Leadermorphosis

Isaac Getz is a business philosopher and professor at ESCP Business School, and the co-author, with Brian Carney, of Freedom, Inc., the book that gave us the idea of the liberated company and sparked a movement that included 500 organisations at its peak.

We talk about why a liberated company is a philosophy rather than a blueprint, and what inner work this asks of a leader. We also cover why liberated companies tolerate tries rather than errors, why you uncover your values rather than invent them, and why none of this is laissez-faire.

Resources:

• Freedom, Inc. book site

• "The rarest commodity is leadership without ego" TEDx talk by Leadership Without Ego book co-author and liberating leader Bob Davids

• "Liberating leadership: How the initiative-freeing radical organizational form has been successfully adopted" seminal California Management Review article

• "The liberated company theoretical concept: current issues and the intimidating complexity of organizational design" Journal of Organization Design article

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 55 with Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organisations

• Ep. 41 with Michael Y. Lee on what the academic world is learning about decentralised organisations

• Ep. 12 with Karin Tenelius, co-founder of Tuff

Michael Bungay Stanier returns to Leadermorphosis, and this time we get right into the messy, human heart of work: our relationships. Michael is the author of the bestselling The Coaching Habit and, most recently, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. He is on a mission to un-weird the soft stuff, to make better working relationships something we build on purpose rather than leave to chance.

We talk about why the quality of your working relationships is so crucial for happiness and success, and about what Michael calls the Best Possible Relationship: one that is safe, vital and repairable. We get into how to upgrade our relationships, including how to have healthy conflict, as well as misunderstandings of psychological safety.

Resources:

• Check out the 10th anniversary edition of Michael's book The Coaching Habit

• The Change Signal episode with Liane Davey about why we need more conflict, not less

• The Enemies Project YouTube channel we mentioned

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 68 - my first conversation with Michael about being more coaching

• Ep. 45 with Prof. Amy Edmondson

• Ep. 100 with my colleagues from Tuff about pebbles conversations and some of our other practices

Chorus was born out of the merger of three traditionally structured care organisations in 2017, but today its 1,000 employees work in 20+ self-managing, local teams. Strategic Coach Angela Williamson share this remarkable transformation story and how inner development – and not just structural development – has been key. Chorus began as an experiment asking the question: "What if the people closest to the work were trusted to make most decisions themselves?"

Resources:

• Corporate Rebels' blog about Chorus and their organisational model

• Chorus website https://chorus.org.au/

• Mia Mingus on the Nothing Never Happens podcast talking about reimagining accountability

• My blog about the tyranny of the inner boss

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 69 with Jos de Blok, founder of Buurtzorg

• Ep. 26 with the nurses at Buurtzorg

• Ep. 96 with Xavier Costa about love in self-managing organisations

• Ep. 67 with Andy Brogan and Helen Sanderson about Confirmation Practices

• Ep. 85 with Bernadette Wesley about Deliberately Developmental Organisations

If you ask employees at EPPO who the CEO is, they will answer: there is no CEO! In this episode, Rodrigo Ventre shares the story of transforming his father's company into a self-managing organisation. We talk about his lifelong passion for human development and the increasingly radical experiments he has encouraged in the domains of business, culture, and governance.

It was not an easy journey, but today EPPO is celebrated in Brazil for its innovative organisational model and being an inspiring place to work. This episode is a warts-and-all story including insights from a systems level, but also from Rodrigo as a father and a human being.

Resources:

• The EPPO case study from INSEAD

• More about Target Teal in Brazil (where you can also learn more about Organic Organization or O2)

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 70 with Ravi Resck on the future of work movement in Brazil

• Ep. 41 with Michael Y. Lee on what the academic world is learning about decentralised organisations

• Ep. 55 with Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organisations

Natacha is the co-founder of Freche Freunde, a leading children's healthy snacks brand. She shares insights from the two-year transformation journey she led at the 80-person company – what she says were the hardest two years of her life. Through experiments with Holacracy and self-management, the biggest challenge turned out to be her own personal development. In this honest and beautiful story, Natacha shares the ups and downs of the process and what her next adventures will be.

Resources:

• Natacha's conversation with friend of the pod Manuel Küblböck

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• • Ep. 49 with Peter Koenig about Source

  • Ep. 94 with SINA, Uganda

Abhijith HK and Vidhya Abhijith are co-founders of Codewave, a digital innovation company in India with over 200 employees and zero hierarchy. In this episode, we explore how they built a self-managing organisation from intuition, their peer-based feedback system called Peerly, and how they moved from "ruinous empathy" to radical candor. We also discuss scaling through "Fractas" (mini startups within the company), staying bootstrapped to protect culture, and the personal growth required of founders on this journey.

