群龙无首的公司

你中意自己的上司吗？有时候，你是否觉得没有管理者的企业更有效率？一家瑞典公司对其管理构架做出了彻底地改变，他们把所有的管理者都“请走”，让员工们分担决策的责任及自由。

 

What would work be like if you had no boss? Imagine you could make all your own decisions and no one told you what to do.

 

One company decided¹ to find out if it could work. The staff at Crisp, a Swedish software consultancy, chose to get rid of their CEO and create a completely flat organisation². Having trialled several different management structures, the firm agreed to take the radical³ step of having no single leader.

 

First, they needed to establish what a CEO actually did. Then they shared those duties out amongst staff and board members. Employee Yassal Sundman told the BBC: "When we looked at it we had nothing left in the CEO column, and we said, 'all right, why don't we try it out?'".

 

Which is exactly what they did. And Crisp employee, Heinrik Kniberg, believes it's been a good move. He says the company can now act faster: "If you want to get something done, you stand up and start driving that". Kniberg also claims workers are more motivated. Crisp regularly measures staff satisfaction, and say they average over four out of five.

 

Any big decisions are made during the company-wide four-day meetings several times a year. They do still have a board: it's a legal requirement. But the board can be used as a last resort to resolve tricky⁴ issues.

 

So, if it's working out for Crisp, could this model become more widespread? Online retailer⁵ Zappos tried out a similar plan but had mixed results. Almost a fifth of Zappos staff decided to leave, and chief executive Tony Hsieh admitted that "self-management is not for everyone".

 

Founder⁶ of file-sharing service Dropbox, Drew Houston, believes that a leaderless structure is too chaotic⁷.

 

"Often infinite freedom like that can be pretty disorientating. It doesn't always feel good, because you no longer know what you're supposed to do, what's important and you're bumping up against other people," Mr Houston says.

 

So, what is the perfect balance? How do you keep accountability in a company without hierarchy⁸? Would you like to work somewhere with no boss?

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