When you give a bunch of very talented people free reign to do what they want to do, you get excellent results. Google and 3M have proven in the past that giving their employees time to work on projects and develop ideas, aside from their day-to-day work, can lead to great things. Dedicating time to work on a project with no management or direct instruction has led to some of the most historic products like the Post-it Note and Google applications like Gmail.
So what happens when a lack of management becomes the entire premise of a company’s business structure so that employees can pursue what actually interests them? You get Valve Software.
According to its new employee handbook, Valve Software is a gaming company that lacks bosses. There is no management over any of the employees, but there is extensive collaboration. Valve’s employees are free to develop their own ideas and everyone is entitled to greenlight an idea. Because of that philosophy, workers are drawn to the things that they like and will often work harder and be more focused.
“Since Valve is flat, people don’t join projects because they’re told to. Instead, you’ll decide what to work on after asking yourself the right questions” says the employee handbook.
Good employees are often intelligent enough to recognize where they are needed. In the same vein, their coworkers can recognize who would be most beneficial to certain projects and scout out the specialists in the office. This only works because the company can hire self-motivated, highly talented individuals who don’t need supervision and can work without any form of management.
This approach has led to successful products like the video games "Counterstrike," "Portal" and "Left 4 Dead."
“We’ve heard that other companies have people allocate a percentage of their time to self-directed projects. At Valve, that percentage is 100,” the new employee handbook explains. This structure is working to Valve’s financial benefit, considering that it is worth anywhere from $2 billion to $4 billion.
“More specifically, (Valve president Gabe) Newell says of the 250-person company that on a per-employee basis, Valve is more profitable than tech giants like Google and Apple” Oliver Chiang said in a Forbes article.
However, it is also very important to recognize that this is only possible for companies with the means to hire expensive talent. Valve can work this way because it isn’t a place for individuals who need hand holding or need to be taught and they are very clear about that. Within the list of things Valve explicitly says in their handbook is that they aren’t good at “helping new people find their way.”
So while efficient and innovative, Valve’s flatland isn’t the ideal system for companies who can’t afford top notch developers, creatives or professionals. At the very least, it should be considered by more companies with an elite group of individuals with similar skill and mindsets working on collaborative projects. The added trust and flexibility could lead to the next great innovation of our generation.
Reach the columnist at kayla.chan@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @kaylarc214
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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