Is Peer Pressure Keeping you Warm?
If you ski, hike or live in or visit a cold climate, chances are you have been kept warm and dry by GORE-TEX(R)...
That product is made by a company called W.L. Gore https://www.linkedin.com/company/gore/.
They are a multi-national worth around $2.5 billion, lay claim to over 2,000 patents, have nearly 10,000 people, have been profitable in all 65+ years of their existence and much of the company works in a highly regulated (pharmaceutical) industry.
They do all of this without a management hierarchy.
How does that work?:
At Gore, the prosperity of individual workers is determined by the economic success of their small business units (less than 150 people).
This adult/adult or "peer pressure" based self-selection management model is also used in many successful Agile organizations.
W. Edwards Deming (arguably the grandfather of Agile) believed firmly that decisions need to be made closer to the knowledge, and Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland models the 'inverted' org chart with customers at the top, followed by those who deliver to the customer (front line workers) and servant-leaders all the way to the C-suite supporting those folks who make the customer happy.
What do you think? Could peer pressure supplement (or even replace?) hierarchical command & control management approaches?
* Adapted from "The Lean Mindset, Ask the Right Questions" written by Mary & Tom Poppendieck and Henrik Kniberg
That product is made by a company called W.L. Gore https://www.linkedin.com/company/gore/.
They are a multi-national worth around $2.5 billion, lay claim to over 2,000 patents, have nearly 10,000 people, have been profitable in all 65+ years of their existence and much of the company works in a highly regulated (pharmaceutical) industry.
They do all of this without a management hierarchy.
How does that work?:
- People choose their own work
- Leaders are those who attract followers
- Individual business units are small, self-governing and self-supporting
This adult/adult or "peer pressure" based self-selection management model is also used in many successful Agile organizations.
W. Edwards Deming (arguably the grandfather of Agile) believed firmly that decisions need to be made closer to the knowledge, and Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland models the 'inverted' org chart with customers at the top, followed by those who deliver to the customer (front line workers) and servant-leaders all the way to the C-suite supporting those folks who make the customer happy.
What do you think? Could peer pressure supplement (or even replace?) hierarchical command & control management approaches?
* Adapted from "The Lean Mindset, Ask the Right Questions" written by Mary & Tom Poppendieck and Henrik Kniberg
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