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No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

bbc.co.uk

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Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#41

Post by selectodude »

jasode wrote: post #37

This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you first read the company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence: - "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth of what you bill." After making a mental note o…

May as well go to cosmetology school for a year instead of getting a CS degree if you're going to work in asinine conditions like that.

If I want to eat what I kill, I'd rather go make millions (or starve) on Wall Street. At least there's a base salary instead of a base rent.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#42

Post by nickpsecurity »

jasode wrote: post #37

This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you first read the company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence: - "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth of what you bill." After making a mental note o…

"There's nothing wrong with that model (as another commenter mentioned doctors paying into a "group practice" for shared expenses such as an office and billing staff.)"

Another common one I've seen is hair stylists. They often rent their booth from the shop in exchange for equipment, pay processing, foot traffic especially, and so on. They get some cut of the base pricing plus tip money. Idea is they'll come out profitable on a regular basis despite paying to be there. Just another business expense really.

" If workers are the ones paying the company, it's easier for them to agree not to have a CEO manage them."

Testing the comparison again, this is also true for hair stylists. They're the ones who have to pay to be there and maximize their revenue. They'd rather be left alone to use whatever methods they can to keep customers happy, regular, and with high tips. Likewise for a consultancy where people renting space in the company would want to be flexible to maximize number of clients and revenue by targeting methods to each one's or each group's preferences. Both for hair stylists and IT consultants this take experimentation that might not happen in organizations with top-down management, esp micro-management.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#43

Post by nickpsecurity »

selectodude wrote: post #41
jasode wrote: post #37

This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you first read the company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence: - "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth of what you bill." After making a mental note o…

May as well go to cosmetology school for a year instead of getting a CS degree if you're going to work in asinine conditions like that. If I want to eat what I kill, I'd rather go make millions (or starve) on Wall Street. At least there's a base salary instead of a base rent.

That's crazy you and I posted the same example at about the same time. Although, I have kinder thoughts about that market it seems. ;)

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#44

Post by gluczywo »

xutopia wrote: post #30
whack wrote: post #19

It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…

Maybe that's the natural size for a company and growing beyond that is simply an aberration!

It might be the natural size optimal for efficiency but not for survival (in the natural selection sense). The capacity of an organization grows with headcount even with diminishing efficiency per capita.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#45

Post by monodeldiablo »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #36
whack wrote: post #19

It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…

"That's when the number of people involved is too great for the human brain to process the entire social network. Hence why formal organisations and hierarchy are now needed." Or innovate on a divisional or matrix-style organization where it's a series of independent units or teams of teams. Not too different from how we make complex programs integrate well. Decomposing them properly with complexity in the right spot…

Gore & Associates (makes of GoreTex) operate like this. Whole groups of worker-owned co-ops in Northern Italy (Emilia-Romagna) also operate more or less this way, in a loosely-coupled network.

The trend in modern employment toward more individual empowerment, less hierarchy, and greater profit share points toward a co-op future for a large band of white collar jobs. Or it would, if they weren't so heavily discriminated against in the US tax code.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#46

Post by TallGuyShort »

RubenSandwich wrote: post #22
whack wrote: post #19

It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…

Agreed. I've noticed that organizations that often times claim to be 'leaderless', just have other implicit ways of exerting power and influence. Truly leaderless is difficult, and requires humility from all it's members.

There's possibly a good analog in data. A while ago it seemed very popular to talk about "schemaless" data systems, and I heard the perfect commentary: "If you think your data is schemaless, what that really means is you don't know what the schema is, and that's bad."

What people probably meant by schemaless: It's very easy for things to have a slightly different schema than they used to if that's needed. Things that don't all conform to the same schema can still be handled well. And it should be understood that sometimes you do need a better defined schema.

So my point? Don't focus on being 'leaderless' or 'structureless'. Focus on being flexible enough to allow new substructures in the company as needed. Make sure there's a system in place that allows people to coordinate with groups that don't have the same structure as them. And recognize when you do need a bit of structure to keep scaling.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#47

Post by adzicg »

jasode wrote: post #37

This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you first read the company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence: - "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth of what you bill." After making a mental note o…

> The DNA of having employees pay the company to work instead of the other way around?!? Of course, the BBC article wants you to think "DNA" as in "no CEO" instead of "workers paying a rent".

This is missing the point (full disclosure: I know several people working at Crisp and co-organise workshops with them in Sweden).

I remember hearing Henrik Kniberg talk about this at Oredev a while ago, and we ended up restructuring our consultancy firm quite close to their model in 2013. The idea is that you don't work for the company, the company works for you. It's applicable to consultancies, where everyone effectively goes and earns money on their own, but some shared overhead (such as accountants, paperwork, getting master-services agreements with banks and insurance certificates so you can do business) can be effectively shared by everyone under the same umbrella.

our model is not a 10% haircut, but that all shared costs are divided according to the proportion of revenue quarterly. the company also doesn't have a boss or anyone in charge (legally, in the UK, we have designated partners who are allowed to sign documents, but everyone has that right, so everyone is a boss and nobody is the Boss).

Our company is also not allowed by the statute to have any assets or own any IP, that all belongs to individuals. This is to avoid any conflict of interest and people starting to 'work for the company' in the future.

This model obviously wouldn't apply to companies trying to accumulate wealth/IP/assets and looking to create an exit by selling the company. But it works amazingly well if you want a lifestyle consulting business where everyone does their stuff.

Edit: typos

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#48

Post by jasode »

adzicg wrote: post #47
jasode wrote: post #37

This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you first read the company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence: - "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth of what you bill." After making a mental note o…

> The DNA of having employees pay the company to work instead of the other way around?!? Of course, the BBC article wants you to think "DNA" as in "no CEO" instead of "workers paying a rent". This is missing the point (full disclosure: I know several people working at Crisp and co-organise workshops with them in Sweden). I remember hearing Henrik Kniberg talk about this at Oredev a while ago, and we ended up restruct…

>This is missing the point

You are missing the point of my comment. I wasn't disparaging Crisp nor passing negative judgement about their business model. (I compared it favorably to doctors contributing to a shared practice.)

My critique is of the terrible writing in the BBC article which warps the situation to spin it into a story about "no CEO". In other words, Katie Hope wrote the BBC story such that the reader is manipulated into thinking this:

- cause: "no CEO" --> effect: "better business"

When the real cause&effect is this:

- cause: "workers pay the company a rental fee" --> effect: "workers conclude they don't need a CEO boss"

The more salient point is that the "workers pay fees to the shared company" and a downstream side effect is the "no CEO". Why do we not read about freelance hairstylists and doctors in group practices having "no CEO"?!? Because it's a non-story that would waste readers' time. The cause & effect is obvious there.

>The idea is that you don't work for the company, the company works for you. It's applicable to consultancies, where everyone effectively goes and earns money on their own,

Yes, I agree. Katie's journalism omitted this critical detail. Therefore, her subsequent paragraphs with contrasting quotes from Drew Houston (Dropbox) and Meg Whitman (Hewlett-Packard) are idiotic comparisons. Dropbox/HP are not consultancies where workers pay a royalty fee to work there.

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