Innovative Work Models for the Future with Pim de Morree

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen** (0:18)
Hey, Mike, you're back from skiing, or you're all in one piece, anything sore? At my age, I'm not sure.

**Mike** (0:23)
No, fortunately, yeah, no injuries to speak of. Always happy to go out to the wilderness, although I got to say, I don't think our conditions are probably as good as where Pim is at. So I definitely enjoyed it.

**Stephen** (0:37)
Well, that's good. Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen, joined by my co-host Mike and Tulio today. We're diving into a topic that is shaking up more and more workplaces across industries, and that's self-management and innovative work models. The traditional corporate structure with its layers of hierarchy and rigid bureaucracy, is being challenged by companies that are pioneering new ways to work. Ones that prioritize trust and autonomy and purpose over control, and one of the most well-known voices in this movement is our guest today, Mike, why don't you introduce him to everyone?

**Pim de Morree** (1:15)
We'll get rolling.

**Mike** (1:16)
Yeah, absolutely, Steven. I'm super excited to have, really honored, I would say, to have Pim de Morree. Did I say it right?

**Pim de Morree** (1:24)
Yes, very good.

**Mike** (1:26)
Awesome. He's the co-founder of Corporate Rebels. It's a movement dedicated to transforming outdated corporate structures into really thriving, self-managed, and purpose-driven workplaces. After leaving the traditional corporate world, frustrated by, I would say, its inefficiencies, Pim and his team set out on a mission to visit the world's most progressive organizations, which we'll get a chance to hear a lot about that, maybe today on the show. These companies that have abandoned hierarchy, embrace really radical transparency, and redefined what leadership really means today. And so through Corporate Rebels, Pim has spent years now researching, advising, and showcasing organizations that have successfully moved to self-management. He's worked with companies like Burtzog, Hare, and Patagonia, proving that decentralization isn't just possible, but it can lead to massive business success. So Pim, again, we're honored to have you. Welcome to the show.

**Pim de Morree** (2:36)
Yeah, very happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

**Mike** (2:38)
Awesome. Pim, maybe we can just start with something fairly simple. What inspired you to dedicate your career to breaking the rules of the traditional corporate structures?

**Pim de Morree** (2:51)
Well, finally, we really didn't set out to embark on a career in this field. It was just really the frustration. It's now nine, ten years ago that we worked for big corporates. So when I say we, it's Joost, my co-founder at Corporate Rebels and I.
We got completely fed up with just working for three years for these large corporates, different companies, but experiencing the exact same frustration with traditional management, with bosses telling you what to do, the strict rules that you had to listen to, and there was no freedom for any entrepreneurship, any initiative taking, just retreated like a small child. And we got completely fed up with that. We missed so many important aspects at work, so we said to each other, let's see if we can find companies that do things a little bit different. And back then in 2016, we made a list of companies we wanted to visit to research how they were organizing themselves in a different way. And that's how Corporate Rebels was born. No business model, no idea how we were going to sustain Corporate Rebels in the future, but it was just the idea, okay, let's visit these companies because apparently, some have cracked the code and show that working in a less traditional way can actually benefit both their people and the business. So it started like a very stupid childish idea. Quite naive, I would say, but luckily-

**Stephen** (4:25)
It was rebellion. It was rebellion, that's all.

**Tulio** (4:27)
I love it.

**Pim de Morree** (4:28)
Yeah, and I think frustration is a really good fuel for a venture like this.

**Tulio** (4:34)
I love it.

**Mike** (4:34)
Some of the best ideas.

**Tulio** (4:37)
The best. So my journey started a couple of years after yours, and after you're exposed to that, everything else just feels dirty. But many people hear the term self-management organizations, and they immediately assume it means chaos, like no one's in charge. But some of the most successful companies today operate without traditional managers. And how did these organizations function efficiently without bosses? Because a lot of people usually ask that question.

**Stephen** (5:09)
How does it work?

**Pim de Morree** (5:11)
Yeah. So big question. But let's start with the most important things first, because I think there's one huge misunderstanding when it comes to non-hierarchical self-managed bossless organizations, whatever you want to call them. There's a big misconception because often people tend to think that if you don't have a traditional structure in place, you don't have any structure in place. But that's a misconception, because these companies have a lot of structure. It's just not top-down structure. It's more peer-to-peer structure. So instead of a boss deciding things for you, it's up to you and your team to decide how you do things. Responsibility is also shared. Accountability is shared. So it's not up to a single person or a couple of people at the top of an organization to decide how things are done. But it's up to everybody in the organization to chime in and to play a role in making sure the business runs in a successful way. But there is a lot of structure. So let's be clear about that. There's a lot of structure when it comes to how do you make decisions in an organization like this? How do you share information? How do you appoint people to pick up certain roles? Or how do people decide themselves to pick up work? So there's a lot of clarity around how things are done. And you need this in place. Well, you can run a smaller self-managed company, 10, 20, 30 people without any structure.