Joost Minnaar from Corporate Rebels on making work more fun

Lisa: So Corporate Rebels, you’ve said, started out of frustration when you and Pim entered the world of work and were really sort of disappointed by the corporate world. What are some of your frustrations, some of your biggest frustrations today that keep you going with this mission, this purpose behind why Corporate Rebels was started?

Joost: Well, we started out of our personal frustration with the corporate world. Back then we actually thought we were the only ones that were frustrated, or not the only ones, but just a few that were frustrated in the corporate world, and that we were the ones that didn’t fit in. So we started to look, dig deeper into the engagement scores, and we found that there was a huge amount of people disengaged in work. We were actually not the only ones; we were just part of it – like I would say 80%. So most people are disengaged with their daily job.

So that’s basically our mission: to make work more fun and to beat this problem, and to actually, we hope, make this engagement problem get out of the world. That’s our mission. We started to write about it, and now that’s driving us. We want to make a big impact and we want to beat all the stereotypes. We want to show that it’s possible in every industry, that’s possible in every culture, and that’s possible in any size of your company or organization.

Lisa: And that’s when you started this bucket list, which is now developed into the two of you touring the world and visiting more than 50 organizations and kind of pioneering leaders all over the world. And that’s what’s inspired your latest offering, which is this Corporate Rebels Canvas where you have these eight trends that you’ve discovered with kind of common themes in the organizations that you visited. Could you say something about what the Corporate Rebels Canvas is and how people can use it?

Joost: Yeah, we started to share this canvas with the eight trends because we visited more than 50 or more than 60 organizations around the world, and we clearly saw that they were doing things differently than traditional organizations. We sat down for a long time, we discussed about it, and we arrived on eight different trends that we think these kind of bucket list organizations are doing differently than traditional ones.

But I want to be very clear about this – this is not like a “ticking the boxes” exercise, that if you take all these trends, you will be an engaging or happy organization. You will not. It’s just that you can use it – you can use the canvas as a starting point to start a discussion within your team and within your leadership.

Because we saw these stories and we saw these organizations and we wrote about it widely, but only recently, some months ago, we started to try to make our own transformations in organizations. And we found that it was really needed. If we were working with leaders and if we work with teams, we needed to have a canvas to start our conversation and to see if everybody was aligned on the same focus points on where to work to make an organization better.

So that’s when we came up with the canvas, and since we are sharing everything on our website that we make and what we produce, we share this canvas. And we hope that other people, when people are followers, are using this canvas just as a tool for inspiration and as a tool for alignment between teams and leadership.

Lisa: So the canvas is sort of a starting point for a conversation to get a shared understanding of what some of the aspirations are in certain areas of an organization?

Joost: Yeah, exactly. Like, we visit many organizations, and none of the organizations are completely focused on all the eight trends. Most of the organizations, they focus themselves on either two, three, four different trends, and they’re completely like they are doing everything to make that developed as much as possible.

If you look, for example, at Patagonia, they are very much focused on their purpose. If you look at other companies, they are very much focused on radical transparency, like make everything open to the public. And companies like Buurtzorg, they’re doing that.

So we discover, as we want to discover, what the teams or the people within the organization actually want themselves. So where, what are their focus points? And if everybody would in an organization fill in the frame or the canvas, you can easily see where people are attracted by and what will be the first points to work on.

So if everybody is very clearly focused on purpose or very focused on leadership, then you know, “Okay, the first experiments we will do in our organization will have to be focused on those internal focus parts.”

So we try to – we always try to explain it like, you know, in the past we had these equalizers, and you can basically tune your perfect situation. So that’s the same for this canvas. You can very much focus certain points from very important to not so important, and that’s what this canvas must be used for – to see what is important and what is not.

Lisa: I think that’s really important because you and I’ve spoken before about that there’s no one-size-fits-all. And if you try and copy another organization’s recipe for success or way of organizing, then it’s not gonna work. So I think it’s really valuable to use these eight trends as a sort of starting point and, as you say, to pick the ones that most resonate with you and the people in the organization, and the ones that they are most compelled to start experimenting with and kind of tuning to meet their own needs.

