An uncommon common sense approach
Our 5 Core Un-Management Principles
Our 5 Core Un-Management Principles
Treat people like adults. Give them the autonomy and flexibility to do their job. Expect them to take responsibility for results, and they will.
1
Provide Meaningful Work
- Make a difference, improve lives. It’s not just about making money.
- Keep the big picture in mind to drive all decision making. Focus on what benefits all three: clients, team members and the company.
- Encourage people to bring their full selves, including their sense of humor, to work.
- Apply the company’s core values in every aspect of work.
2
Create the Conditions for Success
- Ensure alignment at the team and project level.
- Clarify expectations. Set clear and measurable goals.
- Manage projects not people.
- Use communication systems that put everyone on the same page.
- Be open and transparent in sharing information about any and all work, limiting access only to personal and other confidential information.
- Give everyone the training and tools they need to be outrageously successful.
- Train them in setting priorities.
- Use time blocking and eliminate multi-tasking or switch-tasking.
- Provide access to workshops, conferences and or training that can expand their expertise.
- Compensate people fairly for their role and their region.
3
Focus on Continuous Improvement
- Challenge the status quo
- Review what’s working weekly, and make sure to do more of it. Then figure out how to do it even better tomorrow.
- Review what’s not working to identify what to stop doing and what do start doing. What worked yesterday may not work today.
- Identify systems solutions
- Celebrate mistakes. Set aside time each week to discuss mistakes and come up with ways to avoid them in the future.
- Avoid using blame and focus on systems improvements.
- When a problem is identified, find the root cause, get input from the team and make the system changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
- Encourage team members to come up with ideas to improve the company weekly. Appropriate ideas are implemented immediately.
- The entire team uses data to drive decisions and accountability
- Measure everything to uncover processes that are no longer working
- Change what’s not working and measure the new strategy.
- Coach team members to follow their interests and develop new skills and expand their bandwidth within the context of company goals.
4
Minimize Hierarchy
- Enable team members to think and act like the CEOs for their areas of responsibility.
- Push decisions down the chain as far as possible.
- Get rid of hierarchical titles like manager, vice president, etc.
- Minimize levels within the organization.
- Allow those who are capable of leading to lead, no matter what their position.
- Rotate the responsibility of leading meetings so everyone develops leadership and facilitation skills.
- Focus on teamwork and internal and external collaboration.
- Use project management and communication tools to keep meetings to a minimum.
5
Provide Autonomy & Expect Responsibility
- Hire self-motivated people and do everything possible to avoid un-motivating them.
- Expect people to take 100% responsibility for getting their work done.
- Trust people to do the right thing for the company.
- Encourage people to live a balanced life, stay healthy and take advantage of flex time to fit work around exercise, family, friends and fun.
