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

Why does Spain appear to be a hotbed for progressive organisations lately? Xavier Costa shares three hypotheses: the implementation of the NER self-management approach in over 100 companies, a rich history of cooperatives, and a culture of innovation in the boundaries of Spain.

We also talk about lessons learned from Xavier's experience of transforming companies, both with consultancy Full Circle Team, and investment fund Krisos, which buys and transforms companies. How do you rebalance salaries? How do you support former managers? And what is the 'healing' and personal transformation journey needed for self-organisation to work?

Resources:

• Full Circle Team website: https://www.fullcircleteam.es/

• Krisos website: https://krisos.eu/

• A Corporate Rebels blog about Indaero's 'no managers' experiment

• My blog from a few years ago about the NER approach

• My colleague Karin Tenelius' blog where she also interviewed Xavier about the new ways of working movement in Spain

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 53 Dunia Reverter and Jabi Salcedo talk about the NER / K2K approach

• Ep. 60 Anna Thomson and David Baksh talk about La Fageda

The way groups are working together is not working. But introducing new structures alone is not enough. Tamila and Simon talk to me about how we need to develop our ways of seeing, being and working together if we want to act in the highest possible alignment with our vision. A key part of this is using the lens of Power, Belonging and Justice (PBJ) and strengthening our muscle in Conflict Resilience. Strap in for some powerful wisdom, giggles and deep learning.

Harmonize is a worker-owned cooperative that helps groups work together through Comprehensive Organizational Development and Analysis (CODA™). Tamila and Simon are the co-founders of Harmonize.

Resources:

• Harmonize's website

• Harmonize's courses

• Simon's blog series on the Common Mistakes in Self-Management

• And his article 'Autopsy of a Failed Holacracy'

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 19 with Simon Mont back in 2018

• Ep. 33 with Margaret Wheatley

• Ep. 37 with Miki Kashtan

SINA (Social Innovation Academy) is a network of social enterprise incubators in Uganda and neighbouring countries with a mission of supporting marginalised young people to create their own solutions to social problems in their communities.There are currently more than 10 SINA communities which have catalysed 70+ social enterprises and more than 500 jobs. The goal is to create a global movement of 1,000 SINAs and 100,000 social enterprises by 2035.

Etienne Salborn, founder, and Tonny Wamboga, Operations Lead, talk to me about SINA's model in which self-organisation plays a central role. How do scholars take on key roles? What is the 'confusion stage'? What are common misconceptions of self-organisation? What are the specific cultural challenges of learning self-organisation in Uganda? We talk about these questions and more in our conversation.

Resources:

• SINA's website: https://www.socialinnovationacademy.org/

• More about the SINA framework

• A case study about SINA (non-academic)

• An academic master thesis on the agency aspect of scholars in SINA

• Masters of Social Change, a SINA documentary about refugee activists and social entrepreneurs

• Etienne on the Out of the Clouds podcast talking about the SINA founding story and the model

In this episode we talk all about psychological safety – the misconceptions, what it actually means in practice, what we can learn about it through an equity lens, and how we can design organisational structures that support it (like decision-making protocols).

We also talk about how August does onboarding and creates an adult learning environment through feedback, peer reviews and the role of a 'Development Advocate', plus how they relate to the 'new ways of working' movement right now.

Tirzah and Mike are teammates at August Public Inc., an organisation and leadership development and change management firm. Tirzah leads August's Equity & Inclusion practice and Mike is a Founding Partner.

Resources:

• Download the August white paper 'Looking at Psychological Safety Through an Equity Lens'

• Learn more about August and their other insights via their website

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 45 with Prof. Amy Edmondson

• Ep. 41 with Michael Y. Lee about the interpersonal risks research (safe spaces and interaction scripts)

• Michael Y. Lee's research paper 'Fostering Positive Relational Dynamics in Teams: The Power of Spaces and Interaction Scripts' (Academy of Management Journal, 2020)

• Book: 'Confronting our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging' by Peter Block and Peter Koestenbaum

Miki is the seed founder and Emma a founding member of the Nonviolent Global Liberation community (NGL), which runs entirely as a gift economy. They and NGL as a whole are knee-deep in visionary experimentation about what it would take to realign humanity with life through online and community living experiments.

Even without bosses we can still struggle to embody new ways of being together because of our internalised systems of patriarchal conditioning and capitalist thinking. The capacity lens gives us a way to examine this and make more conscious choices together. As Miki puts it, "Everyone who gets into it falls in love with it, because it moves us from rigidity to flexibility, from predictability to emergence, from coercion to willingness, from judgement to tenderness. Who wouldn't want that?"

An incredibly valuable episode if you are wrestling with topics like fairness, how to distribute tasks and roles, leadership in a bossless environment, how to avoid burnout or how to deal with overwhelm in the face of huge societal challenges.

Resources:

• Nonviolent Global Liberation website

• Miki and NGL's learning packet called 'Resource flow systems: from incentive to willingness'

• Link to capacity lens course (access to video recordings only)

• Related Leadermorphosis podcast episodes:

• Ep. 37 with Miki Kashtan on the three shifts