Do you distribute your decision-making power across the whole team and get everyone at least involved in decision-making, even if (especially if) these decisions wouldn't be theirs to make?
Are you transparent (like truly transparent) in front of the team, even if (especially if) it means sharing difficult stuff?
As an example, would you let your whole team collectively decide who will be proposed for a raise/promotion instead of going with your own opinion? And yes, that goes with an assumption that everyone knows what everyone else earns.
I consciously chose a radical example to avoid the notion that just vaguely asking for an opinion would do the trick.
BTW, running a company where anyone can make any decision, and everything is transparent, this example isn't radical at all, though.
I said multiple times that if I were to land (again) a job somewhere in the ranks of a bigger company, one thing I would introduce would be transparent salaries (and collective decisions about them, as far as it is implementable).
There are very few management changes that may universally yield so much good and are so much feared at the same time. It is not to say that the change is simple or easy. But it's totally worth it.
Thank you! That's not the most radical thing that we did. But transparent salaries are a sure shot to trigger controversy :) There has been a HackerNews thread on that somewhere. One of the best comments was literally "It can't work. It is against human nature."
Well, 10 years later, it still works like a charm :)
But it was never written with the intent to have a complete, well-organized story, so it's kinda all over the place.
When it comes to size, right now we're smaller. Business climate has not been the friendliest to our niche, to say the least. However, we've been anything up to 40 in the meantime.
And yes, I keep hearing arguments that "it won't work at scale" all the time. To which I can only recommend Gary Hamel's Humanocracy, which is all about debunking this myth.
Do you distribute your decision-making power across the whole team and get everyone at least involved in decision-making, even if (especially if) these decisions wouldn't be theirs to make?
Are you transparent (like truly transparent) in front of the team, even if (especially if) it means sharing difficult stuff?
As an example, would you let your whole team collectively decide who will be proposed for a raise/promotion instead of going with your own opinion? And yes, that goes with an assumption that everyone knows what everyone else earns.
Those are some radical assumptions (I mean the proposing together raise/promotion part) :)
Did they work for you in practice?
I consciously chose a radical example to avoid the notion that just vaguely asking for an opinion would do the trick.
BTW, running a company where anyone can make any decision, and everything is transparent, this example isn't radical at all, though.
I said multiple times that if I were to land (again) a job somewhere in the ranks of a bigger company, one thing I would introduce would be transparent salaries (and collective decisions about them, as far as it is implementable).
There are very few management changes that may universally yield so much good and are so much feared at the same time. It is not to say that the change is simple or easy. But it's totally worth it.
A gist of what we did: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transparent-salaries-20-months-later-pawel-brodzinski/
A side note: given that I tend to be fairly vocal about these things, I also know quite a few stories where such changes went south.
Wow, loved reading it. Definitely unique!
Thank you! That's not the most radical thing that we did. But transparent salaries are a sure shot to trigger controversy :) There has been a HackerNews thread on that somewhere. One of the best comments was literally "It can't work. It is against human nature."
Well, 10 years later, it still works like a charm :)
That's so unique :)
Do you have somewhere a deeper article that covers the process (what other radical things for example)?
Now you are still ~25? Do you think it can work for bigger companies too?
The overview (including the journey) is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=_lrMXtISF-Q&ab_channel=LunarLogic
Then, most of the stuff I tagged "autonomy" on my blog would be relevant: https://brodzinski.com/tag/autonomy
But it was never written with the intent to have a complete, well-organized story, so it's kinda all over the place.
When it comes to size, right now we're smaller. Business climate has not been the friendliest to our niche, to say the least. However, we've been anything up to 40 in the meantime.
And yes, I keep hearing arguments that "it won't work at scale" all the time. To which I can only recommend Gary Hamel's Humanocracy, which is all about debunking this myth.