The Zappos of Hardware? - Part 2

#16 The Zappos of Hardware? - Part 2

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.

Missed part 1? Read that one first by clicking here.

The Saent device. Perhaps the world’s first hardware brought to you by a self-managing organisation?

When people think of self-managing (Teal) organisations such as Zappos, many equal this with “Holacracy”. This is kind of like saying the term “search engine” equals Google. It’s kind of true, but at the same time it’s incorrect. Many Teal organisations indeed run on Holacracy, but you don’t have to implement Holacracy to build a self-managing organisation.

To “become” Teal, I foresee Saent will use some elements of Holacracy, but not all. Our challenge is different from most companies:

No revenue at this moment, so even the core team is not on permanent contracts yet.
We’re a remote team, distributed across the globe.

These reasons make implementing aspects of Teal challenging. For example, how can we set fees and salaries, if we currently don’t know how much cash we’ll have by the end of the year? But it also creates opportunity: we’re structuring the company like this from the start, so we can truly allow the entire team to shape the transformation and direction.

*Being pragmatic* In the end it all comes down to practicality for a small startup like us. We can’t setup a task force to study “how to transfer to Teal”, nor can we afford the company to lose focus and turn into a mess. We’ll need pragmatic actions to make this transition, open up the power of Teal and then improve as we go.

Here are the initial steps we have in mind:

I give up. Not the company, but my formal power. I will not be able to single-handedly hire nor fire anyone. Similarly I can not veto projects, nor any other decision for that matter.
Full transparency. To make well-informed decisions, all Saents get access to all company data at all times.
Advice and object. Any Saent can embark on whatever project they want, as long as they follow the advice and objection model; you don’t need consensus, you just need to listen to advice and address objections from peers.
Fees and salaries. As of July, everyone in the team will set their own fees and salaries through a process and rules we’re defining together.
Hiring. Any Saent can start the process of bringing onboard a new team member. Candidates will go through a similar advice and objection process, followed by a trial project.
Roles and tasks. Anyone is free to pick up roles and tasks as they see fit. A central overview will show who is handling what, like a constantly evolving job description.
Our purpose. Every action needs to serve the purpose of the organisation. We have a first draft of our purpose in this internal vision memo, but we’ll further refine and find Saent’s purpose as we go along.

Clearly the above still leaves blanks and raises other questions. But I trust we’ll be able to figure out the answers as we go along. You can be sure to read about our progress right here, unless of course the Saents decide otherwise!

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