Where does power belong in the organisations of the future?

At Meaning 2015 next month we’ll be posing this question to a diverse panel of business leaders. The intention is to address (one of) the elephant(s) in the auditorium — can a company that has a shareholder ownership model also be ethical and progressive?

One of those panellists will be Dave Boyle — a community ownership expert who was instrumental in the founding of fan-owned football club AFC Wimbledon. Ahead of the event we asked Dave to share his views. And he didn’t hold back…

How do you view the relationship between power and ownership in business?

They’re like a Moebius strip — discussions about one inevitably turn into discussions about the other. For every Valve, which seems to have uncoupled power and ownership to a greater extent, there are 100,000 businesses which haven’t, and where there’s still an intimate relationship. Take newspapers — why did a newspaper hack a dead girl’s phone? Mainly because of the awful, twisted bullying power dynamics in newsrooms. And why did those newsrooms have that dynamic? Because they were owned by people who demanded exclusives, demanded revenge on their enemies and set the culture of power from the very top.

In wider society, we recognise that power and culture have a more complicated reaction with each other — the US President is powerful enough to blow the world up, but not powerful enough to stop kids getting shot with assault rifles. But most workplaces still operate on a command and control structure that’s more in keeping with Stalinism than the 21st century, and a big part of that is that ownership gives you the right to be the final decision-maker. Although we can find examples of non-hierarchical enterprises, the culture we’ve inherited owes more to who had the most well-supplied mad psychotic sword-wielding bastards than to who had the most participatory decision-making structure. That culture of hierarchy is reinforced at home, in sport, at school, and it slots very neatly into a paradigm of private for-profit ownership.

Can you describe a situation from your own work life that has brought you to this conclusion?

I used to work in football. We used to tell a story of a group of fans at a Scottish club who went to meet the owner and Chairman. The owner was happy to chew the fat for an hour and was fairly engaged in their opinions about the quality of the food on offer and the toilets. But when the fans started to ask about the club’s strategy, about transfers of key players to other clubs, about its youth development and so on, the Chairman abruptly called the meeting to a halt and said “Look lads, it’s like this - I own the club. Now fuck off”.

Many believe that a founder or strong charismatic leader is essential for keeping an organisation on mission. Is this compatible with the current trend towards more open leadership styles and democratic working practices?

The cult of leadership is one of the hoariest piles of toss going. I’m with Lao Tze on leadership; it is important, but the best leaders make themselves redundant. It’s such an easy thing to say, like politicians in opposition forever promising to distribute power when they’re in office but rarely getting around it it. We’ve also got corporate legal structures which actively work against it, as many worker co-ops find; before you get the Robin Dunbar view on how many people should be involved in decision-making, the law wants to know who’s name is above the door. Strong leadership is one of those things which Very Serious People know is absolutely necessary, until it turns out it’s not at all. People use the metaphor of a conductor, until you point out that there are orchestras without conductors, at which point they decide that just because it works in practice doesn’t mean it can work in theory.

Is a focus on employee wellbeing merely a means to greater productivity and therefore profit for shareholders?

A cynic would say that Gabe Newton has found a great way to enable brilliant people to make him even richer than if he were over their shoulders all day. Seriously, the key word is ‘merely’. There’s a relationship between this style of workplace and the bottom line, just as Napoleon said that the most important thing in any battle, more than equipment, strategy or brilliance of generals, was the morale of the army.

That said, I see this as the thin end of a wedge; once you accept people in the workplace are worth treating well enough to care about their wellbeing, it’s hard for you to maintain that they have no involvement in the profit-sharing or ownership.

If you think (as I do) that a large part of the current capitalist dynamic depends on a separation of people in to the Ubermensch and the damned, giving the damned humanity and agency is more than merely being nice; it’s a political act with systemic implications. It’s hard to maintain a system of deep and abiding inequalities of power and wealth without some sense that those doing better out of that state of affairs are somehow worthier or better than those on the other side of the tracks. It’s all post-facto rationalisation, sure, but just as strategy gets eaten for breakfast by culture, rationality gets eaten by emotion and so something as banal as thinking nice things about people is a political act. The problem is the time taken for this realisation to percolate into meaningful action; the world is full of memoirs by senior people evincing a view of the way to liberate human potential and talent that they were unable or unwilling to act on when they actually had agency to make a difference. That’s what’s good about the wave of start-ups where people are recognising this at the start of their organisational development rather than on their death bed.

What is the role of unions in the 21st century company?

It depends on what the 21st century company is. For the majority of the human race, dreams of autonomy, holocracy, wellbeing and workplace fulfillment remain light years away; First World solutions at best. Most of the things that underpin worker autonomy and power have come from collective organisation and solidarity, and we’re far too far away to say their work here is done. Many of the things we bemoan as evidence of an impoverished and weak society are a result of the decline of the power of unions as a countervailing force to the untrammeled power of the market (which is to say the ability for the best to be undercut by the less good to be undercut by the worst, as Churchill noted). I think in a post-capitalist, autonomous world we’ll need something rather different. Until then, in a workplace where you enjoy some power but not ownership, you’re still vulnerable; the Whig view of history isn’t always the case, as Cabaret makes tragically clear.

Hear more from Dave and his fellow panellists at Meaning 2015 on 12 November. They are Jack Hubbard: people-focused entrepreneur, Carole Leslie: employee ownership expert, and Tarun Gidoomal: MD of NextJump — a company who are world-renowned for their culture.

Meaning is the annual gathering for people who believe business can and must be a force for positive change in our dynamic and volatile world.

At Meaning you’ll connect with people who feel the same way. Together, you’ll be inspired by pioneers who are doing things differently and with ideas from the edges.

Our speakers are international thinkers and doers from business, academia and activism, each bringing an individual perspective on the challenges and opportunities we face.

Meaning 2015 is happening on 12 November in Brighton, UK. Find out more via www.meaningconference.co.uk. Or follow us on Twitter for news and content.