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Learning a lesson - and becoming stronger
Running a small company like Socialsquare is usually both fun and challenging. Sometimes, it’s mainly challenging, especially when things don’t work out the way you’ve hoped and planned. That has been the case for the past few months.
The business has never been better since more companies realize they need to understand and work with new social tools and methods for participation and that they need Socialsquare to help them. And of course we are happy about the situation.
But as our own company grew, we found ourselves increasingly swamped with work, and we did what many other growing companies have done before: We hired a CEO to come inside and fix things. So, in April this year, Natasha Friis Saxberg came onboard to take the reins as acting CEO, in order to relieve us of some of the work, and help grow the business in the best possible way.
But what we thought to be the perfect match was more of a challenge than we expected and we’ve realized that there is no easy way to combine the work of a group of passionate idealists with more traditional management. And it’s pretty difficult to be the manager if you can’t manage the usual way. As a result we have reached a common agreement with Natasha Friis Saxberg who is leaving the company.
Since we founded Socialsquare in 2005, one of our objectives has been to help to help our clients reinvent their processes and management. If we want more participation from employees and customers we need new social tools, higher levels of trust and more openness.
And what has happened since Natasha left us has been a magnificent show of reinvention from everyone on our team. We now have an openspace-style monday morning meeting that basically operates the company. We have a very do-ocratic approach to management – the people who takes on a responsibility also takes on the leadership. And the spirit and energy on the team is stronger than ever.
The solution comes from within as always, there’s no easy solutions. Lesson learned, once again. Taking a strong dose of our own medication actually helped – which gives us even more courage when it comes to prescribing the cool-aid to others :-)
Trine-Maria & Thomas
What a good blog on the difficult area of management/no-management.
Although I doubt that you can run a company in an open-style do-ocratic approach if you grow even more, it is very interesting to discuss what works and what do not work.
I am a thorough believer of bottom-up leadership, but is on the other hand also convinced that in practice a CEO can play an active role in “profiling” the company for example.
I, myself, am involved in a software company with about 10 people, where we also have to work out the details of growing and changing the culture over time. This can be difficult at times, but possible with good leaderhip.
Best regards
Jakob Diness
As part of the Socialsquare team, I’m happy to agree with all of the above. I was sad to see Natasha go, as she is a very engaging and confident leader. But as Thomas and Trine-Maria says, the energy and the idealistic drive in our team really thrives in the open space we have now.
It’s true that issues may well arise with more people in the team, but one of the lessons we’ve learned here is that to carefully consider how we scale this model.
Another issue that we’re still grappling with is blogging more on our work, and that will certainly become more important as our numbers increase…
Very interesting blog! I would like to know a little more on the: there is no easy way to combine the work of a group of passionate idealists with more traditional management. I know a lot of places where the combination of idealist and leadership/management is working very well, but havent yet seen a place where you really could do without leadership/management. Perhaps the problem lies in more traditional management or perhaps in We hired a CEO to come inside and fix things i.e. unclear (and unrealistic?) expectations?
Jakob – This do-ocratic group management is probably only possible in the phase we are in right now and I am sure that we too at some point will look for more leadership/management. But I really think that the lesson I have learned now is that we will have to be a lot more specific about what our company really needs to become stronger – before we go there again!
Jørgen – I think you gave part of the explanation – I am almost certain that I had expectations that weren’t clear – not even to me.
One of the lessons I have learned is that if we really want to work together as a team (with or without a formal manager or CEO) we have to spend more time together aligning our thoughts, sharing expectations and learning from each other.
And the only problem with that is that it means we might have to set aside other things (for instance to spend all of our time engaging in projects with our much beloved clients) – and to me that will be the challenge – realizing that building the business is also real work :-)