BBC reports
Do you really need someone to tell you what to do at work? Three years ago, Swedish software consultancy Crisp decided that the answer was no.
The firm, which has about 40 staff, had already trialled various organisational structures, including the more common practice of having a single leader running the company. Crisp then tried changing its chief executive annually, based on a staff vote, but eventually decided collectively that no boss was needed.
Yassal Sundman, a developer at the firm, explains: "We said, 'what if we had nobody as our next CEO--what would that look like?' And then we went through an exercise and listed down the things that the CEO does."
The staff decided that many of the chief executive's responsibilities overlapped with those of the board, while other roles could be shared among other employees. "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?'" says Ms Sundman.
Because they are all in charge, workers are more motivated, [says Henrik Kniberg, an organisational coach at the firm]. Crisp regularly measures staff satisfaction, and the average is about 4.1 out of five.
Last March, VentureBeat said
Crisp, a boutique consultancy company in Sweden, is made up of approximately 30 people, but none of them are truly "employees". They have zero managers; not even a CEO. Decisions are made through consensus, and instead of relying on some manager to allocate tasks, Crisp developed its own protocol detailing the chain of responsibilities when a new task appears.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2017, @01:51AM
The "almost" in that statement bothers me.
I would like to see an actual example of a top-down something which happens there.
TFA mentions that they are required (by incorporation law, it appears) to have a board of directors.
It isn't said, but it seemed to me that that is made up of Worker-Owners who were democratically elected and that it has no one from outside the operation sitting on that.
As such, "top-down" doesn't seem to apply.
None of the 30+ consultants are actually employed
Exactly. There are no "employees".
The term which applies is Worker-Owner.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]