Resources:

• Link to Codewave's handbook

• Corporate Rebels' blog about Codewave

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 41 with Michael Y. Lee

For episode 100, Lisa talks with her colleagues Eva Vilella, Trevor Hudson, and Kajsa Thelander Sadio from Tuff Leadership Training about what it's really like to work inside a self-managing organisation. They explore how working at Tuff has transformed each of them, their culture of continuous development with practices like "pebbles" and "mooseheads," and the genuine challenges alongside the beauty – from coordination difficulties to the loneliness of autonomy. A rare inside look at self-management with all its complexity, humor, and humanity.

Resources:

• Moose Heads on the Table – book by Lisa and Karin from Tuff

• Lisa's blog, 'The tyranny of the inner boss'

• Trevor's blog about relationship conversations at work

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

• Ep. 12 with Karin Tenelius, co-founder of Tuff

• Ep. 85 with Bernadette Wesley on Deliberately Developmental Organisations

If we want to practise alternatives to hierarchy, what needs to be in place? Perttu has twenty years' experience as an organisational consultant and I've been really enjoying his research papers on Radically Decentralised Organisations.

We talk about the four things needed for a Radically Decentralised Organisation to be sustainable, leaderless leadership, group dynamics we need to be aware of, and some interesting case studies in Finland, particularly in the public sector.

Resources:

• Perttu's paper, "Leaderless Leadership in Radically Decentralised Organisations" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380008457_Leaderless_leadership_in_radically_decentralized_organizations

• Perttu's website: https://perttusalovaara.com/en/

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 37 with Miki Kashtan

• Ep. 78 with Sofia and Luís from Mindera

• Ep. 41 with Michael Y. Lee

Handing the baton over to someone else can be risky, especially when it's your company you're handing over. Timea Kristof shares her research on six key factors necessary for a successful succession process to happen, and one of the most important factors might surprise you. It's love.

Timea shares insights from her research, including examples of organisations she interviewed such as a family business with three generations of failed successions, as well as her own lived experience of handovers. We also discuss Peter Koenig's Source Work and how this is a helpful lens when thinking about succession. And we also share some personal learning moments as people pleasers in recovery!

Resources:

• Timea's website and research https://www.gekko.consulting/founder-succession-research/

• The webinar recording of Timea presenting her research for ConsciousU

• Read more about Source Work:

• Tom Nixon's book Work with Source

• A Little Red Book About Source by Stefan Merckelbach

• Nadja Taranczewski's programme, CU Source: https://www.conscious-u.com/cusource/

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 49 with Peter Koenig about Source

• Ep. 5 with Tom Nixon

Allan Rhodes is Chief People Officer at teal-inspired insurance broker Konsileo. He shares what he's learned over the last three years about helping to design a self-managing organisation, including how to onboard people into a totally new way of working.

We also talk about his favourite metaphor of organisational gardening. We can be inspired by other gardens and gardeners, but what will grow best in our unique soil and climate? Allan has dual nationality as a Mexican Englishman so he shares observations on the two cultures having experienced communities exploring progressive ways of organising in both Latin America and the UK.

Resources:

• Konsileo's website: https://konsileo.com/

• Allan's blogs about Organisational Gardening

• Latin American networks and organisations promoting self-management:

• Co-crealia: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cocrealia/

• Pancho Mora's podcast, Autogestión: https://panchomora.life/

• Organizaciones Brillantes: https://www.organizacionesbrillantes.com/el-movimiento

• Brave Job: https://www.brave-job.com/home/

• CultureSee: https://www.culturesee.com/

• Outiopía: https://ouitopia.team/en/

• Luis Salas - Polymath - Reinventando a tu Organización (newsletter): https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-salas-0b7b7135/

• Encuentro Internacional Teal: https://www.congresointernacionalteal.com/

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 49 with Peter Koenig about Source

• Ep. 5 with Tom Nixon

• Ep. 82 with Mayden, another UK self-managing company

• Ep. 52 with Jorge Silva from 10Pines, Argentina

• Ep. 96 with Xavier Costa about the movement in Spain

• Ep. 33 with Margaret Wheatley