En Route to Saenthood:
#15 The Zappos of Hardware? - Part 1
This series is about what I’m learning, observing and experiencing while building my startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 500 words.
A few weeks ago, in preparing the first remote workers meetup in Beijing, I had a long conversation with Eric Khun. He is an engineer at social scheduling app Buffer.
Eric can work whenever and wherever he wants. He can also decide completely by himself which tasks to take on. He decides his own salary together with colleagues. He can also see exactly what they earn and is able to observe the revenue of the company in real-time.
Sounds crazy? It gets even crazier. You can see all these things too, right here on Buffer’s transparency board.
Buffer is not alone. Companies of all shapes and sizes are being run on similar principles of self-management and transparency. Zappos, Semco Partners, Whole Foods, Medium, Morning Star and Gore-Tex are just some examples of organisations who are thriving without traditional hierarchies and managers.
Why does this matter?
I’ve been in “managerial” roles for almost seven years now, several of which involved me being at the top of a little pyramid. Yet I always felt many aspects of that structure were counter-productive.
For one, the top-down model assumes the CEO always knows best. People are given some bandwidth within which to operate. Anything out of the ordinary first has to travel up. This not only stifles creativity but also slows everything down (you need “sign off” for anything unusual).
This problem gets exponentially bigger in large organisations. But even within a small team, the opinion of the founder carries more weight in every matter by default.
Of course there might be decisions in which the founder’s voice should be decisive. In our case, I probably have the clearest idea about why Saent matters and how it should operate within the space of personal productivity. But when it comes to growth hacking, PR, accounting and hardware, my opinion should matter much less, if at all.
Power at the top
Even if they’re the nicest people in the world, those at the top hold the power to fire or promote. This unexplicitly carries through in each interaction. In every team I’ve worked in, even a casual remark from the CEO can shift the balance on an idea or decision.
To counter this effect, power needs to be redistributed across the team. But that’s just one aspect of a self-managing organisation. As Eric from Buffer mentioned to me, he gets to determine his own work and salary. New people are hired by the team, not by one boss. And perhaps most importantly, a lot of self-managing organisations put their purpose and people first, not profits (though this doesn’t mean they don’t aim to be profitable).
We’re seriously looking at turning Saent into a self-managing company. But how could that ever work? In the upcoming part 2, we’ll explore practical aspects and how we might implement those.
Ready to give Saent a try?
Download the free app now to start working smarter, being more focused, and developing better work habits.
Or buy your Saent button (now shipping!) with a 12-month subscription to the Premium Saent app included!
