Chapter 3: Stairway to the Boardroom: Challenging Outdated Hierarchies - A conversation with Chris May

Chris May is founder of Mayden, a tech business which supports healthcare services. Mayden is a ‘self-managing organisation’ although it didn’t start that way. In this conversation I talk to Chris about some of the challenges he has faced as he continues to work on his own willingness to distribute decision-making and step away from the conventional role of founder and CEO.Key points: Self-managing organisations do have leaders. But they people who are in the best position to lead in any particular situation, rather than leadership being a permanent role. People generally do not need managing. Self-management only works well if you have clarity of the vision and strategy. You have to repeat this over and over for it to sink in. You need a no blame culture. This means you’re likely to get much better quality because people aren’t motivated to hide their mistakes. Organise for the majority who behave well and have no interest in cheating the system. Get out of the way. Fulfil your legal obligations and then find a job for yourself where you are needed rather than relying on your status, job title or seniority to be a role in itself. The ethos of an organisation is worth fighting for, but that responsibility doesn’t sit only with directors. Everyone contributes to the evolution of the ethos. Your interview process should screen out the people you don’t want in your organisation. You can create a self-managing micro-culture within your organisation, if you’re organisation doesn’t have the appetite to embrace less formalised hierarchies as a whole. But you’ll need to brave to do this!Be less chimp and more bee.