Self-Management Under Pressure
#17 Self-Management Under Pressure
(or “The Zappos of Hardware? - Part 3”;\
This series is about what I’m learning, observing and experiencing while building my startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 500 words.
It’s one thing to declare yourself a self-managing Teal organisation in the calm before the storm. It’s quite another to stay put while you’re in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign, with a long way to go towards your $100k goal.
Just a few weeks ago, we switched to being a self-managed organisation. No bosses, no job titles, no traditional CEO-power for me. Eventually people will decide on their own roles, don’t have to get approval for expenses and can even set their own salaries.
Under this new structure, we’re building a hardware product, developing a software app and have launched an Indiegogo campaign. All of this while working as a distributed team, spread out across the globe in different timezones.
So how is it going?
Well, the salary thing was a bit of a disaster.
Being my optimistic self, we took the hardest topic (set your own salary) to launch into self-management. We opened up the discussion without any rules nor guidelines in place. This didn’t work.
It wasn’t that everyone asked for too much. Quite the contrary. Since we’re running on an initial seed investment, all Saents were afraid to ask for too much, effectively cutting out someone else. And without clear guidelines, the discussions were endless; we talked about nothing else for two days.
*No to anarchy* We quickly concluded we did need rules, just different ones than before. For now we’ve settled on this solution:
- People make a proposal to me (one-on-one).
- I give feedback (which they don’t have to incorporate).
- This proposal gets presented to the rest of the group for objections.
Not perfect yet, but already quite different from a normal salary negotiation process.
Then we launched our crowdfunding campaign…
The Saent button and software in action, top-down view.
To my surprise, so far we’ve only had a few minor hiccups in terms of execution. Things are happening more fluidly than before, even though we’ve still barely defined any rules and guidelines (because we’re so busy with our campaign).
*Seek feedback, not approval* Nobody is waiting for my approval (which is great, with half of the team working while I sleep). Everyone feels free to take initiatives and set their own priorities. And they all gladly ignore dumb ideas coming from me (which is great).
The main principle we’re operating on is that you need to seek feedback from those affected by your decision. People can put in objections (which you need to consider), as opposed to having to seek approval. This is a subtle but important difference, as it speeds up decision making and creativity.
*The score so far* I’m surprised how everything keeps progressing organically amidst turbulent circumstances, even though we’ve only implemented 2% of Teal best-practises. It might help that we tried to tackle the hardest issue (salary) first, so everything else now seems like a walk in the park. And I’m sure working with people used to doing freelance work is an advantage; they’re naturally more independent and proactive. Whatever it is, the experience so far has been amazingly positive.
I’m sure we have a long way to go and how we’re currently running the company wouldn’t scale. But we’ve jumped off the cliff, are on our way and are not planning to turn back!
Ready to give Saent a try?
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