Globe and Mail Article: The Bossless Office

The Globe and Mail contacted Clear HR Consulting to discuss whether the bossless office concept could work in a small business environment. Here’s what Cissy Pau had to say about the appeal of a bossless office:

“It can be a very motivating environment for the right people. No one looking over your shoulders, no one monitoring your work, you decide what’s best to be done. If people have a vested interest in the success of a company, they’ll do what’s best for the company and so you don’t need someone telling you, ‘That project is due,’ or ‘You made a mistake here.’”

Here’s the type of workforce Cissy believes is necessary for the bossless office to work:

“They need to know what to do, how to do it, when to do it,” she said. “The organization would need to be extremely values-driven, so that everyone would know, without a doubt, this is the direction that we’re heading. Without that, I think you could have some anarchy.”

She was also asked whether small business owners would be willing to relinquish control:

“For this to work, there needs to be no ego,” she said. “That founder needs to say, ‘I don’t want control, we want everybody to be involved in having authority,’ and I suspect for a lot of small business owners, that would be a hard transition to make.”

While there are a number of pros for the bossless office concept to work in a small business environment, on balance for most organizations, the cons would likely outweigh them.