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No bosses please, says this firm
No bosses please, says this firm. A world without bosses is possible, or at least that is the firm belief of companies like Zappos, the online shoes-and-more marketing firm that last April eliminated all managerial positions and handed over the reins of the business to its employees.
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The e-tailer Zappos is part of a small but growing corporate movement that says the absence of a hierarchical structure promotes the entrepreneurial spirit
A world without bosses is possible, or at least that is the firm belief of companies like Zappos, the online shoes-and-more marketing firm that last April eliminated all managerial positions and handed over the reins of the business to its employees. The e-tailer Zappos is part of a small but growing corporate movement that says the absence of a hierarchical structure promotes the entrepreneurial spirit among employees and stimulates collaboration, innovation and the flow of ideas.
Defenders of this trend champion management philosophies like "holocracy," a system in which the taking of decisions is divided among self-organised teams instead of being the province of the corporate structure's top echelons. Zappos started trying out holocracy with a small group of employees in 2013, and soon afterwards its CEO Tony Hsieh announced his intention of eliminating managerial positions altogether while letting the company's approximately 1,500 workers take the helm. Since then, the firm has launched "circles" to which are added employees depending on the kind of work they do and in which the roles and responsibilities of each, as well as the goals accomplished, are established in meetings.
The process has had its ups and downs – this month Zappos announced that 14 percent of its staff or slightly more than 200 employees have decided to leave the company – but even so the firm believes the advantages well outweigh the drawbacks. At any rate, the concept is picking up steam globally. Mark Young, co-founder of the British consultancy Future Considerations, said in a recent statement on BBC that large corporate clients have begun to test this method of decentralised decision-making in some of their divisions.
Among the big companies that have opted for a flat managerial structure is the British store chain John Lewis, owned by its more than 80,000 employees and which establishes policies in each division individually, based on a consensus among the employees. A council with representatives from each division establishes the general strategy of the company. According to The Wall Street Journal, some 300 companies have tried the holocratic system since it was first formulated around a decade ago.
By Teresa Bouza
