Unboss the company culture
By Sidsel Lindsø - CEO of ExploCrowd
“The traditional hierarchical management approach has been predicted to disappear so many times, and yet again, it surprisingly manages to survive all of the doomsday prophecies.”
When I read this comment in the Danish business newspaper “Børsen” by Henrik Elsig Andersen recently, it made me smile. His words pinpoints that we might not have come as far as we would have liked.
For years and years, hundreds and maybe thousands of books have been written about the future of work and how to create agile businesses that can adapt fast to the disruptive changes in the market. With the increased pace companies will have to reinvent themselves in order to stay relevant to their customers and the society. And yet, the traditional management systems prevail, most likely because of habit.
That’s the way we have always done it, basically since Industrialisation 1.0, and our systems have adapted to this. Being in the middle of Industrialisation 4.0, it does not necessarily mean that the traditional way is the most efficient way to run a business. And the question is: Are we, with our Scandinavian trust-based societies, missing out on opportunities that lie right in front of us? Are we really using all of the potential of our most valuable asset, the people?
When we started ExploCrowd, our aim was to do things a bit differently: Building a company culture facilitating speed and being able to move fast when opportunities would arise. In order to do this, we chose a different path.
This has been recognised by people studying us from the outside over the years. But even though they have noticed ‘something different’ about us, they have not been able to put the finger on exactly what the difference is. There is nothing we want more than to share what works for us, because we think it works really well.
Imagine if someone got inspired by our story and changed their own work life to the better. Nothing would make us happier!
As we have described before in several blog posts, and also reflected on our company website describing our philosophy, we share a lot with the authors of the book “UNBOSS” in terms of ideas on leadership philosophy. To us, these ideas create the foundation for how you can run a competitive business that can adapt quickly to rapid changes and business opportunities that the future brings.
The balloon I actually got from my ExploCrowd co-workers for my birthday.
The philosophy was an inspiration when we originally came up with the idea for the company, and recently we wanted to review how far we have come in terms of our own development as a team and a company and compare us with what was originally described in “UNBOSS”.
The authors of “UNBOSS” have quite an efficient way of communicating how things can be done differently than the traditional ways. This is presented in a series of tables describing the boss vs unboss Person, the Organisation, Employees, the Work, Communication and even the Human Relations department of the future. Our team has gone through what is most important to us in the way we work together, with our partners and clients, and you can see the results in the four pictures below.
In our view, the traditional way leaves too much potential locked within potentially outdated structures of power, processes and procedures that must be followed, as we have previously explained in this piece (in Norwegian) – translated to English here.
With our different approach we unleash the potential of our experts and let our partners shine as they deserve, but also let the young talents make a significant difference, and all create value.
You might think that it is easier for a new company that has a unique opportunity to build the culture from scratch? It might be easier, but large organisations can indeed reinvent themselves, as long as the will is with the people at the helm. This has been demonstrated amongst others by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis who had a total revenue of USD 48.7 billion in 2020, increased by USD 1.3 billion compared to the year before. With CEO Vas Narasimhan at the helm, the culture and their purpose soaks through every bit of their communication, and that is a great inspiration.
We truly believe that company cultures based on these principles create space for creativity, enabling more innovative ideas. If you ask us, this is what fuels the future – both for companies and clients.