Over 2.4 Billion Roubles invested. 100 companies involvement. Average yearly growth: 234%.

The profit margin has increased by 15%. Management expense fell under 7% of the overall salary expense. 83 new products launched by expanding into the new markets.

Strict hierarchical management model shined during the times of the industrial economy. They transformed the agrarian society, disciplined people into following the routines and fulfilling tasks. Now, this same model is destroying businesses.

people become irrelevant

As managers, we are overloaded with routine tasks. It becomes easier for us to just penalize our staff to force the results, and perhaps we try to avoid taking responsibility.

We only discuss any possible changes at the water coolers, mostly just to vent.

As facilitators, we often bury any initiative and support the status-quo, even as we fully see its shortcomings.

business is losing steam

There are no new ideas; or, they get dwelled on for years and then collapse in just days after trying. Best employees move on to other places of work where they could truly shine.

Even the owners become disinterested in their own business. The money is already made; the fatigue has settled in; it is rather hard to continue like that. The business does not work by itself, yet it’s inconceivable to just let it shutter.

We hire more and more of the managers and admins. We create this fake feeling of stability and being in control, while actually moving yet farther away from reality.

If you look at what is happening after the industrial revolution you’ll see there’s only one growth criterion. It is the readiness of young blood to take risks in business. We have this culture in the US, but it seems Europe mostly lost it. Great Britain used to be the leader of the industrial revolution, yet it is more like a leader of bureaucracy now. This is the result of the current educational system. There’s just too much education, and people are too afraid to take risks anymore.
Nassim Taleb

1903

Frederick Winslow Taylor publishes The Principles of Scientific Management. This paper established the vertical management structure based on the delegation of responsibilities. Here, an employee is viewed as a function.

There are only two main incentives to work: wages and fear of losing it.
Henry Ford

We don’t do parenting by force - that would not work. Instead, we invest in building the relationships. This approach pays off in the families. Instead of demanding some blind subservience, we show care about each other. It makes us - and people around us - happy.

when the relationships are broken, we instinctively:

We invent some plan. We avoid responsibility for the senseless job done. We attach people’s motivation to just how well they are following the plan.

We create fake stability based on the contracts and penalties, closeness to innovation, and keeping the status-quo.

We are forcing ourselves and other people around us to work too hard for the sake of the elusive effectiveness. The honest ones burn out first.

add more management

Digitization only increases the degree of paranoia and hyper-reporting. This is not helpful; instead, our helplessness increases and we are trying to meneuver ourselves out of it.

In a couple months, KPI starts looking just like another penalty system.

If the phylosophy of agility is not shared by all, it will be rejected. Best teams grow, work, and quit/move together with their leader.

Without fixing the concept, the relationships, and the meaning of the particular company, nothing will work: forget about the corporate culture, employee education, team-building, meetups, workshops, or any other buzz notions.

apply a band-aid

of the salaries are spent on supporting bureaucracy and hierarchy instead of something actually useful.

40%

In businesses employing 100 people and up, the spending on management grows faster than the company revenues.
Gary Hamel

only of the information from the top management will reach an employee at the bottom of the 4-level hierarchy.
Valery Razguliaev

34%

to the people

to your business

to yourself

it’s all in your attitude

we build businesses to do good and to become better

Business is a machine that uses people as resources.

Profit is a maximization of the effectiveness of operations.

taylor

faster moving markets, the pandemic, crisis of trust, windows of opportunities - the world is pushing us to re-evaluate our views

Every employee needs to be managed

High degree of uncertainty

Every employee deserves to be trusted

High degree of uncertainty

the changes occur when we realize what value can be created for our employees and clients

control

possibility

Instead of constant vetting, we give our employees freedom and responsibility to make their own decisions.

Instead of dictating the one and only solution, we leave the door open for a variety of options.

Instead of increasing management and supporting hierarchy, we support independent decisions and initiative with the teams.

Instead of demanding the maximum effectiveness and fulfilling the pre-set goals, we use the resources to start new projects and switch to the new directions.

Instead of viewing people as parts of the machine, we excite our employees with the evolutionary goal, thus creating a society of the like-minded.

Instead of long-term planning, we experiment while always keeping the eye on our evolutionary goal.

we value principles, not processes

trust

optionality

self-sufficiency

excessiveness

humanity

experimentation

there’s no single path to happiness. But we know the way and we are equipped to lead.