Freedom pays: how WorldBlu organisations are winning through freedom

Freedom pays: how WorldBlu organisations are winning through freedom

"In every aspect of our lives - in politics, in economics, in entertainment, and in family life - we demand the freedom to decide matters for ourselves. And yet when it comes to our work lives, far too many people are stifled, contained, hemmed in, and tied down by bureaucracy and rules that have nothing to do with allowing them to do their best they can in their jobs. These constraints leave people feeling out of control of their working lives, which, in turn, leads to stress, fatigue, and disengagement from work."
- from 'Freedom Inc.' by Brian M. Carney and Isaac Getz

At the WorldBlu Freedom at Work Summit 2015 in Miami Beach, individuals from organisations who were either certified or striving to be certified as Freedom Centred Workplaces gathered to share their experiences.

On the final night, awards were given to the most freedom centred practices and those organisations who had achieved certification for up to nine years in a row. CEOs and HR Managers had tears in their eyes as they watched heartfelt video messages from employees thanking them or were honoured for their contribution to freedom at work. That people could be so emotional over work is evidence that we as human beings are so desperate to have connection in our working lives, to have the freedom to be who we really are, to have the opportunity to contribute to a bigger purpose and do our best work. 

Over the last three days of the summit, we've heard incredible stories: confessionals from CEOs like Michael Tuteur of Votenet who realised he wasn't as devoted to his employees as he thought because he wasn't allowing them to be part of making decisions; the commander of the USS Santa Fe (David Marquet) who was able to turn the ship around by encouraging the crew to state intent, ask questions and make decisions, instead of seek permission; the journeys several companies (Zappos, Geonetric) have gone through to remove 'managers' in favour of autonomous workforces and natural leaders because they recognise that micromanagement isn't scalable.

WorldBlu believes that mindset, organisation design and leadership are the keys to whether an organisation is 'fear based' or freedom based. We've all experienced what it's like to work in a fear based organisation.

Indeed, WorldBlu Founder and CEO Traci Fenton told a story of an employee in a Fortune 500 company whose colleagues had a coding system for how angry their CEO was in meetings. 'Red' meant his face was going red, 'vein' meant his vein was bulging, and the final stage was 'ACP'. This last one stood for 'assume the crash position'! Sadly, stories like this are not unusual in workplaces today.

Replacing a fear based culture with a freedom centred one starts with mindset and often re-framing unconsciously held assumptions and beliefs about work and the people doing the work (people must be controlled; boss knows best; people can't be trusted etc.). Only once you've established a freedom centred mindset can you design a freedom centred organisation and create freedom centred leaders.

This year's summit marked a particularly important milestone because WorldBlu was able to share the output of a research study they had commissioned.

Dale Matheny, an expert in business analytics and sustainable business practices and a professor at Principia College, helped WorldBlu analye revenue data supplied by participating WorldBlu-certified companies from around the world. To judge the strength of the WorldBlu company results, he compared their revenue growth to that of S&P 500 companies. The research looked at cumulative revenue growth over a three-year period, 2010 to 2013. The results?

The S&P 500 companies achieved a 15.36 percent average cumulative growth rate. The WorldBlu companies in the study achieved a staggering growth rate of 103.16 percent.

The full whitepaper can be downloaded from the WorldBlu website which also looks at resilience during the recession and case studies on DaVita and Menlo Innovations.

As WorldBlu Founder and CEO Traci Fenton says: "Freedom at Work is not a utopian concept—it’s a powerful organisational model that impacts every facet of an organisation, proven to deliver powerful revenue growth and tremendous resilience during tough economic times."

We have a long way to go and even the WorldBlu certified organisations at the summit these past few days recognise that it's a continuous journey. The grooves of the Industrial Revolution are carved deep and it's going to take time to make the dominant, fear based organisation models obsolete. But it's a worthy cause and one that is long, long overdue...

"The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage."
- Thucydides

 

 

 

 

Garry Turner MCIPD

Expanding Possibilities & Value Creation | 1-1 Thinking Partner | Spaces | Embodied Leadership | WorldBlu Freedom at Work partner | International Speaker | Super-connector | Journey of Decolonisation | Community Builder

6y

Really interesting Lisa Gill to read this blog 9 months after my first learning about WorldBlu and the transformational impact they can make via Perry Timms in April 2017. Having been on my own personal transformation during H2 2017 with them, their model is now going to start to reaching the masses I feel. Have a great start to the new week.

Samantha Gee

Director and co-founder at Verditer Consulting - specialists in reward

8y

Reinforces the fact that the most powerful reward isn't about expense.

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