Salim Ismail is the author of Exponential Organizations and the founder of Open ExO, a consulting firm that helps companies and governments restructure for the future.
I am here for his vision: He wants to see companies and governments that are cooperative, decentralized into small groups with self-appointed leaders, entrepreneurial teams that vote on decisions together, and innovation teams that can iterate on big ideas and spur human advancements.
In other words, the exact kind of organizations we are studying here.
Watch the video from our discussion above or read an excerpt below
Elle: You study unique business structures like Haier and Valve Corporation. Could you talk about some of the more unique business structures are that you've seen?
Salim: Those are both good examples. Delving into Valve is fascinating. It's about 500 people. It's a software company out of Seattle. One of the characteristics in the book I wrote, Exponential Organizations, is autonomy and having as little structure in the company as possible. Valve has no CEO, no reporting lines, no job descriptions, no management meetings, no middle management of any kind. They literally operate like a beehive. If somebody spots a bug in the software, they grab three people, go and fix the bug, and disband. Each employee self-selects what they want to do. It sounds like a joke, except they get more revenue per employee than Microsoft.
They make an absolute fortune.
So you think, okay, that's great for a gaming company, etc. But we found a Canadian regulated bank called Tangerine Bank that operates like this—with no CEO, no reporting lines, etc. When they do an online promotion, everybody floods to the phone banks. When there's regulatory reporting time, everybody helps out the chief risk officer put all that reporting together. It turns out to be a really powerful model for letting people gravitate to where they have the most fulfillment. It allows for much leaner and more resilient organizations.
The epitome of this was what we saw with Haier, a Chinese appliance manufacturer.
