the challenge with a democratic company is that it takes a holistic approach. you can’t really do open-book salaries when performance measures aren’t also open book (so i know what everybody is making, but i don’t have any context for understanding those decisions. that = bad.)

i would suggest taking a look at this post about running a company without managers (make yourself unncessary, so you can be promoted, yay! ) but seriously, my buddy alex ran his company democratically and in that post describes how he did it. perhaps there’s something you can take, experiment with, and report back to the class (seriously, i’d love to hear how things work out…)

i will

Thank you Phyllis for concisely expressing what I wanted to say, that there is some social contract that accompanies democratic ideals and a democratic environment in a company or organization.

Kareem, I do agree with you in that ultimately, management is responsible for creating a democratic environment. And maybe we will see more of that in the future. As things stand now, my personal challenge would be how to inject more of that into a contemporary organization where I am lower down the food chain. Like Phyllis, while I love the notion of a democratic environment, I’m not sure how easy or practical it is to implement when it involves such a cultural shift in many companies or organizations. Now I’ m not saying that, because it’s difficult one shouldn’t pursue it, but I know how challenging it can be and understand why one might be inclined to get away from it all and just start from the ground up.

If I were to be really cheeky, what would round out your next post would be to answer, as a lower-level employee, how can I, I mean, one, gently suggest change into the system so that things do swing more democratically?

Maybe you can find someone to co-write that post!

Ray

Ray, I think your point about a social contract speaks to not only the trust that should exist between mgmt and their people, but also the need to have transparent systems in place that people can trust in to produce the right outcome.

Phyllis, I love that you share your real-world perspectives–thanks! Would love to hear more about how you dealt with rejecting ideas and the ensuing emotions.

Also, agreed re: responsibility to engage on both sides. If it doesn’t happen on the employee side, I have to put the responsibility with management: either they hired the wrong people, or they are providing reinforcement that tells employees that their feedback isn’t important. I’ve got a post on this coming up soon, would love your thoughts

Fantasic, well-researched post! As you know, I’m still on the fence about whether I believe there can be pure democracy in companies (particularly in larger ones)…but this post clearly lays out democratic principles I agree with whole-heartedly. There’s no question that Engagement, Explanation and Clarifying Expectations are key to motivating teams and gaining buy-in to decisions. I think executing those three principles is the practical difficulty.

I think Ray hit it right on. Time is one issue. It takes time (and patience) to explain, engage…and then deal with the emotions and rejection of ideas that often come from employees.

Even more important about Ray’s comment is that democracy in the workplace, as in society, is a contract involving all parties. Leaders must let people be involved, but with that comes a responsibility on the part of employees (which often doesn’t happent). This responsibilty is to treat leadership with respect, engage them in dialogue and ask questions to really understand - before judging the decision or outright rejecting it. Only when the entire team - leaders and employees - accept their responsiblities and stay open can this democratic decision-making process work. At least that’s my opinon.

Thanks for ENGAGING me in this discussion! Phyllis

Great post.

I think a great companion text to the Fair Process paper–and what would help explain the flip side of the dynamics in some situations–is “Beyond Reason” by Roger Fisher, another Harvard guy. (He’s the guy who wrote “Getting to Yes”.)

The thesis in “Beyond Reason” is that emotions play a role in negotiation–for both participants in a given relationship.

If I’d talked with your senior manager at ESPN, I also would’ve found it short-sighted had they told me that explaining decisions would encourage second-guessing. That said, if I guessed at the psychology behind the manager’s comment, one plausible explanation is that engineers–and I am very much one of them–tend to be aggressive with feedback, to the point where second-guessing is sometimes taken to be, or plainly is, wanton rejection.

I think if management knew that they could trust their workers to give them constructive feedback–and it is everyone’s responsibility to do something as simple as set the ground rules for such conversations–then we would see more transparency.

So what are the ground rules? In “Art of Project Management” and his presentation at ETech, I think Scott Berkun brings up good points with respect to creative thinking, or just problem solving in general. The line was, “Creativity/flow demands intimacy more than intellect”. And the way to achieve that is to borrow some ground rules from Improv comedy: the two most relevant ones, I think, are “Yes and…” (vs. “But…” or “No…”) and “Make the other guy look good” (the corollary being “Don’t make them look bad”).

So for example, if management shares rationale and data and the options they are considering, engineering must be willing to build upon those options, or at least offer constructive criticism and not dismiss them indiscriminately. And of course the converse holds. At the end of the day, workers don’t want to feel uninformed or excluded from decision-making, and managers don’t want to feel stupid or rejected outright for considering particular decisions.

I guess this is my long-winded way of saying: Fair process is great; in my mind, it spurs collaborative, creative problem solving that fuels success and makes people happy. To get there, the team needs intimacy, and workers should feel just as empowered as managers to make that happen.

Cheers,
Ray