Managers Bleed Money

Have you ever thought “what does my manager actually do?” and what work would be like without managers?

Removing managers from the workplace might seem like a crazy idea, many will think it will result in chaos in the office, managers are seen as disciplinarians after all. Managers sound important to the business and their flashy cars and expensive clothes further reinforces their importance to the business and to society at large. However thanks to the beauty of technological advancement and the human desire to continuously improve, managers may not be needed much longer

So now lets imagine a company where:

• Compensation decisions are peer-based
• No one has a boss
• Employees negotiate responsibilities with their peers
• Everyone can spend the company’s money
• Each individual is responsible for acquiring the tools needed to do his or her work
• There are no titles and no promotions

Impossible? … A company that processes 25–30% of all tomatoes in the United States can tick each of those bullet points. The Morning Star Company has rebelled against the business community and the world at large by pulling off the impossible, the company is also much more profitable and efficient than its managing counterparts. So you may be wondering how do you get the more experienced employees doing the more complex tasks? well they use something called CLOU’s (Colleague Letter of Understanding) a colleague has to meet with other colleagues in their field and it gets determined what tasks that employee will have to do which ends up with more senior employees taking on the more complex roles and basic tasks given to recent hires.

Familiar with processes where someone who is “senior” has to sign off on lots of your tasks? is that person not always available?… can you imagine if a maintenance engineer needs an $8,000 welder, he orders one. When the invoice arrives he confirms that he has received the equipment and sends the bill to accounting for payment. Although purchasing is decentralized, it’s not uncoordinated. Morning Star colleagues who buy similar items in large quantities or from the same vendors meet periodically to ensure that they are maximizing their buying power.

Apparently no one at the Morning Star Company uses the term “empowerment” as the notion of empowerment assumes that authority trickles down — that power gets bestowed from above, as and when the powerful see fit. In an organization built on the principles of self-management, individuals aren’t given power by the higher-ups; they simply have it.

Now this works for tomatoes but can it work in the tech sector? If anyone of you have played a half-life game you have played a zero managed product, Gabe Newell of Valve has two objectives, 1. being in dank memes 2. Getting rid of managers. From the Valve employee handbook “A flat structure removes every organizational barrier between your work and the customer enjoying that work.” They want people who produce and can help juniors produce as they produce themselves, not someone who watches someone produce but hides behind unnecessary meetings and excel spreadsheets to cover up their inability to produce themselves.

This brings us to my last point in the software delivery world … are scrum masters managers in all but name? yes and no, some smart companies have success with a Dev taking on a scrum master role and then rotating who is the scrum master (within the dev team ) between sprints thus making a technical team self-managing however having a non-technical scrum master who's job is to “coach” and “facilitate dialog” is just a very expensive meeting scheduler.

If you want to save money and be like the best in the business, have a think about your managing situation and if changing it could work for your business, if you’re an employee like most of us, maybe its time to do things properly.