Building an Innovation Democracy: No Bosses, but Plenty of Leaders

Walk around the halls at Gore, or sit in on meetings, and you won’t hear anyone use words like “boss,” “executive,” “manager,” or “vice president.” These terms are so contrary to Gore’s egalitarian ideals that they are effectively banned from conversation. Although there are no ranks or titles at Gore, some associates have earned the simple appellation “leader.” At Gore, senior leaders do not appoint junior leaders. Continue to read Building an Innovation Democracy: No Bosses, but Plenty of Leaders to learn how leaders are selected at Gore.

Building an Innovation Democracy: A Lattice, Not a Hierarchy

This post is the second part about Bill Gore – The Management Innovator. The first part is the post Bill Gore: Management Innovator.

At first glance, Gore seems to bear some of the same structural trappings of other big organizations. There’s a CEO, Terri Kelly,who earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware and has spent her entire 23-year career at Gore. There are four major divisions, a broad array of product-focused business units, and the usual gamut of companywide support functions. Each of these organizations has a recognized leader at the helm. Continue to read Building an Innovation Democracy: A Lattice, Not a Hierarchy

Bill Gore: Management Innovator

This was the challenge that faced Wilbert (“Bill”) L. Gore in 1958 when, after a 17-year career, he left DuPont to strike out on his own. Gore dreamed of building a company devoted to innovation, a company where imagination and initiative would flourish, where chronically curious engineers would be free to invent, invest, and succeed. Over the next several decades, Gore’s vision took shape in the form of W.L. Gore & Associates, a company built around a set of management principles diametrically opposed CO much of modern business orthodoxy. Bill’s legacy is an organization that today generates $2.1 billion in annual sales and employs more than 8,000 employees in 45 planes around the world. Continue to read: Bill Gore: Management Innovator

Whole Foods: Anything Worth Doing is Worth Measuring

It’s one of the most popular aphorisms in business: what gets measured gets done. Whole Foods takes that simple proposition to remarkable extremes — and then shares what it measures with everyone in the company. Mackey calls it a “no-secrets” management philosophy. “In most companies,” he says, “management controls information and therefore controls people. By sharing information, we stay aligned to the vision of shared fate.” Learn more here.

Democracy & Discipline at Whole Foods – All work is teamwork

Everyone who joins Whole Foods quickly grasps the primacy of teamwork. That’s because teams — and only teams — have the power to approve new hires for full-time jobs. Store leaders screen candidates and recommend them for a job on a specific team. But it takes a two-thirds vote of the team, after what is usually a 30-day trial period, for the candidate to become a full-time employee. This hiring referendum affects the behavior of everyone involved in the process: the job candidate, the team, the store team leader. More….

How Whole Foods Market deals with the management challenges

Whole Foods’ innovative management model (see here, here and here) has allowed the company to successfully address several of the next-generation challenges:

Challenge: How do you empower people by managing less while retaining discipline and focus?
Whole Foods answers: Give employees a large dose of discretion; provide them with the information they need to make wise decisions; and then hold them accountable for results.

Challenge: How do you create a company where the spirit of community binds people together?
Whole Foods answers: Manage as if you really believe that the interests of stakeholders are interdependent; create a high degree of financial transparency; and limit compensation disparities.

Challenge: How do you build an enlarged sense of purpose that merits extraordinary contributions?
Whole Foods answers: Make the pursuit “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet” as real and tangible to employees as the pursuit of profits.

By Gary Hamel, Via The Future of Management (2007)

Three lessons from Whole Foods Market for Management Innovators

Gary Hamel, in his book entitled “the Future of Management” has listed three essential lessons that every company should be learned: (i) Principles matter; (ii)The biggest obstacle to management innovation may be what you already believe about management; and (iii) Inspired management innovation can help to resolve intractable trade-offs. Learn more about these lessons here.

Whole Foods Market: A Contrarian Management Model – Purpose

Gary Hamel wrote about Whole Foods Market business model in his book “The Future of Management”: “What ultimate binds Whole Foods’ 30,000 plus associates into a community is a common cause-to reverse the industrialization of the world’s food supply and give people better things to eat.” Explore here.

Whole Foods Market: A Contrarian Management Model – Trust and EquityWhole Foods Market: A Contrarian Management Model – Trust and Equity

According to Gary Hamel (via The Future of Management), putting so much authority in the hands of associates requires that top management trusts them to do the right thing for the business. Conversely, team members will stay motivated over the long term only If they trust top management to let them share in the bounty of their own productivity. Whole Foods builds that trust in a variety of ways. Moreover, the folks at Whole Foods have worked to build a company that feels more like a community than a hierarchy. Read more here…

Whole Foods Market – A Contrarian Management Model: Freedom and Accountability

Gary Hamel writes about Whole Foods Market in his book “The Future of Management”: “Whole Foods believes that critical decisions, such as whom to hire, should be made by those who will be most directly impacted by the consequences of those decisions.” Read more ….