Self-Governing Online Worker Communities

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Oil-services company Schlumberger is doing something unusual for a big corporation: fostering the creation of online groups of employees with similar interests and allowing these communities to govern themselves and choose their leaders. Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel talks to John Afilaka, a geological engineer who was elected to lead the company's rock-characterization community. 'Mr. Afilaka campaigned to increase technical professionals' influence on top management's research-and-development priorities and to forge better links among various communities. He claims progress on both.' Richard McDermott, a consultant, tells Wessel such a management structure is unusual: 'People...see it as a real democratic institution in what is otherwise an authoritarian institution, a business.' Wessel notes: 'Other companies, apparently, are scared of that.'"

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Voting Your Shares

[Doc Ruby]

Professionals have organized democratic professional organizations for centuries. In fact, the high rate of "society" membership among American colonists was one way they were prepared to design the longest-lasting democratic republic to date: the USA. Americans have continued to be "joiners".

What is changing is that these organizations are now possible, with low management overhead, within large organizations, due to increasingly cheap and complex comms tech, that's also easy to use. Scientific and engineering professionals are among the most likely to join professional organizations that elect leaders, and to use these techs. And our jobs are so complicated that they need to leverage our social skills to manage productivity. While those skills are increasingly unavailable to "management specialists" who therefore aren't really scientists or engineers. So the "privatization" of these communities is inevitable.

Of course, the Wall Street Journal won't see it that way. They instead see it as the "democritization of the workplace". Which it is, also. But that's because democracy is the best way for complex groups of productive people to specialize and work together. The WSJ inability to see it that way, to see it as a source of fear for other companies, says more about their attitude towards democracy than about their understanding of professional working structures.

You forgot Iceland

[Anonymous Coward]

...to design the longest-lasting democratic republic to date: the USA

You might want to learn a thing or to about history [wikipedia.org].

Check out Semco

[Anonymous Coward]

A Brazilian company that has been democratic for 20 years [mondaymemo.net], and a book review [ibm.com] (with excerpt [co-intelligence.org]).

Nice try...

[moviepig.com]

Turnout in early elections was an impressive 60%, but it since has fallen to 30%.

Golly, it does sound like a real democracy...

The puzzle for large corporations employing highly skilled professionals is how to tap and maintain entrepreneurial vigor. I don't see clearly whether Schlumberger has pulled this off, but kudos for a creative try.

Communities of Practice at Novell

[Azul]

Novell has very similar communities. You can read a little bit about them in this article [novell.com] of Novell's Connection Magazine (and, as you can see, this article is about 1 1/2 years old):

From Architecture to Secure Identity Management (SIM), Analytics to exteNd, Novell employees are putting their heads together in Communities of Practice. At Novell, Communities are more than just a group of like-minded individuals talking shop. They provide a primary information source for members, while promoting networking and fostering a culture that values and encourages knowledge sharing and collaboration.

While our communities aren't entirely self-governing, this doesn't seem to matter much in practice. Participation in them is entirely optional. Being a co-leader of one of these communities, I can tell you Novell greatly recognizes their value...

Re:WSJ written article and it shows

[superspaz]

Good article. Funny how many professional HR people miss such things. I can't describe how much natural lighting improves my mood even when working in a cube farm. I'd be willing to take a 5% cut in pay to work in real light rather than in florecent hell.

Has been tried in some communist countries

[markov_chain]

The official name for companies in ex-Yu was WO, for "Workers' Organization." So instead of Microsoft Corp, in communist ex-Yu it would have been "WO Microsoft." These were self-governed, but eventually power structures would emerge often due to family and political connections. I'd love to know how this experiment works out.

Re:"Leaderless" Organizations

[xero314]

I always enjoy hearing people talk about their ability to work with out management or any form of leadership. I personally have held roles as manager and worker. large groups, or even small ones with head strong people, need leadership.

