Boldare Shakes The Workplace Up. For Good.

When Piotr Majchrzak (“Pete” is acceptable for native English speakers) founded Boldare, he wasn’t just trying to create an innovative and exciting digital product design and development company. He was trying to create a work environment where anyone could excel. 

“I never believed in formal structures.” 

Most of what we’re familiar with in professional environments is a hierarchal structure. One person on top with underlings below them and underlings below them and so on. The person on top makes all the decisions and rules and the underlings follow them. That’s just how it is, right? 

“I can compare the running of this company to like running a city. 

“If you’re in the city, you have your own house, maybe a flat, and you can do whatever you want. 

“But of course … you have to obey some rules that you set up with the neighbors.” 

Boldare calls this their Holacracy Experience. Think of it as the freedom of driving your own car, but you have to drive on the right side of the road. The same applies to a workspace. We trust drivers to follow the rules of the road. We should trust workers to accomplish their tasks competently. 

Anyone who has worked with a manager over their shoulder knows the tension and resentment it can cause. That micromanaging negatively affects productivity. The irony is that when managers think their involvement can only help, it actually hurts. 

Boldare Breaks The Rules And Wins

If you take a look at some of the work Boldare does, you can see that there is a high level of competence and good taste. There is a dedication to what the client wants but an authority in the quality of work produced. If you think this result is because management is cracking skulls, you’d be mistaken. 

“I was working at a certain company which had to downsize. It was a small company – like 10 or 15 people. But they decided that they had to downsize the team. 

“So, I called my boss, ‘OK, maybe you don’t have to fire this guy. I’ll make the company and people are paying me for the service you want to have.’” 

How many managers or higher-ups are you aware of that would create a new company in order to preserve the livelihoods of their employees? 

“Friends came to me [asking], ‘why aren’t you doing that in the proper way?’ And I was asking, ‘Okay, what’s the proper way and why should I do it?’ 

“And so I didn’t get it. [I got the feeling that] there is a certain way of doing things.

“It didn’t work. I was looking for something to be some kind of new way of working.

“[So we created] an organization [where] …  you can be your own boss.

“I found it effective.”

Employee Autonomy and Why It Works

Find me a worker with a level of autonomy and I’ll show you someone who can be trusted to get the job done. The more you micromanage, the less you trust your employees, the worse off your business is. 

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the work Boldare does and tell me that their method is ineffective. 

Of course, there’s always the “we’re a family” speech that managers give. You’d be kidding yourself if you haven’t rolled your eyes at that sentiment. Not because coworkers are incapable of bonding and enjoying each other’s company. But because we know that managers are often being disingenuous when they claim “we’re a family.” 

What’s more accurate is “we’re a team.” We have to work together towards a common goal. If you foster that sentiment, you just may see some success.

There are plenty of workspaces that are productive, effective, and healthy environments. Those environments are the ones where workers are expected and trusted to produce good work. Nobody likes a manager that nitpicks your every last interaction with a customer. Nobody likes a supervisor standing over your shoulder. 

One of the few silver linings of this pandemic is that it exposed the poor working conditions in our labor market. The Great Resignation is a long time coming. For the first time in a long time, workers have leverage. Managers, supervisors, and executives need to take note. 

When you trust your employees to do good work, when you give them the conditions in which to live their lives to the fullest, and when you expect quality from them, they most often deliver. And that’s good for everyone. 

Boldare knows it, and it’s working for them. It can work for all of us.