Bad boss? Problem solved
We all know the feeling: The work has to happen, and it’s piling up.
But instead of your boss being a lifeline, they are a hindrance. Perhaps they slow decisions down with endless questions, or maybe, they simply aren’t available.
Either way, most of us have probably wished our managers would disappear.
At one Melbourne-based innovation consultancy, they actually did, at least on paper.
The decision to get rid of the bosses at Inventium was made by the company’s founder, Dr Amantha Imber.
Imber had been researching the idea of a ‘‘holacracy’’, a decentralised workplace where line staff members are empowered to speak and act, and roles are not defined by a job description.
The result was a system she calls Be Your Own Boss.
‘‘I came to the realisation that when you employ smart people who enjoy working autonomously, who have a lot of drive, that sometimes managers – even with the best of intentions – can get in the way and become bottlenecks,’’ Imber says.
She notes that the most highprofile company to go in the same direction is probably Zappos, from the United States.
The first step was to ‘‘fire’’ the existing managers, by taking away their management responsibilities – not, it should be noted, actually firing them.
Their reaction was surprising. ‘‘They were thrilled,’’ Imber says.
‘‘The type of people we employ doing the thing – and as is true with most organisations – they enjoy doing the thing they were employed to do. If you’re an innovation consultant here, you’re employed to be helping clients innovate more effectively. That’s the stuff they love.’’
Climbing the ladder at Inventium now involves taking on additional responsibility.
‘‘A more junior consultant would work with more junior to mid-level employees at client organisations, whereas someone with more responsibility would be working with senior leaders and executive teams,’’ Imber says.
Each project has a project lead, who, while not a manager, is empowered to give informal feedback on the team.
‘‘Whoever is leading [that project] has the power,’’ she says.
While Imber says productivity remains high and bottlenecks have vanished since the new system has been implemented, she says the Be Your Own Boss concept is not a panacea.
‘‘For people who aren’t selfdriven and don’t love autonomy, but like to be told what to do, managers give comfort.
‘‘But that’s not the type of people we employ here. We employ self-driven people who, when set a big goal, can bring in various people to speak to and run with that,’’ she says.
The autonomy now expected of every staff member means it’s more important than ever to get the right people on board.
Given that Imber is technically still the boss in a boss-less organisation, are there some things she wishes her former managers still took care of? Maybe not.
‘‘[Beforehand] if there was an unhappy employee, even if they didn’t report to me, that still kept me up at night … So it helped a little with my practical workload, but not my emotional workload.’’ –Sydney Morning Herald