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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.
The article omits a critical point: that Swedish (Nordic) culture has an almost unique approach to authority that is particularly collaborative and consensual.
This model is not exportable to other contexts without a wholesale change of the destination culture as well...a bit more of an undertaking.
Cf the work by Geert Hofstede
-Styopa
I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
They looked at their C-level executives and said: hey, they don't do anything anyway, why bother.
It's a sentiment many of us have had for a long time.
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US CEOs will nuke Sweden to stop this dangerous idea from spreading around the world!
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I'd like to see this tried at scale. 40 people barely scrapes my division.
That said, collective intelligence has been used by companies and the intelligence community. I'd be interested if a few thousand employees collective thoughts on a direction of a company would work better than the boneheaded moves by a few C-level execs.
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.
Since January, the USA is an entire country where no one is in charge.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Valve is flatter than most, but it still has Big Gabe N's Big Gabe Oat Ride.
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.
How will you ever formulate your trust synergies? without your CEO you cant reactively anticipate the growth strategy of your win-win situations and kaizan the goal strategy matrix. Christ forbid you go for longer than a few weeks without a CEO's absolutely critical newsletters and quarterly associate pow-wows to help strengthen and inspire. Why it gives me chills to think how much actual work your corporation accomplishes on a daily basis without a CEO. You might have "happy customers" and "completed projects" but do you have productivity metrics to suggest your lean six-sigma axis is tilting toward revenue pivots?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Oh really? Well, maybe YOU didn't not try it, why don't you go not do that and tell us how it didn't go?
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?
I wish MBAs were judged by their ability to support and enable coworkers to achieve a common goal.
That sentence is a non-sequitur. A MBA is a college degree, not a class of people. Having a MBA doesn't grant anyone magical armor to prevent their job performance critically evaluated.
Presumably you are using MBA as a trite shorthand for someone in management who studied business in college. Guess what? They ARE judged on their ability to do exactly what you suggest. Managers who fail to support and enable co-workers to do their job generally suck at their job and generally are rewarded accordingly no different than any other job. Having an engineering degree doesn't grant one magical powers of intelligence and competence nor does it mean they are good at engineering. Some people with MBA diplomas are very good at their job. A bunch more are mediocre and some really suck. Same as with any other type of degree and job.
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.
The board is still in charge. And below, there is a top level of management.
They eliminated one middle man between the top managers and the board. Big deal.
In America, that is one seriously overpaid middle man, however, so we need to do it more than they do.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
You consider ChicFilA excellent food?
In a previous life I worked for Ericsson. In training for Americans, a story was related by our Swedish trainer as so: "The Roman empire finally came knocking on the borders of what's now Sweden and asked of some Swedes, "take us to your leader" in typical Roman fashion. The startled Swedes responded, "what's that?" Anyone who ever worked for a Swedish company would recognize the idea of a *very* flat organization where the ratio of compensation between the top and bottom employees is around 4:1 - contrast that to the average American company of around 400:1.
As if any of the selected alternatives to Trump were any better?