Self-management – Unleashing Employee Engagement
Turquoise organizations are a model of creating companies more and more often used by entrepreneurs. Increasingly chosen both in large and small companies. In the book “Working differently” Frederic Laloux described the turquoise management model as the highest stage in organizational management consciousness. Besides the “Evolutionary Turquoise” there are four other “colors of the organization” – that is the organizational cultures of the company, but described as the most innovative and future-oriented. While in classic management we deal with a hierarchical system, in turquoise organizations we distinguish three pillars – self-management, striving for wholeness and an evolutionary goal. After Frederic Laloux published Working Differently, it turned out that many more leaders and companies were creating organizations using self-management practices. Such people were, among others, Marek Wzorek, who at igus Sp. z o.o. as the president of the management board, he co-founded an organization based on a non-hierarchical Solar System as the company’s organizational structure. By gathering my own experience and by talking to many other self-management practices, such as Ruben Timmerman, Jan Zborowski, Rahim Blak or Frank Blase, Marek Wzorek described his own experience in self-management and other practitioners in the book “From hierarchy to turquoise, or how to manage in the 21st century”. In this article, we are going to look at the first pillar of teal organizations – self-management. What is self-management, or how can a company function based on mutual relations?
Self-management – shared responsibility for the company
Self-management in turquoise organizations is based on mutual trust of colleagues. Mutual trust is of much greater value in achieving business goals together and in developing the company together. Self-management involves the abandonment of the hierarchical organizational structure, the hierarchy of positions, and even the naming of positions itself. Imagine that the company exists as one, great unit, and the employee becomes its member and thus takes responsibility for the activities he takes and treats them as his own, pursuing common goals with the rest of the team. There are no overarching leaders, and each member of the organization has an equal opportunity to grow and innovate. This makes everyone in the turquoise company equally engaged.
Trust as the key to success
The basis for the success of such a business model is the mutual trust of employees, which is possible thanks to the common pursuit of goals. Employees perform functions that are individually tailored to their potential, thanks to which the company achieves better results. Team members share their knowledge and individual achievements for teamwork. Each employee is equally committed and responsible for their work. For this pillar of turquoise to exist, all business information must be open to everyone, and decisions must be made in participatory or advisory processes. In the turquoise organization, we believe that by speaking openly about the greatest challenges, we are able to achieve much more as a team than alone. Thanks to this, among other things, the hierarchy in the company ceases to exist in favor of self-organization.
Self-management in Poland
In Poland, the topic of turquoise organizations is not very popular yet, but we can already notice more and more companies that are getting to it. Which companies in Poland declare this way of management? These are companies from various industries, including
- SoftwareMill.com – softwarehouse with a team working 100% remotely from the very beginning of the company – described in the book “From hierarchy to turquoise”
- Boldare.com – softwarehouse with implemented holacration – described in the book “From Hierarchy to Turquoise”
- Biuro Tłumaczeń Diuna – a translation company – described in the book “From Hierarchy to Turquoise”
- igus Polska – a leading producer of polymer energy chains, plain and linear bearings and electric cables for movable connections – described in the book “From hierarchy to turquoise”
- Green Tower – a network of democratic kindergartens and nurseries based on the values of parenthood and closeness
- KAMSOFT PODLASIE Sp. z o.o. – a company offering modern solutions supporting work in the pharmaceutical, medical and veterinary industries
- Brewa s.c. – a company dealing with photovoltaic installations, heating foils and EV charging stations
and we with ecoCoach – the birth and beginnings of the company were also described in the book “From hierarchy to turquoise, or how to manage in the 21st century”
Other companies that have convinced themselves to turquoise include HighSolutions (Software), DeSmart (Software), Halibut (training), PKS Gdańsk-Oliwa SA (transport company), Mentax (claims handling), OXALIS Polska (distribution coffee from the Czech Republic). The number of turquoise organizations is growing every year.
ecoCoach – we take care of our clients together
As a team of business coaches and experts in turquoise organizations, we share the principle of self-management. Our common mission is to create an ecosystem that ensures health and holistic development for people and organizations. We believe that there is enormous potential in every human being that can be used for the best possible results. During the cooperation, we trust not only ourselves, but also our clients when making decisions. Are our values close to you? If you like to develop and would like to help others in their pursuit of discovering the best version of yourself not only in professional but also private life – join our team and community. In an innovative training, coaching and recruitment service ecoCoachCommunity , we combine the addition of new people to the team, along with sharing the best practices on how to effectively enter the profession of a business coach and executive coach.
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