Articles
Give Your Team the Freedom: our article in Harvard Business Review
We have just published on hbr.org a short article. It updates where we are in the coporate liberation and restates some principles that every manager willing to enter it must know. Give Your Team the Freedom to Do the Work They Think Matters Most Brian Carney...
CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW (CMR) ARTICLE
Liberating Leadership: How the Initiative-Freeing Radical Organizational Form Has Been Successfully Adopted by Isaac Getz Summer 2009 In April 2010, the article won the annual Syntec Award for the best academic article published by a French institution affiliated...
Altruism can be good for business, as these companies show
Despite all the benefits that capitalism has brought to society, we have reached the moment when its downsides – social and environmental – have begun to outweigh its positive effects. Attempts to eliminate the negative social effects of business started as far back...
Altruistic companies during the COVID-19 pandemic
A lesson in creating successful companies that care The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting how altruistic businesses adapt, remain flexible, and survive. Strategy+Business, June 10, 2020 by Isaac Getz and Laurent Marbacher In mid-March, COVID-19 locked down most...
WSJ op-ed on Royal Mail
Free the Workers, Fix the Post Office by Brian M. Carney & Isaac Getz OCTOBER 30, 2009 This month's disruptive strikes at the Royal Mail are the fifth such industrial actions to hit the post office in the past 30 years. As we went to press it was still possible...
Isaac’s article in “Leadership Excellence”
Leaders of the Free Culture by Isaac Getz AUGUST, 2011 Truman is said to have mused about Eisenhower taking over the president’s office, issuing orders only to discover that nothing gets done in the bureaucratic swamp. But this fine politician underestimated “Ike.”...
Our article in Forbes on Bob Davids’ leadership philosophy
Bob Davids' 30 Top Tips To Stop Being A "Smart Boss" By Isaac Getz May 6, 2012 We need smart people. Our universities are focused on producing just that. Those who come out on top are the smartest and hence succeed in business, law and politics. It would be easier to...
Our WSJ Op-Ed on why Google’s culture is NOT a freedom-of-initiative one
Why Google's 20% time was a perk and not a part of the freedom-of-initiative culture By BRIAN M. CARNEY and ISAAC GETZ Recent reports indicate that Google has been effectively zeroing out employees' "20% time"—the policy of letting Googlers spend a fifth of their...
What can ‘liberated companies’ teach HR?
Our Op-Ed in the British HR Magazine in Dec. 2016 Freedom- and responsibility-based companies are spreading all over the world but the region where the ‘corporate liberation’ movement is strongest is just across the Channel. In France and Belgium this movement...
Hierarchies are unnatural – it’s time for a liberating revolution
Our Feb. 22 comment in the UK magazine People Management Hierarchies – accepted by most as the ‘normal way’ of running a business – are unnatural, since they are counter to universal human needs. The hierarchical workplace as we know it today emerged during the...
What is corporate liberation? – Changeboard HR community
Imagine you are watching a boat of eight rowers training for a big race in the middle of a lake. You hear the whistle blow, and puzzled by what you’re seeing, you ask the coach: “It doesn’t seem that the boat is moving”. To what the coach replies: “It’s because I...
Why work/life balance needs a rethink
Our Op-Ed in the British HR Magazine in June 2017 Why work/life balance needs a rethink Isaac Getz, JUNE 19, 2017 Our time is split into two boxes: 'work' – things we earn money for – and 'life' – things we do outside of work. HR takes care of the work box, leaving...
Our Changeboard Op-ed on Work Stress
Three British psychologists, Hans Bosma, Steven Stansfeld and Michael Marmot, spent five years studying the stress levels of more than 10,000 British civil servants. Their findings showed that men perceiving little control over their jobs are 50% more likely to...