Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom Is Open Allocation in Your Future

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom Is Open Allocation in Your Future Github. Gore Associates. Treehouse. Valve. What do these companies have in common? Well, besides the fact that they are forward-thinking, pioneering firms, they all practice aleadershipstyle calledopen allocation. In open allocation, employees select how to spend their time and the projects on which they’ll work. There is no such thing as hierarchy. In an open allocation culture, employees are accountable to the business and to their peers. As long as they can show that they’re contributing value, they can switch assignments whenever they want â€" there are nomanagersor rules about headcount to hold them back. Self-Directed, Self-Managed In an open allocation scenario, teams essentially manage themselves and are only temporary. The concept reminds me ofGartner’s swarming idea, in which a project group forms based on expertise and interest and then disbands when its goal is accomplished. Rather than an executive calling for a new team, the informal leader is the employee who came up with the idea for the project â€" tenure or “rank” aside. A newstrategic initiativewill only get off the ground if the “leader” can convince others to invest their time, talent, and resources. No Blame, More Gain The benefits of open allocation are many. Decisions are smarter and better informed because the people making them are closer to the work, and employees can provide input free of strict, inflexible communication channels. Team members are automatically more motivated because they wouldn’t have chosen to work on a project if they didn’t believe in it and weren’t excited about it upfront. And if they are unhappy, they have to recognize that it’s because of their own choices rather than a managerial mandate. Instead of leaving the company, they just move on to another project. For the rest of the post, head over to SilkRoads blog.