Leadermorphosis

Isaac Getz, business philosopher at ESCP and co-author (with Brian Carney) of Freedom, Inc., the book that gave us the liberated company and sparked a movement of some 500 organisations at its peak, argues that liberation is a philosophy rather than a blueprint, and that the CEO's ego is its biggest obstacle. The conversation covers the inner work this asks of a leader, why liberated companies tolerate tries rather than errors, why you uncover your values rather than invent them, and why none of this is laissez-faire. For consultants: core source material, and Getz's philosophy-not-blueprint distinction is a direct caution against selling self-management as a template.

In this episode, Michael Bungay-Stanier discusses the importance of building strong working relationships, drawing from his book "How to Work with Almost Anyone." He emphasizes that good relationships are not accidental and outlines three key pillars: safety, vitality, and repairability, while also addressing common aversions to conflict and the necessity of open communication. For consultants: understanding these principles can enhance their ability to foster healthier workplace dynamics and improve team performance.

In this episode, Angela Williamson discusses her role at Chorus, a self-managing care organization in Western Australia that has decentralized into 20 local teams. She shares insights on the challenges and successes of implementing radical decentralization, focusing on the importance of inner and outer development work, accountability, and the emotional dynamics within care work. For consultants: Understanding the complexities of self-management and the developmental aspects of organizational design is crucial for guiding clients through similar transformations.

In this episode, Rodrigo Ventre discusses his journey of transforming his father's waste-management company, EPPO, into a self-managing organization devoid of a traditional CEO. He shares insights on the challenges and successes of fostering a culture of human development and radical governance experiments that have made EPPO a celebrated model in Brazil. For consultants: understanding this transformation provides valuable lessons on implementing self-management and distributed authority in organizations.

Natacha Neumann led a two-year transformation at Freche Freunde, her 80-person children's snacks company, experimenting with Holacracy and self-management, work she describes as the hardest years of her life. The ratio she discovered: org transformation is 80 percent mindset, 20 percent structure; the real bottleneck wasn't roles or hierarchy but her own personal development and capacity to cede control. She shares the ups and downs of what happened when leadership stepped back. For consultants: Self-management fails when founders skip their own development; no structure can fix a leader who hasn't learned to trust their people.

Abhijith HK and Vidhya Abhijith built Codewave to over 200 employees without a single management layer, relying on peer feedback through their system called Peerly and moving the organization from ruinous empathy to radical candor when it mattered. They scaled by creating Fractas, mini startups within the company, and stayed bootstrapped to insulate the culture from external pressure to compromise. The founders themselves had to transform: learning when to step back, when to speak clearly, and how to let peers hold each other accountable. For consultants: A hard-won example of how the shift from management to peer accountability requires founders to unlearn authority even as they protect the organization's survival.

Guests to start with

Episodes with Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations), Amy Edmondson (psychological safety) and Aaron Dignan (Brave New Work) — the canon of the field.