IMG_8945.jpg

“But a large auditing firm confirmed it: the 3.3 million SEK in profit was there. The year before there had been a loss of 4.4 million SEK.

So the company was profitable, the team was now in charge and I was able to move on. Looking back, it’s clear the team made this transformation possible:

When I added it up, during the eight months as CEO of Komanco I had worked a total of just 18 days.”

– Karin Tenelius on her input as interim CEO of consulting firm Komanco in 2001. From the book “Moose Heads on the Table” by Karin Tenelius and Lisa Gill (2020).

This one is exceptionally only in Swedish. It’s about a pioneering Swedish entrepreneur, who let his emplyees make decisions. If someone wants to translate in the comments, feel free.

Nedanstående citat låter som: Karlssons på taket förbättrade samlingar

Nedanstående citat är: En svensk redovisningsföretagares ledarskapstips 

“Intuitionen har många fiender. Den allvarligaste är regelverk. […] I KAPITLET OM ATT SKROTA BESTÄMMELSER ger jag exempel på bestämmelser som lämpligen kan slopas i första hand.” 

Mera? Jaaa:

Låter som: utopister

”I Björn Lundén Information [AB] får varje medarbetare själv fatta beslut om inköp utan någon övre beloppsgräns.”

Är: ett gäng som sedan uttalandet gjordes år 2001 har vuxit till ca 115 anställda från dryga 30.

Bägge citaten ur ”Ledarskap och företagande – speed intuition management” av Björn Lundén

#annatärmöjligt #inspiration


IMG_8916.JPG

In their blog, Corporate Rebels write about Viisi, a Dutch financial services company where …

… every employee knows what he or she will earn in the future.

This means … during the job interviews I will know:

1) what I will earn if I join, and how much I will earn during all the years I work there

2) what everybody else in the company earn

What?

“The candidates have responded very positively to the fact that they no longer have to negotiate.”

What’s the logic behind all this?

“The starting point was the question how we could least disturb the intrinsic motivation of the employees and how we could take out demotivating or counterproductive forms of extrinsic incentive.”

What if I get attracted to a competitor who woos me with bigger pay?

“Because we are at the top quarter of the benchmark and salaries are rising automatically […] this creates psychological safety and you don’t have to worry about it all the time.”

With no reflection in pay … how will I stay motivated to do my best?

“… insufficient performance is solved by the group. If the framework conditions are right, people have an intrinsic need to become better […] and in a team, people help each other.

Only if someone is a real “asshole” or does not do his or her part, will the team colleagues not accept it. In the long run, the person then leaves on his or her own, because you can’t stand the pressure of the group for long.”

“But what we do have is a participation in shares. Ten percent of the shares are reserved for employees. Everyone gets one point every year, regardless of job function and working hours.

In the event of a sale or IPO, all points are added together and the value of the employee shareholding is divided by the number of points.”

Exciting! I love it when people try things out and find new ways to choose from. Article on Corporate Rebels: https://corporate-rebels.com/why-we-should-not-punish-intrinsic-motivation/

Fredric Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations” just blew my mind when it comes to hope and confidence. He has followed a dozen organizations that work – successfully – in a new way, of which one of the core elements is self-organization (what I like to call working like a swarm). The criteria for these organizations to be included in his research was:

  1. They had to have worked in this new way for at least five years.
  2. There had to be at least 100 people in the organizations (one had 40000).

Here is an excerpt from his RSA presentation, which can also be found on Youtube in its entirety.

 

The basis for the workshops I host is in preparing the “activity field” for the participants, or “preparing the space” as insiders might say. The ideal is to create a space where:

  1. I immediately feel safe when entering the room. Decoration can help, and music.
  2. I see that this is a place for creation – empty sheets of paper, markers etc.
  3. I get a sense of being invited rather than pushed. There might me questions on the walls and preferably the whole workshop has been summoned through invitation.

I think pressure enough will come from life itself, from needing cash flow for the business to survive, from competing companies, from an inner search for meaningfulness at work. When, in the midst of this pressure, I am offered a place where I can advance at my own pace, creativity can happen.

Trust is built on openness – and openness is easier to maintain if there’s a supporting structure.

Example:

In 2009 I attended a rite-of-passage camp in Australia where boys aged 12-16 participated together with their fathers. I was there as a trainee leader in a staff of 10. Each day we (the staff) ended the workday with a small ceremony of three steps, sitting around a fire:

  1. Taking turns, everyone said “what I did well today was …” and then something we though we had done well.
  2. Taking turns, everyone chose a “snapshot of the day” – a moment that had stuck in our minds.
  3. Lastly, this question was posed: “Is there something that needs to be said in order for us to continue tomorrow with full capacity?” During this round if you didn’t have anything on your mind you’d say “I’m clear”.

This last ritual was a big one for me. Here, we had the chance to clear out anything that was bothering us, any friction like “I got irritated when you jumped the queue during dinner” – no matter how small. I dreaded it, especially if I had something on my mind, and I appreciated it when it was done. And knowing it was coming up every evening, it worked as an incentive to clear things as they came up.

This ritual of clearing at the end of the workday I have since used when making television programs with a few intense weeks of recording. It’s easier and more fun to work when the air is clear(er), and it’s tempting to skip the clearing. And so structures like this ritual can help.

What if those recurring thoughts you have had, have emerged into your consciousness for a reason?

What if your co-workers told you the random thoughts they’ve had lately, and you’d get a feeling that you’re all holding pieces of a puzzle?

There are simple ways to start tapping into the potential of the collective. Within the Art of Hosting community there is a saying, “all solutions are already in the room”. We just may not have spoken about them yet.