What do I mean by employee-run?
Well, it could mean that in the absence of ‘The Boss’, everyone simply carries on with their “usual or customary function“.
This would work for a while, but fairly soon, something different would happen, outside the usual or customary, and whoever has to deal with it would certainly find a way to do so.
So far, so good, but what happens when the next unusual thing happens? Or when it happens to a different person? A different solution is found. And again the next time.
Before long entropy has set in, and everyone is running their role their own way – or worse, arguing with each other about how to do it, or getting frustrated because the person before them has done it wrong, or become a bottleneck.
When I say I want everyone to be ‘A Boss’, I don’t mean this kind of boss – the one that micromanages, re-does people’s work, and generally makes everyone else feel frustrated, stifled and uncomfortable.
What the original Boss has is context, vision and a deep understanding of what the business exists to do for its clients, together with what needs to happen, when it has to happen and how it has to feel, to generate a delightful customer experience that keeps the business profitable.
When you get all of that out of one head and into a format that can be shared, learned, practised, followed, discussed and adjusted, you enable everyone to perform the role of Boss, you make them a co-Boss.
You could still let people carry on with their customary roles, with the advantage of the bigger picture behind them, or you can design new roles that deliver that customer experience better, more consistently.
Better still, you can re-organise the ‘business so that instead of sticking to ‘customary functions’, people do what the original Boss did when they first started – everything, from beginning to end – for their own set of clients. Only now, each team member knows what that boss had to learn over months and years of painful experiment, and can apply that knowledge with their own creativity and flair. They can step in to help each other, because they know what everybody else does. They can delegate parts of the process to each other because everybody knows the whole thing.
And as co-Bosses, they can collaborate to improve how the business makes and keeps its Promise to the people it serves. Because how to do that is also part of what comes out of the original Boss’s head.
In this way going ’employee-run’ becomes truly meaningful.
And scaleable.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
Ask me how.
