We spend a lot of time developing leaders and then we rely on them to run our organizations, make the right decisions, and get things done. But leadership as a concept has flaws:

(1) By creating leaders, we sometimes diminish others.

(2) By creating leaders, we create followers. We focus on developing leaders but not as much on developing followers. But followers need to develop as well.

(3) Followers distance themselves from leaders. This removes a certain level of trust, communications, and performance from followers. Dominant voices and group think destroy team work.

(4) Leadership creates the hunger for power and power can corrupt people. Corrupted people often make the wrong decisions.

Solution

Let's define a leader as a person that possesses a number of competencies, such as awareness, emotional intelligence, communications skills, ability to influence others, etc. Now let's take one of these skills out - "the ability to influence with authority" and let's add two new skills - "great team player" and "creative thinker". Instead of calling this newly minted person a leader, let's call him a teamer.

We are now ready to create a great organization. Forget leadership. Let's create teams. Our perfect organization will consist of teams, small enough to be make quick decisions but large enough to bring efficiency. These teams will consist of teamers, people with great leadership skills who don't care about subordinates or followers but have all of the other leadership qualities that make them great communicators as well as highly effective team players.

Now let's add some motivational factors. Every teamer should be an owner in every sense of the word. Every teamer should be rewarded partially based on his own contribution to the team, and partially on results achieved by the team as well as the organization as a whole.

Now let's add some checks and balances. Every teamer should be accountable to his team mates. Team mates dictate every teamer's salary, direction, tasks, and whether or not he makes it in the team.

Now let's add complex decision making. Complex decisions should be made by boards. These boards should consists of cross functional teams.

Now let's create a process that assures we have the right people in those teams and they are prepared to make these teams highly functional. Let's focus our educational efforts on building great teams. Make sure teamers respect and trust each other, build on each others' ideas, stretch, innovate, create and manage healthy conflict, come up with decisions and commit to execution, hold each other accountable, and focus on team results, rather than self.

Now let all information free and create a system of 100% transparency. Let everyone in the organization know absolutely everything.

Now, let's set our teamers free and let them create chaos. An organization consisting of the right teams with the right people, the right personalities, the right training, and the right attitude will act like a market. The market is efficient (at least that's the widely accepted theory) because it consists of people working for their self interests. An organization with the right teamers will also be efficient if people are set free and are allowed to pursue their own self interests. The boundaries setup by this system will act as motivators and checks and balances to make sure the system stays as efficient as possible.

At first, you will see total chaos, but then the system will self stabilize and turn into a powerful, self-sufficient, unbeatable, high performing machine.

Practical Impact

An organization will become much more dynamic and efficient. There will be a higher degree of trust and productivity. There will be no side effects of leadership. People will stop worrying about their rank, promotion, and power and will focus on what matters most. Communication will be open. Ideas will flow more freely and will be more likely accepted. Change will become a way of life. People's jobs will be easier to do because they will now focus on what's natural to them, rather than what's developed through brainwashing. People will be motivated to think differently, try more things, apply their imagination, better utilize free information, take bureaucracy out of decision making, take annoyances out of work, and make work more fun.

First Steps

1. Create a limited test inside of one department of an organization.

2. Put a lot of efforts into teamer development.

3. Stop reinforcing old behaviors.

4. Start promoting new behaviors.

5. Gradually convince people to change.

6. Free new behaviors.

7. Make this change one department at a time.

8. Make departments talk

9. Create a culture of transparency.

Of course, this is easier to launch in a startup organization than an existing company, especially if it's large.

Credits

Me (Matt Shlosberg) with some ideas borrowed from the works of Henry Mintzberg, Russ Ackoff, and studying success of W.L. Gore.

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May 14, 2010 at 9:35am

Mark Talaba

TGI's Role-Based Assessment (RBA), was designed from the very beginning to measure 'teaming characteristics'. It is used for hiring & promoting, works extremely well in matching people to the functional mission of their team, and is also effective in analyzing and solving team performance problems.

I would be happy to explain and/or show you more about it.

Best regards,

Mark

May 18, 2010 at 4:17am

Elan Hoffman

While I do think that this is a great suggestion Matt, and one I think could work where it not for the challenge of the Ego.

