Trust and transparency

Trust and transparency

I first came across the name “turquoise organizations” exactly a year ago, after being suggested to me twice by two different people to read Frédéric Laloux’s book, in two different places and at different times. While reading the book, while still the president of the management board of igus in Poland, I had a kind of enchantment because the practices that I was doing with my team in Poland at that time were similar to what Frédéric Laloux describes.

Working in conditions of transparency, honesty, trust and the departure from the traditional pyramid structure towards a flexible solar system were natural elements of the way we work at igus.

The book made me realize that not only do we do many activities differently, in our own way, but there are many more such, maybe some non-standard companies in the world. The publication was also a kind of indication that it is worth staying on this individual path that the company has been following for several dozen years. It was also a certain explanation why our turnover and profits grew so fast in recent years, far exceeding the market average at that time.

Someone may ask the question, “How is turquoise management different from normal management?”.

For me, the most important differentiating element is the abandonment of the traditional, pyramid-shaped organizational structure in turquoise. This common business organization model with the CEO or owner at the top and production workers or customer service personnel at the bottom is practically completely unused in turquoise organizations. At igus,
where I was the boss for Poland, in 1985 this system was replaced with the so-called solar system.

It was a big change in the way the company operates, which works very well and is still used today. In the now newly developed by me and by the team company following the turquoise – ecoCoach – we use the network model of colleagues, independent entrepreneurs, known from Morning Star or many other turquoise companies. These models significantly reduce bureaucracy, allow for multi-directional communication and multi-directional learning from each other.

Trust and transparency are other key elements that distinguish turquoise management from traditional management. In turquoise organizations, the boss or owner trusts employees and employees trust them. Thanks to this, detailed control procedures are not required, e.g. expenses, creating budgets and approaching each employee as if he had bad intentions and wanted to rob the company.

My approach to my colleagues both at igus and at the new ecoCoach, which I am developing in the spirit of turquoise, has been and is marked by great trust, transparency and mutual respect. I can’t imagine working with people any other way.

There are many more elements that make the difference between a traditional enterprise and the turquoise one, but it is enough if we consider only the two aspects of the management difference, which I wrote about above, and you can already see what colossal benefits brings the functioning of the turquoise organization:

• greater closeness, trust and cordiality of employees towards each other thanks to the departure from vertical, distancing people from each other, from – processes and customers’ structure
• reducing the time needed to make decisions decisions are made where the process takes place
• saving thousands of hours of time by giving up budgeting and controlling
• better communication in the team – networks of interconnected employees-colleagues who learn from each other in every direction and easily communicate
• greater joy, satisfaction and fulfillment thanks to the fact that employees know how their actions directly translate into creating value for the client.

Even though implementing a turquoise organization is not an easy and fast process, I recommend it to every entrepreneur. At ecoCoach, we are happy to support it with individual and team coaching, workshops or full implementation support.

I am sure that thanks to reasonable implementations of turquoise organizational models or similar to them, Polish companies will be much more effective, people will work better, and problems related to the lack of commitment or the acquisition of new employees will end.

My dream is to create in Poland such a strong environment of turquoise, learning from each other entrepreneurs, companies and employees who exchange the latest achievements in the field of management, communication, team cooperation and innovation, that American trips would come to Poland, Japanese and Germans, to take the best examples from us.

Having contact with the environment of technological start-ups, 3D printers and Internet technologies, many young Polish entrepreneurs set a good example for giants from all over the world. Let’s take examples from the best.