The guru of democratic workplaces (and my No. 1 business hero) Ricardo Semler has said he reckons that his company, Semco, is only 20% of the way towards the democratic ideals that it aspires to. This makes me think that NixonMcInnes can only be perhaps 10% of the way there. We have a lot more work to do.
Since democratic companies are quite rare, it's hard to know how well you're doing. So this year I'm entering NixonMcInnes for the WorldBlu Most Democratic Workplaces List to find out how we measure up. As part of the process, all of our employees will be surveyed on 10 criteria and we'll be benchmarked against other companies. I'm hoping to learn where we're ahead of the game and where we need to improve to help us on our journey to become more democratic. If you share these democratic ideals, then why not submit your own company?
Apparently their annual conference is excellent too - The Chief Happiness Officer has been raving about it.
So what kind of things do you need to change to become democratic? How do you see democracy working in an organisation?
Posted by: Leif Kendall | 19 November 2008 at 06:29 AM
Hi Leif, thanks for commenting. The answer to that deserves its own blog post, and here it is:
http://www.tomnixon.co.uk/2008/11/how-do-you-see-democracy-working-in-an-organisation.html
Posted by: Tom Nixon | 19 November 2008 at 11:01 AM