Sceptics argue that self-management means chaos—no bosses, no structure, no accountability. But in a recent post on LinkedIn, co-founder of Corporate Rebels, Pim de Morree argues that global evidence shows the opposite: leadership is distributed, control flows bottom‑up, and self‑management can scale.

Examples include:

• Clever (Denmark): 500+ employees thriving in energy within a larger corporation.

• Disco (Japan): 5,000 staff coordinated through an internal marketplace and “Will currency.”

• Mindera (Portugal): 1,000+ software developers innovating under private equity ownership.

To emphasise the stupidity of classical organisational design, Pim uses this wonderful image of a football team struggling to play together in silos!

I often use this sporting analogy not only to illustrate such inefficiencies, but also to ask leaders and teams how much time they spend learning or training together. The most successful sports players and teams spend many more hours training than they do actually playing on the pitch.

How can you improve efficiency, creativity, and culture by creating self-managed teams?

And how much time should your leaders and teams invest in learning how to work together better?

Image Credit: Corporate Rebels and Business Illustrator