Company's salary and organization model is very similar some Finnish consultant companies. Vincit Helsinki at least.
No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
61–70 of 113 posts
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Until you have a bad contract and you get sued
the company does not have any assets so there's nothing to take from a court loss.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#63Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 prof…
But hairdressers are an outlier and have hideous medieval working conditions
If a hairdresser has "hideous medieval working conditions" than a underwater welder, oil rig worker, or a line cook must be in the seventh circle of hell.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#65To me, the most interesting example of a similar organisation (that I see rarely mentioned) is AES (an energy supplier) under Dennis Bakke, as described in Joy at Work [1]. As he puts it, every decision made at the top was a lost chance to delegate responsibility. He advocates the advice process: any person can make any decision, provided that they first get advice from anybody with expertise, and anybody who will be affected. Note that consensus is not required: one of the desired results is that, freed from the need to persuade others, you can focus solely on listening and understanding other points of view. You're hopefully better informed to make a decision, and others feel listened to (rather than feeling like their points aren't being heard as you're trying to persuade them).
Not only did AES have tens of thousands of employees, many of them joined by way of acquisitions of existing plants, rather than being hired by AES with their ethos in mind. That's not to say that everybody was a good fit (some people chose to leave given the choice), but that many stayed and eventually appreciated the change in management structure challenges the idea that self-management is only appropriate for a small proportion of people.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
the company does not have any assets so there's nothing to take from a court loss.
so you get sued as a partnership /individual which is likely to make them untractive to do business with
the LLP is limited liability, and unless in a case of criminal negligence that cannot be broken, so it's difficult to go after individuals. This model depends on working with people you trust not to be criminals, and as I mentioned above works only for relatively small consultancies where everyone can be trusted.
in terms of 'make them untractive to do business with', since the company was restructured in this way we worked with some of the worlds largest investment banks, big telecoms companies, and a ton of other parties that require a lot of paperwork. nobody seemed to mind that we're structured this way or find us unattractive to work with.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
so you get sued as a partnership /individual which is likely to make them untractive to do business with
the LLP is limited liability, and unless in a case of criminal negligence that cannot be broken, so it's difficult to go after individuals. This model depends on working with people you trust not to be criminals, and as I mentioned above works only for relatively small consultancies where everyone can be trusted. in terms of 'make them untractive to do business with', since the company was restructured in this way we…
I suppose that might work if you just a body shop rather than actually delivering something tangible.
I have had bad experiences with clients acting in bad faith destroying one of the companies I worked for
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 discriminat…
Acess to capital is the real killer
There are ways around that. Cooperatives can raise cash through subordinated capital campaigns (essentially an investor-backed loan at a capped rate of return) and other methods. Even capital-intensive industries like manufacturing have big, successful worker cooperatives operating in them.
Honestly, too many people make too big a deal out of the inability for cooperatives to trade ownership for cash. And yet bootstrapping a start-up is somehow still possible, acceptable, and laudable. And I won't even get into all the perverse incentives introduced by stock ownership and the secondary market.
The tax issue, though, is the deal killer. Being double taxed by the federal government on your income is a non-starter. Until worker cooperatives get treated the same as producer and consumer cooperatives, I can't see them taking off in the US.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Acess to capital is the real killer
There are ways around that. Cooperatives can raise cash through subordinated capital campaigns (essentially an investor-backed loan at a capped rate of return) and other methods. Even capital-intensive industries like manufacturing have big, successful worker cooperatives operating in them. Honestly, too many people make too big a deal out of the inability for cooperatives to trade ownership for cash. And yet bootstr…
Poptels experience in the UK shows the potential downside (I say that as an ex member )
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
the LLP is limited liability, and unless in a case of criminal negligence that cannot be broken, so it's difficult to go after individuals. This model depends on working with people you trust not to be criminals, and as I mentioned above works only for relatively small consultancies where everyone can be trusted. in terms of 'make them untractive to do business with', since the company was restructured in this way we…
I suppose that might work if you just a body shop rather than actually delivering something tangible. I have had bad experiences with clients acting in bad faith destroying one of the companies I worked for
one nice aspect of being a small company that doesn't chase assets is that you can choose who you work with, and don't have to accept jobs just to keep employees working. generally if someone is too much hassle that shows early on and we just don't work with them.