In Change the Mindset of Employees with These Three Simple Steps,^∇ Joost Minnaar, the author, points out that people’ behavior is constrained by what the working context empowers them to do and we agree.

He cites several examples of what he means by structures: organizational structure, the way meetings are run, the way decisions are made, how conflicts are handled, and how tasks, roles, and responsibilities are distributed. The thing is not to read these as just practices, but as things that hold back employees in a fundamental way.

These are, in fact, what makes people into employees. The context has to change to unleash them to be more than, well, employees.

Decentralization

You can address all the examples above with one change: decentralize,

• Organizational Structure. I read this as “the Fiat hierarchy has to go.” So long as you are the boss, this will modulate how people behave when you’re around. They know that you and your managers control their salaries, their status (i.e., promotions), and how tasks, roles, and responsibilities are distributed. This is “first and foremost” in their minds, always, and they act accordingly.
• Running Meetings, Decision Making, Conflict Handling, and the Distribution of Tasks, Roles, Responsibilities. If you and your managers call meetings and do most of the talking, make all the pivotal decisions, handle all conflicts, and have the final word on assignments and promotions, people will behave accordingly.

And by “accordingly” I mean that they will behave as employees, putting in a given amount of acceptable work in exchange for wages. Employees won’t act as co-owners for the simple reason that they are not.

What to Do?

To decentralize, the first thing to do is to let go of the Fiat hierarchy,

• Get rid of titles, rank, “need to know” secrecy.
• Decentralize decision-making. This requires full transparency: everybody needs to know what’s going on, in detail, so they can make well-informed decisions.
• Decentralize conflict handling. People need to up their skills on handling their own conflicts. If that fails, they can reach to another co-owner to facilitate.
• Decentralize distribution of Tasks, Roles, Responsibilities. Co-owners know who can do what best.

Co-Ownership

The problem has been how to distribute ownership. The traditional way is to distribute share and stock options. However, stocks carry lots of baggage,

• Stocks are static: once assigned, it is forever.
• Their distribution is very centralized.

The scalable solution has to be dynamic and decentralized. And the RADs! application does it,

• Painless: The mobile application handles all the mechanics so users can focus on recognizing contributions.
• Decentralized: Every co-owner gets to recognize contributions so the app can distribute RADs to other co-owners.
• Dynamic: The RAD distribution changes regularly (e.g., monthly) and this reflects the contributions made by co-owners.

ENDNOTES

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Joost Minnaar. Change the Mindset of Employees with These Three Simple Steps. Dec 2022. <https://corporate-rebels.com/work-context-changes-mindset/>