Cempaka Belanda: Who Needs Bosses? Not Game Company Valve

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013.
They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."

"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Who Needs Bosses? Not Game Company Valve

ABC News, by Alan Farnham, April 25, 2012

Software developer Valve Corp in Bellevue, WA, has 300 employees
and not one manager or boss. (Value Corp)

Video game and software developer Valve Corp, in Bellevue, Wash., has 300 employees--but not a single manager. How to they do that? What's it like to work in a boss-free zone? And what other companies share Valve's approach to non-management?

Valve's website proclaims: "We've been boss-free since 1996. Imagine working with super smart, super talented colleagues in a free-wheeling, innovative environment—no bosses, no middle management, no bureaucracy," just highly motivated peers coming together to make "cool stuff" without anybody "telling them what to do."

It would be wrong to say that up until this week Valve kept its no-boss policy a secret, or that its happy peers toiled in obscurity. The company gets plenty of attention, acknowledgement and feedback from customers, suppliers and reviewers for the best-selling games it makes.

But a few days ago, Valve allowed its unique and quirky employee handbook to be posted onthe Internet -- and since then, the phones have been ringing off the hook.

The calls aren't coming from would-be game buyers. They're coming from doctors and lawyers, clerks and car mechanics asking either "Can I go to work for you? Boy, I hate my boss" or "Can you teach our organization how to do what you do--get by boss-free?"

All of this attention, says Valve's Greg Coomer, has come as something of a shock. "Surprising," he calls it. "We've been hearing from people well outside our usual audience, from the UK, even from the public sector."

As its handbook makes clear, Valve's approach isn't for everyone. The U.S. Army, for instance, is never going to embrace no-boss-ism. Nor, probably, says management expert and business author Geoffrey Colvin, could FedEx--or any other business that employs tens of thousands and has to function like a Swiss watch, day after day, with precision and predictability.

Coomer agrees. "We know we're unique," he says. But he adds, "We wouldn't advise others against trying it. We're very interested to see others applying it to their organizations."

He says it's taken Valve every day since its founding in 1996 to make its system work. But work it does, judging by results. The company is to video game distribution what Apple's iTunes is to music. Its best-selling games series include Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Portal. In 2010 privately-held Valve announced it had in excess of 30 million active user accounts.

"Welcome to Flatland," says the handbook, referring to Valve's non-hierarchy. It goes on to explain that hierarchies are great for maintaining predictability and repeatability, but maybe not so good for an entertainment company trying to manage some of the most "innovative, talented people on Earth." Telling people like that "to sit at a desk and do what they're told obliterates 99 percent of their value."

Employees get to vote on their assignments. If they hear of a project they want to join, they literally vote with their feet and with their desks, which all have wheels. They unplug their computers, push back from the wall, and wheel themselves to whatever new project they want to join.

There's a system for reviewing their work and for assigning blame and praise. There's a system for tweaking compensation. But it all plays out without what most long-suffering office schlubs would consider top-down authority. For a full (and vastly entertaining) description of how Valve accomplishes this trick, see their handbook.

The closest Valve gets to having bosses are people called Team Leads. Says the handbook, "Often, someone will emerge as the 'lead' for a project. This person's role is not a traditional managerial one." They serve as clearinghouses of information, "keeping the whole project in their head at once, so that people can use them a s a resource." When the project disappears, so does the Team Lead.

Is it possible to get fired? You bet, and Valve employees certainly have been, says Coomer. But the reason has never been for an honest screw-up. Valve from time to time has hired people who, by temperament, found it frustrating or impossible to work within so gossamer a structure.

He freely allows that not having bosses has its downside. The handbook, in fact, has a section headed "What is Valve Not Good At?" Number 1 on the list: helping new people find their way. After that comes: mentoring people, disseminating information internally, and missing out on hiring people of talent who simply need to work within a more traditional structure.

Management expert Colvin, author of "Management Strategies for Difficult Times," says he can think of only two other companies that do business the Valve way: Fabric innovator W.L. Gore, where, he says, not only is the organization flat but people's business cards list no title (just their name, phone n email).

"This is the company where somebody once said, 'To see if you're a leader, call a meeting and see if anybody comes.'" And the other boss-less company? A Brazilian outfit called Semco.

Related Article:

"The New Paradigm of Reality" Part I/II – Feb 12, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" (without a manager hierarchy) managed Businesses, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)