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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.
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.
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.
The secret to very good managers I've worked with is that they realize that the staff working under them does have more talent than the management does. Like a sports team, the manager of the team can rarely accomplish what the athletes can. The manager may have been a great athlete in their past, but usually they were not.
Good management realizes it is their job to have all the things that the team needs in place so the team can perform at peak efficiency. They should take care of all of the logistics involved in getting the players and the equipment ready to perform. A great manager can often drive the strategy for the team, but this is not always necessary. Many great manager will just as often will employ others to provide the strategic planning.
Org charts should really be drawn in the other direction, with the highest level management at the bottom. management is there to service the organization, keep it tuned up and well oiled, keep it pruned and growing in the right direction.
The organization described in this article was of about 40 people. The tasks the former chief executives performed were analyzed and found to be tasks that could be performed by others in the organization. For an organization of professionals, experienced in their work, this seems completely reasonable and not revolutionary at all.
I've managed sizable groups (in the multi-hundreds) and I fully agree with the above. The manager's job is to enable people to get things done, to eliminate obstacles, obtain resources, and otherwise stay out of the way of the people who know how to do the work. A good manager is in some respects invisible, becoming visible only when the staff need the road cleared for them.
The biggest problem I had was with new line managers, who had to learn that being a manager wasn't about them --- it was about their staff and how they could empower their staff. Being the boss doesn't mean bossing people. As the boss you better know that you work for them because without them you fail.
Like ChipsChap, I've managed teams up to the hundreds on a global scale. I've also managed global product management and strategy. I started in the trenches, as a software engineer.
Two things come to mind: first, I'll echo ChipsChap's sentiment about the manager's job. I'll add that sometimes there just needs to be someone who can make an informed decision and move forward. In many cases - in spite of what individual contributors may think - there isn't a clear-cut or definitive "better" way/solution/approach. A good manager makes decisions in the face of ambiguity, on behalf of the individual contributors, in spite of the fact that some will be pissed off.
The second thing is the unfortunate cycle I see embodied in many comments here: individual contributors have a bad boss, and declare all management stupid and decide to forge their own path as much as possible. Managers have bad individual contributors, and declare them all ineffective and in need of more management. The sports team analogy is nice because it is fairly obvious to most people that forging your own path and deciding your individuals are ineffective doesn't work.
I'll add to that, many people also misunderstand the purpose of a manager or individual contributor. Too often, ICs look expect management to be some kind of "super" version of themselves. If you're an engineer and you expect your boss to be a smarter/faster version of you, you don't understand their role (note: this is not the same as having zero understanding of a position). If you're a manager and you expect your IC to understand (or care about) the big picture or things that aren't directly in line with their day-to-day (even others' day-to-day), you don't understand their value. Case in point: I am far from the best or smartest software engineer in my company (thank goodness), but I damned well wouldn't go to one of my leads and ask them to devise a market/strategy-based feature pipeline that includes allowances for where we expect *global* legislation differences to lead the industry I'm in (and please code them up lickity-split, if you don't mind).
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?