WSJ discusses bossless organizations!

And it's one of their most emailed stories, so it clearly struck an interest with readers.  Try this link or this one to read the whole story.

TED talk on the Bossless Organization

Back in June I had the opportunity to speak at TEDx Houston on the University of Houston campus.  It was a fantastic experience I really enjoyed.  Well, the professionally edited video of my talk is finally available: "What is Social Systems Architecture and why does it matter?"  It covers kind of a wide range of topics over 20 minutes, including material from my other blog, Houston Strategies:

1. The Opportunity Urbanism philosophy of cities and how Houston is an exemplar of that model
2. Branding Houston
3. A transportation/transit solution for decentralized cities (like Houston)
4. Organization 2.0 and the Bossless Organization model
5. Reforming K-12 education with empowerment

As a reader of this blog, #4 is probably what you're interested in, and that starts at the 13:37 point if you want to jump ahead.

And yes, if you're wondering, I broke all the TED talk rules by packing way too much into my 20 minutes (and apologies in advance for the frequent throat clearing; lesson learned: no ice water before speaking).  But I got some very positive feedback from the audience, so at least some people appreciated the difference from the usual TED talk model.  The video does a decent job of capturing the slides too (use the bottom right-side arrows to make it full screen), but you can also download a pdf of the slides here.

Enjoy.  As always, thoughts and feedback are welcome in the comments.

Gary Hamel writes about the Bossless Organization in the Wall Street Journal

Good nutshell summary - scroll down to the second item here.  Go here for more on the Bossless Organization winning the M-Prize.

Here's the excerpt:

The boss-less organization: From bosses to mentor/investors
A hack from Tory Gattis

How do you move from a “command-and-control” leadership structure to one focused on motivating and mentoring? That’s the challenge Tory Gattis, founder of OpenTeams, takes on in his hack. Gattis argues that organizations need to abandon the boss-subordinate hierarchy in favor a new relationship that brings internal “mentor investors” together with intrapreneurial teams. Like Silicon Valley’s angel investors, mentors would provide funding, offer advice and make connections—but wouldn’t directly manage.

Key elements of the hack: Employees pitch ideas for investment—for a small project aimed at operational improvement or something grander. There is a large network of mentor investors who are able to provide funding and project teams are free to shop their ideas around. Investors can form syndicates to back bigger, riskier investments. Over time, successful investors and teams would command a larger share of resources.

In an organization built around Gattis’ hack, every idea would have the chance to compete on an equal footing and no single manager would have the power to kill a great idea. That would be a huge spur for innovation and proactive change.

Self-Management Institute features the Bossless Organization

Not sure how long it will last, but it's up now (and here in their archives).  Morning Star is a real company of substantial size that has no bosses and no hierarchy.  There's a lot of other good material there too, so check it out.

The Bossless Organization wins the M-Prize!

Way back in May, I submitted the Bossless Organization concept to the Management Innovation eXchange community as an entry in their M-Prize contest.  The community was founded by Gary Hamel - ranked by the Wall Street Journal as the world's most influential management thinker - to pioneer Management 2.0.  Last night I received notification that I was one of six winners out of hundreds of submissions:

I'm so pleased to inform you that you've won an M-Prize for the Hack you contributed to the MIX:  The Bossless Organization: From Bosses to Mentor Investors

We combed through hundreds of contributions from MIXers from around the world and from every kind of organization—looking for boldness, originality, thoroughness, and the ability to inspire and instruct in equal measure. We certainly found those qualities in your contribution!

The official announcement of the winners is tomorrow morning (10am EST). The McKinsey Quarterly will publish an article about the M-Prize and will send an alert to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. We'll celebrate you and your fellow winners on the MIX home page, M-Prize page and in a series of blog posts from me and Gary Hamel. You'll also receive recognition on the MIX and the Quarterly's Facebook and Twitter streams and in a variety of our partner's forums (from the Wall Street Journal to opensource.com). We'll keep you posted as these announcements go live. And, of course, you are now a lucky ticket holder for the 2011 World Innovation Forum.

Judges for the M-Prize included CEOs and thought leaders such as Harvard professor and former Medtronic CEO Bill George, W.L Gore's CEO Terri Kelly, Whole Foods' Founder and CEO John Mackey, "Future of Work" MIT professor Tom Malone, and venture capitalist Leighton Read.  I'd say that's quite a list of endorsements!

You can read an extended blog post about the contest and the winners here: "Announcing the M-Prize Winners: Audacity, Imagination, Experimentation"

I have to say I was surprised and stunned to receive such an honor.  It is an incredibly exciting development, and one that I hope acts as a spark to get more organizations to experiment with management 2.0 concepts, including the Bossless Organization.  If the concept is something of interest to you, please drop me a line (tgattis (at) openteams.com), most especially if you might consider trying it inside your own organization.

Update: The McKinsey Quarterly has published their article on the M-Prize winners here, including a sidebar on the Bossless Organization.

Update 2: Gary Hamel summarizes the Bossless Organization in the Wall Street Journal here.  See the second item.

SIDEARM Presentation to the Business Complexity Conference

I partnered up with Howard Park at ModelAnswers to submit a paper to the Business Complexity & The Global Leader Conference held this week at Suffolk University in Boston.  The paper is titled SIDEARM (Self-organizing for Innovation, Decisions, Engagement, Action, and Risk Mitigation), and it includes the concepts of horizontal and vertical compression (visual complex systems modeling and the Bossless Organization, respectively).  They accepted it and Howard was able to attend and present it today with this slick Prezi presentation, while I attended via Skype.  It was well-received and generated some good Q&A.  Here's the abstract:

The BP oil spill disaster has shown us all too vividly the catastrophic consequences of excessive organizational complexity and the potential risks to corporate longevity. This paper sets out a model for both the horizontal and vertical compression of organizations to simplify them for enhanced risk mitigation, with additional benefits for innovation, decision-making, employee engagement and action. Horizontal compression involves complex systems visualization, modeling, and simulation for cross-organizational integrated solutions, leading to better decision-making, action, and risk mitigation. We also propose vertical compression of the bureaucratic, command-and-control hierarchy into a flat, entrepreneurial, market-based, self-organizing Bossless Organization. This model is inspired by the Silicon Valley and open source ecosystems to improve innovation, employee engagement, and adaptation to the rapidly changing business environment. Bosses are replaced by non-controlling Mentor Investors—modeled on the angel investors of Silicon Valley—who then sponsor self-organizing, intrapreneurial project teams. Linus’ Law of the open source movement also enhances risk mitigation (and therefore corporate longevity): “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” The combined horizontal and vertical compression components of the SIDEARM model can provide a powerful and sustainable competitive advantage to any organization.

If you have any questions or would like to explore the SIDEARM model for your organization, please don't hesitate to comment here or contact Howard or myself (tgattis (at) openteams.com).

Designing the Bossless Organization: From Bosses to Mentor Investors

I was able to make this presentation at the Self-Management Institute Symposium last week in California.  It was well received and generated a lot of dialogue.  So this week I registered at the Management Innovation Exchange (MiX) community and submitted a condensed version as a 'hack'.  Let me know what you think, over there or over here (although voting/rating over there is appreciated).  Thanks.