The hierarchy of the classic pyramid org chart has very little added value for clients and, moreover, focuses your competitive spirit on beating your colleague to get the promotion, instead of on “we’re going to win or lose together”. So, Simon Dixon worked out a better way.

When Simon set up Hatmill, a specialist logistics consultancy, “The starting point was doing the opposite of doing the stuff I didn’t like in previous places,” where the people management structures and processes weren’t set up to get the best out of everyone.

At Hatmill, “what’s ingrained is the amount of trust that everyone has in each other. Trust in each other’s judgment. We trust people to work together, support each other, and trust each other to give each other feedback to improve, not to critique or belittle each other. We make sure that we operate on an adult-to-adult basis.”

It gives the people on the team a different perspective on what work means: how you can feel about yourself and the work you do.

In addition to creating a nicer experience at work, it pays off in business: “We’ve grown about 40% over the last nine years. I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted it would generate that. We realised it happened because we’ve got people focussing on doing a good job and not screwing each other over in the next promotion cycle. There’s a sense of ownership, team, belonging and purpose.”

What’s essential to shaping your organisation in this way, Simon points out clearly: you have to have someone at the top who is wholly committed to this. You can’t have only a bit of it. You either trust people or you don’t.

“The starting point has to be having a mind that is open enough to think there is a different way of running an organisation.” Having people who think, and know, that it is possible. “Step one is having an open mind.”

More about Simon Dixon:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-dixon-hatmill

More about Hatmill:

https://hatmill.co.uk/about-us

More about Teal organisations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teal_organisation

More about us:

Lisa Dempsey – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisakdempsey/ - https://www.leadershiplabs.eu

Marjolijn Vlug – https://www.linkedin.com/in/marjolijnvlug/ - https://www.marjolijnvlug.nl/?lang=en

Reach us both at PeopleImpactPodcast@gmail.com