Joost: Yeah, yeah. I definitely agree. We would be very ashamed if people were using it as a “ticking the boxes” exercise because we don’t believe in that. We don’t believe that if you introduce all these eight points, you will be engaged or inspiring. In fact, we haven’t seen any organization of all of them that introduced these eight points.

So these eight points are just – this should just be used as inspiration and somehow as guidelines, not as fixed points or fix trends or model or whatever. We don’t believe in that.

Lisa: Then I think we are on the same page on that one. And in terms of leadership, I mean, you’ve met some of the most inspirational pioneering leaders that are around out there at the moment – you know, people like Jos de Blok and so many fascinating, charismatic, pioneering founders and CEOs and leaders. What has been a highlight for you, and what have been the biggest leadership lessons that you’ve discovered in your research?

Joost: Well, the biggest highlight? That’s a difficult thing to say. We met so many inspiring leaders, and I would say maybe the ones that are not so famous or the unknown stories are just as special as some of the known pioneers.

So Jos de Blok is an interesting character, but we also met a really amazing leader in the US, Ari Weinzweig from a company called Zingerman’s. In Belgium, Ministry of Social Security in Brussels, Frank Van Massenhove – very interesting leader.

But overall, we see – we definitely see some trends. Like, one of our points of the canvas is also to be strong supportive leaders. And we never came across directive leadership. In fact, we always saw supportive leaders with very strong – strong leaders, natural leaders that have a vision.

So they all set out a clear vision for the future for the organization, but they are very much aware that they need to involve all the employees in the process because they don’t know how they can get this vision. And they are convinced that the employees know better than them how to implement all the daily practice and how to make it work.

So they set out the vision, but then they start asking their employees, “Okay guys, I have this vision, but we have to do it together. And I will give you all the freedom to get through this vision, and I will do everything in my power to help you making it a reality.”

So they are talking a lot to their employees, they are asking them all the time what they need to perform better. They’re very curious. The most inspiring leaders actually ask us more questions than we can ask them because they want to all the time learn from everyone they see.

They are walking the talk. It’s one thing I found very inspiring – they always give the right example. And they are humble. So they will never tell you that they have the perfect workplace. In fact, they will tell you they are really far from it. They try to be the perfect workplace, but we haven’t met any of them that said they arrived yet because they keep moving and they keep starting new experiments and they keep evolving.

I think that’s a new kind of – or it’s a different kind of leadership that we are not so used to in traditional organizations, but I think it’s an important one. And if you are able to be a leader like that, then you will find a lot of followers.

Lisa: It’s sort of an archetype of leadership that’s emerging at the moment. It’s almost like a humble visionary or something.

Joost: Yeah, yeah, agreed. Like, they have a strong vision for sure, and in that sense, they can also be quite stubborn. But they always – the right leaders, I think, they find the right followers, and they make it work.

Lisa: How does that work then in terms of – because I agree with what you’re saying, but it’s something that I see people debating a lot at the moment in terms of that kind of paradox of the leaders in these successful and pioneering organizations. They have this curious balance of being – having this strong sense of vision and being stubborn, as you said, and yet at the same time being humble, being curious, involving people, and recognizing that the best way to realize their vision is to ask others for help in how to do that. How do those things, in your experience, sit together? How do you get that? How does that balance work?

Joost: I think this is a fact of a combination of natural hierarchy and letting all the people on the team being involved. So if you have a vision, you have to naturally be able to let people be able to follow you.

So how the pioneers that we visit do it is by setting up a vision for the future and invite people to join them to reach that vision. And if your vision is compelling enough, you will find a lot of supporters. And if you don’t evolve them, if you don’t support or if you don’t evolve your supporters in the mission, I think you will fail, and in the end, you will not have any supporters left. So it’s somehow a natural thing, I guess.

