A company culture that may rock your world

THE OTHER DAY I happened across this article which describes a company culture that few would dare emulate.

It’s quite startling.

Their idea is to have a company where roles are incredibly fluid, where almost everything is transparent, and value is created through unrestrained creativity and teamwork.

Pure chaos, you’re thinking!

And you may well be right.  For your company, this might be absolute insanity.  But the point I wanted to make is that these people have bought into their structural model so deeply that they’ve bet the entire business on it.

I’ve talked about this before: deep values take courage.  If you’re headed out into the great wilderness to be significantly different, you’re going to have plenty of people trying to hold you back.  Industry analysts will tell you you’re nuts.

Until, of course, you show them that it can work.  Nobody thought you could get insanely rich off of a search engine.  Nobody thought Coca-Cola could move beyond soda pop.  And nobody expected full-length animated movies to become a powerhouse of innovation.

But that’s the kind of things that the courageous people do.