Get rid of the managers

Hello and welcome to Working It.

You won’t find many people in the FT office on Fridays, and the City of London is pretty empty. Latest US data from Kastle, which tracks security pass use in workplaces, has Friday office occupancy at just 28 per cent. And it’s my hunch that Summer Fridays — the practice of knocking off for the weekend at lunchtime in some creative jobs (sadly, not ours) — is thriving, whether employers have sanctioned it or not.

We’ll return to this phenomenon. Do let me know your experiences of Friday working (or not).

Read on for a look into the secret world of manager-free workplaces, and in Office Therapy I advise someone plagued by their bosses’ love of loud music 🎧

Teal: it’s a way of worklife (not just a tasteful kitchen colour)

This week I have been down a soothing rabbit hole. It revolves around another meaning of “teal”, beyond Farrow & Ball’s ubiquitous paint colour (Vardo 288). The management version is a model of running organisations built on shared purpose, individual responsibility — and no line managers.

There’s very little official online presence for Teal. It feels a bit edgy and underground (🆒, even). The FT has made one mention of it, in a 2015 column by Andrew Hill about online retailer Zappos and its experiment with flat hierarchies.

Teal’s creator is Frederic Laloux, a former McKinsey consultant. He self-published Reinventing Organizations in 2014 and since then it’s sold more than 1mn copies. As the foundational text for the Teal movement, it suggests that at critical junctures in history, new organisational models emerge. We are, Laloux suggests, in one of those moments now.

Why Teal? Laloux’s versions of management practices over centuries are given colours — many people reading this, for example, will work for organisations that fall into the “Orange” category — characterised by innovation, meritocracy and accountability. The next stage is Teal, which is about “self-management, wholeness and evolutionary purpose”.

That’s a bit theoretical but in fact this is a practical, ever-evolving grassroots movement. There’s a Teal Wiki and a newsletter. (Buurtzorg, the nurse-led community care group in the Netherlands, is probably the best-known example of a Teal organisation.)

So what does Teal mean in practice? I got in touch with longtime advocate, Vicky Ferrier, to learn more. Vicky is chief people and commercial officer at Konsileo, a commercial insurance broker co-founded in 2018 by John Warburton, who was inspired by Laloux’s work. It has about 100 brokers who work independently in a Teal system. Vicky’s work supports the brokers, but there is no HR department.

Everything works on a peer-to-peer system, with broker-coaches working with colleagues and then feeding back into the central executive team. Vicky told me: “I just came off a two-hour call — the coaching review meeting — we go through performance, wellbeing, confidence, how well people are working in relationships with others.”

There are challenges. While most people thrive, a few “might love the idea of self-management but can’t get off the PlayStation”. And Konsileo is new: it’s harder to retrofit Teal into existing organisations — too many egos, too much structure.

But talking to Vicky made me think how positive it would be to implement a bit of this thinking in every organisation. “Given that Teal taps into people’s intrinsic self-motivation, we don’t find that people choose to be unproductive,” she says.

Happiness + autonomy= productivity.

Do you have experience of Teal organisations to share? Or any other self-management tips? Email me at [email protected].

This week on the Working It podcast

Every day brings doom-laden AI predictions but there are still plenty of people who are upbeat about technology’s possibilities to transform our jobs. One of them is Jeff Wong, head of the innovation team at EY, the professional services firm. Jeff tells me on this week’s episode of Working It that generative AI could free knowledge workers to spend more time on human pursuits — thinking, building relationships with clients and so on.

The FT’s Madhumita Murgia also gives me a very clear explanation of AI, and its possible impacts on our work and our lives. So if you feel the AI debate is racing ahead and you are racing to catch up, this is the 16 minute primer you need 🏃🏻‍♂️

Office Therapy

The problem: I work in a small business. The office is open plan and music is played all day. The bosses don’t understand how anyone can concentrate without it. I can’t focus with it — and they have ignored my concerns. My noise cancelling headphones don’t entirely block it out. My job involves a lot of concentration. I am not allowed to WFH very often. Do I just have to deal with it?

