Is there no Boss around here?: How an organisation reinvents itself

By Gert Nijland and Hans Ruijs

Living without a Boss is easy! Times have changed. Familiar ideas about organisations and their leadership no longer meet the needs and demands that society or individuals now have. The younger generation don't want to be subordinated within a leadership system, or to be tied to status and materialistic securities anymore. Instead, they are looking to make more meaningful and more mindful contributions towards the development of a sustainable society. The inspiring story of K&N will support you in making this shift.
This book describes a fascinating and unusual project: It tells the story and describes the process of how one company successfully transitioned to having no boss in charge. The organisation completely removed its hierarchy, and now leads itself by understanding its original purpose and being guided by its collective impulse.
Based on practical examples from outpatient psychiatry and community care, these pages describe how ordinary people created a self-directing organisation that continues to grow and thrive. Part story, part instruction, this easy-to-read little book will inspire your next step…

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9783347647589

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

In these uncertain and disruptive times, many organisations have found the need to re-examine their leadership and collaboration issues. Classical and familiar organisational and leadership characteristics no longer seem to meet the changing needs and demands of either society, or individual people. The younger generation wants less and less to be subordinated within a leadership system or to be tied to status and materialistic securities. Instead, they are looking for ways to make meaningful contributions towards the development of a sustainable society. As a result, more organisations, large and small, are finding new ways and opportunities to position themselves both structurally and culturally, to form new collaborations and enterprises. Organisations, having arrived in the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)i era, are asking them-selves how they can adapt more efficiently and effectively to this new and unscripted zeitgeist.

The cooperation between us: Gert Nijland: pioneer of Knowledge & Nursing (henceforth K&N), and Hans Ruijs: of Tikla Consultancy Group, started with an extraordinary question in 2015 and has led to an ongoing collaboration which has been inspirational and surprising in many ways.

In this book, Hans Ruijs predominantly describes the process by which K&N grew threefold in members and in revenue within seven years. He explains how K&N members developed new self-organising working and design principles; how they follow their own free-spirited path, and how they are guided by a common task, which we call impulse or purpose.

Gert Nijland tells the story of K&N in terms of how the organisation understands its Purpose today, and how this purpose is successfully implemented among K&N members and their clientele.

There is a lot of helpful literature available regarding organi-sational development, transition management and how to guide corporate transformation. Among others, we have been inspired in various ways by the approaches of:

Theory U, Spiral Dynamics integral, Reinventing Organisations, Holocracy and Sociocracyii for the transfor-mation at K&N.

As valuable and helpful as these approaches were and still are for us, we were guided in our development work primarily by the questions and topics that came from within the K&N system itself. These questions have typically focussed on leadership issues and potential forms of collaboration.

In appreciation of their contribution to society, this book is dedicated first and foremost to all K&N members and their clientele, some of whom have been flushed out of the vertical work world and have lost their place in the meritocracy.

This book is also intended for the numerous cost-bearers (municipalities, social security institutions and health insurance companies) as well as carers, doctors, and therapists, who repeatedly express their trust in K&N and sometimes perhaps wonder how we do everything that we do at K&N.

Last but not least, we hope that you will be inspired by our story. That you will find encouragement within these pages to rethink and reinvent yourself and your world with confidence and courage.

We have made a point of using gender-neutral terms. Where this has not been possible, we have chosen to use the feminine or masculine form. We thus include all gender identities and groups.

Gert Nijland and Hans Ruijs

Marthalen and Windisch 2022.

1. HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Gert Nijland

"Professionals do not need guidance but must have

an adequate framework at their disposal so that