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210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

businessinsider.com

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Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#121

Post by 1123581321 »

keithpeter wrote: post #117
1123581321 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lead link can appoint people to roles, but the people have autonomy in that role. A manager has the authority to both appoint roles and micromanage execution. Also, there is a parallel to lead link called rep link who is appointed by the lead link's circle to check against bad decisions/behavior by the lead link.

Another way to look at 'micromanage execution' is as 'support and mentoring in the role' based on honest feedback on perceived performance. How do people get support for challenges?

Providing support and feedback is a role responsibility. There can be as many responsibilities and roles to fulfill them as the team needs. If a circle member has a need for support and they are not getting it, it gets brought up at a tension meeting and quickly resolved (new responsibility assigned, role assigned, person's role changed, whatever's needed.)

Edit: I forgot to add that anyone who perceives a person is not receiving support for their responsibility can raise a tension. It's not just the manager's and the employee's job.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#122

Post by Yizahi »

If it is something like on GE airplane engine plant in Durham I can understand this. But they do have managers, only less than usual.

If Zappos won't have managers at all then: Who will decide how much employees will be payed, and based on what data? Who will decide exactly what customers need and exactly what will be actually done and what won't be done or deferred? Who will decide who will be hired who will be fired? Who will decide in situations when one project requires something or someone from another? The list goes on...

If someone (or multiple people) does this then he is not very different from managers in my company and I bet they never even heard about Holacracy or Valve, Zappos and GE experiments in management.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#123

Post by qopp »

ValentineC wrote: post #87
sageabilly wrote: post #14

This sounds a lot like the flat structure they have at Valve, except at Valve they have had that since Day 1 and everyone is used to it. I can't imagine the headaches and the absolute confusion that would result from trying to take a traditional management tree and flatten it. It seems like by its very nature the kinds of people you hired when you had tiered management might not be able to easily transition to a flat…

There are articles on how Valve has "hidden management" cliques though [1]. I'm not sure if this was ever addressed by Valve itself. [1] http://www.develop-online.net/news/valve-s-perfect-hiring-hi...

It's implied/addressed in the employee handbook. Basically the studio doesn't have fixed roles but roles are allowed to naturally emerge around projects and may shift at any time.

I don't think they are against people assuming responsibility or managing work, they just want to be more dynamic about it.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#124

Post by Ecio78 »

bsg75 wrote: post #92
logicalmind wrote: post #22

I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, bu…

> It was unclear what his intentions were. When you don't know how to run a business, cut costs and call the result a profit. Then take the bonus for "hitting the target", and pull the golden parachute ripcord.

This. I was going to post a reply just to say that, but I couldn't have said it better..

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#125

Post by indymike »

velodrome wrote: post #34
basseq wrote: post #13

Thought experiment: ignore the holacracy angle and offer everyone in any company 3-months severance if they quit by a certain date. What percentage would quit? I wouldn't be surprised if the average was 10-20% and a vast majority of these people are taking advantage of what they see as a good deal irregardless of their feelings on holacracy as a management style.

What percentage would quit? The ones that could land another job by the quit date. They would essentially get a 3-month "bonus" for doing nothing. I would say this is only possible if the these people were looking to jump ship anyway.

How many people get a three month, paid vacation at any point in their life?

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#126

Post by bane »

I'm not sure how to gauge this. I think Holacracy may be one of the dumber pseudo-science management theories that's ever come out. If it works for Zappos I'll eat my hat I guess, but I have a feeling that all we'll hear about it is that "it's working great!" as the ship goes down in flames.

Holacracy and other ultra-flat org structures always share two features:

- It consolidates power in the people at the top (the people who do not participate in the flatness of the new structure)

- as social animal, humans will always naturally self-organize into de-facto hierarchies that may or may not be aligned with the needs of the organization

Prediction, the 14% that took the buyout are probably the ones that couldn't fit into the new clique driven de-facto structure and were kissing years of promotable work goodbye. These folks will likely be successful wherever they go. Meaning that the people left behind have either cemented a position in the new structure through force of personality (not competency) or are not otherwise employable elsewhere and will suffer as the assholes fight it out on the bridge.

Here's an employee review

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-The-Zappos-...

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#127

Post by zxcvvcxz »

Say what you want about the particular policy, but I'm glad Tony has the opportunity and authority to implement it. "Management by committee" is the best way of reverting to a non-spectacular mean. It's much better to have companies that have variance, i.e. larger organizations actually define a direction and do it, thereby taking risk.

Plus as an employee I'd be more inspired working with an actual leader, rather than a faceless bureaucracy. We got big co's for that.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#128

Post by keithpeter »

1123581321 wrote: post #121
keithpeter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at 'micromanage execution' is as 'support and mentoring in the role' based on honest feedback on perceived performance. How do people get support for challenges?

Providing support and feedback is a role responsibility. There can be as many responsibilities and roles to fulfill them as the team needs. If a circle member has a need for support and they are not getting it, it gets brought up at a tension meeting and quickly resolved (new responsibility assigned, role assigned, person's role changed, whatever's needed.) Edit: I forgot to add that anyone who perceives a person is…

"If a circle member has a need for support and they are not getting it..."

How does circle member recognise that they need support? What indicators/who provides feedback?

My (limited) experience as a manager was mainly about nurture/support/challenge of colleagues. We could not allow them to fail/fail to 'ask' for support because of implications for clients (we did not sell people shoes).

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#129

Post by dougmany »

tomjen3 wrote: post #101
jotux wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability or inability to describe an idea in simple terms has no relation to the validity of the idea. >If Zappos has a unique take on how to replace middle management, let's all hear it. I think their idea is in this book, mentioned in the article, that they asked all zappos employees to read: http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

>The ability or inability to describe an idea in simple terms has no relation to the validity of the idea. Maybe not in physics, but in politics and business it does - those fields like to seem more complex than they are so they fake it, which is much more difficult to do with simple language.

I disagree. I think we have more understanding of the physical world (physics) then we do the complex human interactions that make up society (politics) and the economy (business). To me the fact the latter fields are not well described alludes the them being more complex.
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