there was an official CEO or single "boss", but there didn't need to be. Major decisions were really made as a collaborative effort among the senior staff, and smaller decisions were delegated to individual senior staff members. Now, there did need to be some method of settling disagreements. Depending on the nature of the disagreements in these companies, it may be that the disagreement was settled by "the boss" (owner/CEO), but those instances were rare in the companies I'm thinking of. Usually the head IT guy made IT decisions, the head finance guy made finance decisions. The head of sales made sales decisions, and so on. The CEO was often, in reality, just one of those heads, except in the rare situations where he wanted to pull rank.
So I think that this could work in the US, at least in companies that are run well and have a good senior staff. I think the key thing here isn't the geographic location or even the culture, but the size of the company. The staff consists of 40 people, well below Dunbar's number, which enables a more organic, communal, and collaborative decision-making process. If they continued to grow, they would eventually need to to adjust and formalize their decision-making. However, I don't really see a reason why a company, even a large one, *needs* a single CEO. It seems like you could still have a board of senior staff who votes on issues, the big downside being that it may be time-consuming to have to convene a formal meeting when decisions need to be made, rather than delegating to a single person.
Without a CEO, how will we ever be able to make sure that corporate assets are sold off to third parties and then leased back in order to show a huge short-term profit that generates a huge year-end bonus while simultaneously stripping the company of value and driving it toward bankruptcy?
While this is true, the reality is that the person's co-workers are quite capable of spotting this without any manager's help. If they are empowered to do something about it, they can.
Yes, so have I. I've also seen companies that go out of their way to duck valid worker's comp claims. Either way, this isn't a task for group managers to deal with. Worker's comp, at least in IT, is about the health and welfare of the individual. The essence of management, as typically constituted, is to steer the group in the direction of the desired goals. Health and welfare really ought to be dealt with elsewhere in the structure than the group management (assuming that management is actually required, which may or may not be the case, depending on many factors.)
No, it's not okay. It's almost a perfect example of worker exploitation. They should be paid enough and work allocated in such a way as to make the job a pleasure to do. By low-balling benefits, pay and tasking, providing no reasonable breaks, and seeing to it that there is very little opportunity or reason to dedicate one's self to doing a good job, management inherently takes on the role of exploiter in order to make things work "anyway." And it shows -- how may times have customers seen the patty slopped halfway onto the bun, the condiments in a ridiculous pile on some small fraction of the patty, the orders missing something or containing something that wasn't ordered? That's a direct consequence of making people suffer in their jobs. Not of the job being inherently difficult.
Now, you can (and many do) argue that in order to keep that hamburger at a dollar, you have to exploit the workforce. The problem, as I see it, is that large numbers of citizens are earning so little as to make it so that an increase of a few dollars a day in meal costs represent a significant, even critical, impact on their overall income. This, while McDonald's executives earn millions of dollars per year.
We are never going to fix this unless we restrict the highly unbalanced upwards flow of money into the hands of those who hold the controlling reins of these organizations. In other words, owners, CEOs and yes, managers. This will probably happen, but only because these upscale jobs will be automated out of existence. Otherwise, greed, hubris and a blatant disregard for worker welfare will continue to make jobs such as fast food jobs your basic employee's nightmare.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I can see how you might find that threatening if your entire ego and identity are bound to a traditional archaic model of gender roles. Time to join the 21st century and realize that none of that shit matters. In many respects masculinity has ruined this planet, maybe it's time to give the women a chance.