The Boss less office

An article for HR MESH – The monthly e-magazine by the HR Forum@SCMHRD

THEME: Creativity in HR

Submitted by:

Sunil Pandey
PGP1 Mob: 9920302951

Batch 2012-14

GOA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

The Boss less office: Future Reality or Dream.

‘Every organization has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does.’ Peter Drucker

Are you angry at your boss? Be boss less...

I have always loved my bosses, but most of the time we all have some or other kind of problems with our bosses. Imagine work environments where there are no bosses and no titles, where employees decide among themselves which projects to pursue and which people to hire and fire, and where each employee is responsible for deciding his or her own salary, raises and vacation days. Sounds different and quiet awkward but this is the recent talk of town of an innovation in HR.

The boss less vision is being discussed on both theoretical and practical terms. Some see it as the democracy of the office place. E.g.: Valve Corp, a videogame maker in Washington State, has been boss free since 1996. It also has no managers and no official project assignments. How do the 300 employees coordinate their work? They self manage: they recruit each other for worthwhile projects, and they roll their desks around (all are on wheels) to reconfigure their work teams as they wish. Salaries and raises are set by committees of your peers. At Valve, with each project one person tends to emerge as the de facto leader, but they’re not assigned from on higher authorities.

And then there are some companies who gave employee partially boss free environment. For e.g.: At Gore, they tell employees that ten percent of every week is their own creativity time, to manage as they wish. Any company could experiment with something similar: Ninety percent of each week you’ll work on your managed project, and the other ten percent, work boss free. But then: What if everyone prefers working boss free?

But every approach has its own pros and cons, so let’s discuss how the work culture will be altered with this new creative approach.

Benefits of boss less work culture:

A flat organization allows employees to work more creatively, more productively and more independently, and feel a greater stake in the success of the company. A boss less office is a very democratic way of thinking about work. Everyone takes part in the decisions, so it's not being directed from above. The idea is that the people doing the actual work probably have a better sense of how to get it done than their bosses do. It's a matter of distributing the expertise to where the expertise actually lies.

In addition to encouraging creativity, boss less environments also increase efficiency. For e.g. Southwest Airlines, which allows baggage clerks the freedom to decide how to solve a customer's complaint on the spot, without having to say, 'Wait while I consult my boss.' In a service-oriented environment, it can foster greater customer satisfaction.

When employees have a degree of self-management, and therefore a greater sense of accountability, it means their motivation is based not on their standing with the manager or boss, but because they identify with the work. Boss less environments work best in organizations where creativity is absolutely essential. Yoplait, for example, has a history of relying on self-managing teams charged with launching new flavors and products, one of the more creative sides of the business.

A substantial body of research shows that humans have an innate need for autonomy. They don't like being micromanaged. One of the things self-management helps employees do is [feel] a degree of control over what they do. Corporations apparently have caught on, he adds, citing surveys showing that while less than 20% of Fortune 1,000 companies had team-based structures in 1980, that number rose to 50% in 1990 and 80% in 2000.

Problems of boss less work culture:

Human nature suggests that someone will most likely rise to the forefront of any group and, even without the title, assume the role of leader, not always in a helpful way. An office with no boss or manager overseeing the work flow can be disastrous. Everyone became a monitor, constantly checking up on their fellow employees, even setting up a board to track what time people came into work and when they left. Rather than having one manager you could ignore, you have all your colleagues on your back all the time. The peer pressure can be very tough. The big challenge for a boss less company is the way decisions get made. The speed of decision-making is often slower if you need consensus. If the decision is an obvious one, then sharing common values will help the group arrive at the right conclusion; if not, eventually one individual must step in and decide.

A boss less office also raises the question of how introverts will fare when the group dynamic requires people to step up and participate in decision-making.

Outcome:

Lot of organizations has been making decisions without a clear hierarchy for a long time. It would not be surprising if boss less environments become the way of the future, but I think they can work in some situations. We like to think of ourselves as living in a democratic society, with the idea that everyone is represented, that everyone has the right to have a say and be heard, so how do you create economic structures that can leverage that? People have experimented with it forever, with varying degrees of success.

Source: Forbes Magazine, Aug 2012

Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2012

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