Nowhere does this style of management address the challenge of the singular ambition - which I believe is inbuilt into each and everyone of us. We all want to be the 20% who are stars, and not the 60% who get the job done. And thats particularly easy do if chaos reigns.

And when you have a flat, clear egalitarian organisation, you will ALWAYS have a ruling class. Just look at socialism/communism. And its all ego (read power) driven. However if you find a way to address that, I reckon you will be able to suggest not just organisational change, but how governments should be set up too.

May 19, 2010 at 5:14am

Ellen Weber

So many good ideas in this post - thanks! Would you agree that the perceived rewards have to become larger for the changes you suggest - than are the safety nets of the status quo culture. The system is tightly built around a left brain model for progress - and so right brain insights and innovations find no place at the tables.

Love your emphasis on teams. How true! To build effective teams it tables knowing what multiple intelligences team members possess related to the vision, reaching across differences to harness brainpower, and negotiating requirements for innovative progress that lead to sustainability. Would you agree it wt would also take reaching across silos with motivation to integrate?

May 19, 2010 at 6:43am

John Pohlhaus

I think that this is a great idea but it can not be universally applied. I believe that you need a degree of equality for this to succede. If you have an organization with people that have similar backgrounds regarding education, and specialization then you have a better chance for this democratic method to work.

From my experience, many people like and promote artificial barriers and silos to their knowledge and do not want to share information that is central to their jobs because they want to protect their turf and create a mystery about what their functions are. Also some organizations have very different age and skill levels and educational levels in them that make it hard to create cohesion becasue people want to do what is comfortable for them rather than what is a best practice for a company or a customer.

Sometimes, the right decisions don't get done unless they are mandated and it is difficult to mandate without titles and authority and a clear chain of command.

It might sound harsh but business exists to create a profit by offering goods and services that customers want and need and rely on. I think that people in power do not always have a hunger for power they often just have an ability to solve problems better than others by leveraging the ability to identify problems as problems and help create solutions that fix issues. Not everyone in an organization wants that responsibility or can do that work effectively. You can't create an entrepreneur by talking about entrepreneurship, you can't crate a salesperson by talking about sales ideas, you can't make a person a great scientist or engineer by discussing science in a meeting, those are largely talents that people are born with and work on throughout their entire lives and bring with them to their first job.

So I think that your idea can work in many organizations but I don't think it can work in all organizations. Can you imagine the military without any ranks or chain of command? How could people in emergency situations like combat or medical disasters work without a system of authority to instantly follow directions and achieve a mission or task without question.

May 19, 2010 at 7:51am

Matt Shlosberg

John -

You are right. This idea is organization driven. I also think it's hard to implement even in organizations that this idea is right for, simply because people have too many mental blocks in their heads. They hate change and this approach requires a major one.
But it does get you thinking. The best organizations will figure out how to apply this approach in real life. I run a small management consulting shop and that's basically my approach. It works very well.

May 19, 2010 at 8:15am

Matt Shlosberg

Hi Ellen,

I agree. The perceived rewards should definitely be greater. Although I've seen research that shows that the sense of safety net in organizations is false. You have the same chance to be laid off working for someone as losing your shirt in your own business. So the safety net is largely imagined. If you can explain it to people, you may not worry about a better reward structure.

May 20, 2010 at 7:29am

Francie Dalton

Matt,
I must comment on your motivational factors which are essential for a self sufficient organization.
The "one-size-fits-all cookie cutter approach to motivating others won't work. Instead, you must customize your methods to each individual you manage. Doing so will allow you to access the discretionary energy of staff - that which they aren't required to do, but could do if you use these tips to make them want to.
Francie Dalton
www.daltonalliances.com

May 20, 2010 at 8:21am

Matt Shlosberg

Hi Francie,

You've got some good points. Different people are motivated by different things. Here's a thought though: should we be motivating people at all or should we get people who are self-motivated through their personality and build a system where they don't lose their motivation?

May 21, 2010 at 7:20am

Matt Shlosberg

Alex,

Thanks for your comments. It sounds like Holacracy has an approach very similar to mine. My hack is general, but I did think of most of the details Holacracy addresses. I guess we both invented the same thing. Great find!