Isabel’s answer: Your problem demonstrates why working for small businesses can be so hard. This selfish nonsense would have those of us who are drones in big corporates running to the HR department — who would do something.

For you to win this, some guile is needed. Is there a co-worker who feels the same way, so you can both ask for the music to go off? Persistent asking/grumbling really annoys managers. Two of you can wear them down faster than one. Ideally you then get the bosses to play music through their own headphones. [Seems an obvious solution to me.]

Can you take in a doctor’s note about your mental health being affected? Noise can cause serious distress. I sent your problem to Rachel Suff at the CIPD, the UK HR professionals’ body, who says that good practice is: “Being flexible in how and where people work, as well as offering, where possible, a range of different workstations, including some that are in a quiet zone.” So you could remind the bosses of this — and seek permission to WFH more. If things don’t improve? You may have to look for a new job.

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our reader? Send it to me: [email protected]. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleague or underlings will never know.

5 top stories from the world of work

1. Culture wars test corporate America’s commitment to Pride month: After a decade of selling Pride merchandise during June with little pushback, rightwing activists are boycotting retailers as well as targeting other companies that openly support LGBTQ rights. The FT’s Taylor Nicole Rogers investigates.

2. “We have to invest much more in our future selves”. In this wide-ranging and fascinating interview, economist Andrew Scott, co-author of the bestselling The 100 Year Life, talks to Sarah O’Connor about planning for longevity, as it impacts individuals, society, government and business. Best stat: there’s a 50 per cent chance that children born today in the UK will live to be 92 or 93.

3. Can a virtual PA turbocharge your career? Some employers are starting to pay for staff to have on-call virtual PAs to take care of their life admin and free up time. Many successful individuals — especially mothers — pay for this back-up service too. Emma Jacobs tries it out for a month — and is very pleasantly surprised.

4. Mental health apps: the therapist cannot see you now. Money is pouring into mental health start-ups — about $8bn since the start of 2020. The FT Lex team reports there’s increasing concern that the automation and AI-driven growth of remote therapy may not be helping people at scale. It could even be dangerous [Premium].

5. Every big business needs its own Chief Political Officer: Corporates need to step up their attention to geopolitics, and every big company needs a foreign policy. FT columnist Camilla Cavendish makes a compelling case for appointing a Chief Political Officer, and getting boardrooms far more up to speed with the pace of world events.

One more thing . . . Do read the Atlantic’s profile of Chris Licht, chief executive of news channel CNN. Licht has since lost his job, increasing the “hubris” vibe of a leader who gave many hours of access to journalist Tim Alberta, including during some very “Alpha male” personal training sessions. Licht comes across as cut off: the reporter repeatedly told the now-ex-CEO what his own unhappy employees were saying. He should have listened.

Every chief executive and leader should read it 👀

A word from the Working It community: loneliness, networking — and unfair odds for men? 🚶🏼‍♂️

Last week’s item about men and loneliness brought in more correspondence than I’ve had on any other Working It topic. This subject touched many of you. We will be covering it on the podcast soon.

Some of you also mentioned there are few chances for men to have the internal networking opportunities now given to women, and the possibility for social and career ties that come with it. One reader who works in financial services wrote:

“There are strong supports for women in my industry as they are under-represented. Women get much more attention and mentoring from senior management, especially at the junior to mid level. I toil away, have excellent performance reviews, but as a mid-level employee, have not had a single interaction with management outside of my product group. The women-only events tend to be smaller, more intimate, and attended by senior management.

“Yes I know there is a gender pay gap and women are under-represented in certain areas, but (perhaps an unpopular opinion) I believe that for junior to mid-level roles, the policies to attempt to rectify this are leaving men behind.”

Is this an unpopular view? What do you think is the fairest solution to help all younger staff make social ties, network and advance internally?

Let me know at [email protected] or DM on LinkedIn. We respect your anonymity.