There is a right way and a wrong way to lead. Bossing people around, telling them how to do their job, and basically being controlling is no way to lead. Good leaders educate their workers, handle disputes between them and shield them from the red tape and annoyancies that are in all large companies.

I don't think it's a hard and fast rule, but I think you would have a hard time finding a reasonable sized company (say 25 or more) made up entirely of equals taking equal share in the work and responsibility.

Office politics by another name

[Un pobre guey]

"'People...see it as a real democratic institution in what is otherwise an authoritarian institution, a business.' Wessel notes: 'Other companies, apparently, are scared of that.'"

Ooh, I'm scared too! While it sounds revolutionary, it actually is not. Just give employees who are already the most inclined to participate in corporate office politics a bit of press and possibly some budget for meetings and other activities, and this is what you get. I was at a biotech company that did this with their scientists. After three years or so, not much had come of it but inflated egos and a lot of hot air.

This is not exactly a new idea, but

[zero0w]

Well, this self-governing community is not exactly a new idea. Peter Drucker [wikipedia.org] actually advised General Motors to do ths same back in 1946, as recorded in his first Management book Concept of the Corporation.

General Motors didn't buy this idea and even thought it was some sort of usurpation and opportunist bet. Its CEO back then, Alfred Sloan, wrote a book in response to these suggestions and requests - My Years with General Motors.

Even though American companies missed the boat in forming better corporate governance by creating such self-governance communities, the Japanese picked up the idea. Of course they had a somewhat different goal to what it means to start a business, but in general this helped many Japanese companies to rise and shine at the level of where they are today - many world class manufacturers and industrialists.

As an SLB employee

[Anonymous Coward]

I can vouch for the relative accuracy of the article. The communities are indeed self governing and an excellent way to exchange ideas among the (many) technical people in the organisation. Moreover, the knowledge management strategy is streets ahead of anything I've seen in other organisations. There isn't really any interference from upper level management, except when funding might be requested for technical conferences and the like. I know when I came up as a junior engineer, the bulletin boards and communities of practice were of enormous assistance to help me further my knowledge. After a period of time, I became a leader of on the SIG's and found it to be good both for one's profile in the organisation and a way to meet other like minded folks (and exchange ideas).

The thing that makes it work is the organisational culture. SLB engineers are encouraged to be independent and show initiative, without necessarily gaining permission from HQ first. I think Henry and Claude have done a great job building this and hope it continues long after they retire.

Tried that

[mergatoriod]

I suggested creating a chatroom for different interest groups 5 years ago and the idea was dismissed out of hand. I was working for a UK MOD contractor. It suprised me that management was so adverse to having employees discuss their opinions in an open forum, the benefits to me seemed to be that new starters would be able to search past posts to answer the questions that all new starters are afraid of asking. It seems to be related to the addage 'think a lot, say very little, write nothing'. The written word is very powerfull in influencing people and management prefer to be the only ones doing it, with memos and 'official' emails. Saying all that, another company I worked for did start a discussion forum, but it contained a forumn to talk to the director and each forumn was moderated by upper management which put most people off, most people preffered to stay under the radar of upper management and avoid appearing to 'rock the boat', posted but did allways feel as though I was identifying myself as a trouble maker.

Damn i've gone and done it again, now waiting for my P45, must not post, must not post, the urge is too strong...
   

In his novel Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson

[mooncrow]

puts forward something very similar to this -- as I recall, the scientific colonists on Mars change some of human society to better fit the new conditions they find on the red planet. The various research units organize into non-hierarchical collectives of just this sort. This book, along with its sequels Green Mars and Blue Mars are based on disrupting the last remains of Earth's feudal legacy: corporations.

What democracy? You mean popularity contest!

[Quietti]

Whether dealing with career Congress critters or with petty ass kissers at the job, the result is the same: it's a popularity contest, not a meritocracy. As such, I really don't care whether the company hierarchy is based upon old boys' network motivated management decisions or by a popularity contest among the proles in the department; workplace hierarchy is completely flawed and totally biased regardless.