Matt

May 21, 2010 at 9:13am

Alex Todd

Matt,

I like your general idea. Organizations clearly need to improve their competency in cultivating teamwork. A big challenge is overcoming existing paradigms. That's where designing structures along the lines of what you propose can help.

You hack reminds me of an organization, I recently discovered, that is promoting a similarly inspired management technology, called Holacracy (see http://www.holacracy.org/sites/default/files/resources/Organization_Evol...). I'd be interested to know how well you feel Holacracy satisfies your requirements for a "self-sufficient organization".

May 29, 2010 at 9:59am

Paul Hemp

Matt,

One interesting question to ponder on this:

How do you nurture trust not only between management and line employees but among peers? How do you blend self-interest with team-interest? It's a constant dynamic in human existence -- tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, etc. -- but I'd be interested in people's thoughts on how trust among team members plays out on a day-to-day basis in real-world organizations.

An interesting experiment in the area of organizational trust is being conducted by "MIX Maverick" Vineet Nayar at my company, HCL Technologies, if you're interested.

Paul

June 8, 2010 at 8:11am

Bill Nobles

Matt, I reviewed your hack as requested in your comments on mine (Overcoming the management hierarchical control mindset—the key to re-inventing management and resolving 20 moonshots) and agree that both hacks address similar deficiencies in today’s organizations. However, I worry that yours risks “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” and unnecessarily scaring business people.

For example your problem description addresses only one form of leadership. Max De Pree offered another model which we advocate—“Servant Leadership,” which addresses all the problems you describe. Recommending a better leadership role model seems more practical than replacing the term “leader” with “teamer”—plus that would eliminate the need for inventing a “chief engineer.”

I like very much your focus on “teams,” “everybody being an owner,” “everybody sharing the organizational rewards,” and “accountability to teammates”—but worry that “chaos” is too scary for most business people and also inaccurate. Our “Freedom-Based Management” model produces “self-organized spontaneous order” inside organizations to replace traditional, inefficient “controlled order—i.e. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market.” I suspect this more accurately describes the environment you seek.

We seem to be fellow travelers seeking similar improvements in organizational management, so I will be happy to continue our dialogue.

Bill Nobles

June 8, 2010 at 8:24am

Matt Shlosberg

Bill -

Thank you for your feedback.
You are right that we seem to be on the same path. I agree with your comments. I was actually thinking along the lines you've described. My general idea was to setup the system (i.e. the environment) in a way that promotes it to function on its own simply due to the system design and then let the system function on its own. In other words, I was relying on Adam Smith "invisible hand" to do the magic, as long as the system is correctly designed.

I'd be interested in discussing our ideas further. Would you mind sharing your contact info? I can be reached at (443)629-8993 or via e-mail at mshlos at hcglobal.com

Thanks!

September 30, 2010 at 12:16am

Raj Kumar

Hello Matt,

I have just come from commenting on your hack "You did WHAT to the Board". I suggested technology for Knowledge flows as an alternative. An alternative to do what? Well, the spirit of this hack is what I had in mind. Its core is free-flow of Knowledge. Much of the Challenges you have recorded will be taken care of by a hierarchy, created not to exercise control but to mentor and guide the evolution of thought. The element of chaos will be there but not in the form envisaged by Bill. His work too is not geared for managing interactions. Chaos will be there to inject dynamism and stimulate innovation.

My statements here are based on what I have achieved with technology. My contributions to MIX are not technology intensive. They await your attention. I shall value your feedback. You may like to begin with http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/assuring-results-empowerment-and-... .

Regards,

Raj Kumar

January 1, 2011 at 12:31am

Alan O'Neill

On the point of motivation, I think looking for ways to motivate people is slightly misplaced. Generally most people are pretty motivated naturally, so to ensure we remain enthused i would suggest we should focus more on removing the things from a system that demotivate us rather than trying to offer more incentive (it's like looking for a magic pill!). For the vast majority of people ive spoken to over the years the first day on the job is when they are the most enthused, motivated and inspired then it's down hill from there. Death by a thousand cuts! We become demotivated by all those little things in the system that turn us off, frustrate or limit us in some way. Remove the frustrations and the redundancies in the system and we will do outstanding things. It's what humans do best!