The importance of questions

To ask questions is imperative to innovation and when sharing knowledge. As I have mentioned earlier in my posting, Ricardo Semler writes about how they work at Semco. He mention that Semco companies promote people to ask questions in their work. By this enabling known truths to be questioned and open the possibilities of better answers than the ones you already know.

This way of thinking can initiate a lot of change in an organisation. If I was to ask about why we never see any documents or an agenda of the leader-meeting in the company i work for (Computas), the answer would probably be something like "We discuss important issues that is handled by the leaders" or something similar.. This would then generate a new set of why's .. These are questions that can open up the organisation and create trust between management and the rest of the workers.

I will make next week my WHY-week at work and note what answers i get.

Semco, Semler and interviews

In the book, The seven-day weekend, Ricardo Semler writes about how they interview applicants for a job at a Semco firm. They do not have a dedicated department for doing these things although it seems that they do have a HR manager. After dividing the applications between the volunteers, which was usually department managers or similar. They would then read the applications and pick what they thought would be the best persons for the job. Later these applicants was asked to come to an interview. Sometimes they had individual interviews to be able to shorten the list of candidates. When they where down to a manageable number they would arrange for a new interview with all the candidates at the same time. For this interview the employees in the hiring department would be able to come and ask any question they may have. In the book they emphasise that this enables the employees to have ownership in the decision of who gets the job. In addition they would actually know the person that gets the job. This is also apply when they are interviewing the position as their new boss.

This is really an interesting way of conducting interviews! It creates a democratic way of choosing who is the best suited person for the job. A process that does not only rely on grades from school and an interview with people your never going to see again (and people your never going to work with). It seems such a logical and intuitive (if there is such a combination) way of conducting interviews. This enables the other employees to accept the person and base the choice on what they value in a fellow worker. Their the ones that knows what it takes to do the job, not necessarily the recruiting department or even the manager.

I am trying to see how I would react to such a process if I had applied for a job. I would meet the "competition" and be openly exposed to them and the employees in the interview. One of the thoughts i get is that I would be pushed in to a competing mode. On the other hand I would find out if this is a job I really want and what it is all about since I talk to the employees and their questions mirrors the requirements for the job. In addition I would find out if I would fit in and be able to work together with the other employees.

This being said, the way it is handled seems very important for the result. It could easily end up on the other end of the scale, like Donald Trump's show The Apprentice.