And if you look at the mission of Buurtzorg and leadership figure of Jos de Blok, you can see that it can grow pretty fast, really big.

Lisa: I don’t know if you saw, there was a post written by Jurgen Appelo from Happy Melly, and he was writing about how he is a dictator in his organization, and he’s kind of come to terms with that. And he said, “There’s no such thing as a holacratic organization, and in some aspects, it’s totally okay to be a dictator.”

And certain things – if you have a vision as a leader and you want people to follow your vision and kind of realize it and stuff like that. And there was a bit of a debate on Twitter, and people saying, “Oh, that’s quite a strong word to use,” and his tone was quite aggressive.

And then Tom Nixon kind of came into the conversation, and he was saying, “I don’t really agree with the language, but I think it’s absolutely okay to be a dictator in some things if you do it respectfully and with dignity.” Because then it’s about being committed to and stubborn about your vision as long as you don’t – so long as you’re a benevolent dictator, if you like. What do you think about that?

Joost: First of all, I haven’t read the Jurgen article, so I cannot really comment on that. But I think the word “dictator” to me implies that people are forced to follow you, and they are forced to follow your lead or do what you say they have to do. So that, to me, really sounds directive.

And the organizations we visit – yes, the leaders have a strong vision, but they will never force people to do things. And if you cannot find yourself in the vision of the leader or the vision of the organization, you probably have nothing to do there. So you will not find your sweet spot on what you can contribute to the mission.

And yeah, probably, these people that don’t – cannot identify themselves with the mission or the vision of the leader of the organization (which is most often combined – what is the mission of the organization is often derived from the leadership). If you cannot identify yourself with that vision, you should ask yourself what you’re doing in that organization in the first place.

So I don’t agree that these leaders are acting like dictators. I think they are acting as leaders, and dictators force people to follow them. These leaders, they invite people to follow them.

And they make decisions, I think that can be true. There sometimes decisions are made based on this vision, and this might feel to some people as dictatorship. But that dictatorship is defined by the vision and by the values that people within organization agreed to live upon.

Lisa: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that’s a really important distinction – that the difference between a dictator is often people don’t have a choice in following them, whereas the leaders that you’ve met – I really like your point about there’s an invitation. There’s a “This is my vision, and if it’s compelling for you and it meets a need for you, then I invite you to join us in making it a reality and being involved in creating that.”

Joost: But I do agree – I don’t say a lie because I haven’t read the article, but I think I can see somehow the points. Like, we have seen also many organizations that have made a transformation, right? That made the transformation from being very traditional to one that is very more progressive.

And if you monitor this transformation over time, you will see that over time, around 20% of the people leave. These are people that leave by themselves because they don’t anymore fit in this progressive environment. And so either don’t like this amount of freedoms and this amount of responsibility, because it’s not just freedom and fun all the time. We also have high levels of responsibility and high levels of accountability, and some people don’t like that. So they leave by themselves, and they cannot anymore identify themselves with this idea of a progressive organization.

Lisa: It’s like with great freedom comes great responsibility.

Joost: Yeah. And if you take, for example, the example of Morning Star – Morning Star is completely self-managed until certain conflicts arise, right? So maybe then it is where they – this is what they want to emphasize in this article – like there are certain situations when the leadership needs to step in.

So if, for example, a conflict between two people is not resolved, it cannot be resolved by the team and cannot be resolved by anyone within organization, then at last, somebody needs to make a decision. And that often is then the highest leader or the one that holds the ownership of the organization.

And in Morning Star, for example, that will be Chris Rufer. But in reality, we visited Morning Star, and it’s up there with the employees. And in fact, they are not – nobody is aware of how often it happens, but they realize in reality, this kind of decisions rarely happen, that the leadership really needs to make a decision that is really top-down to make it work for the organization. But yeah, for sure, sometimes this needs to happen.

Lisa: Yeah, I think the point that I do agree with – I think Jurgen had a point in the area around… There is – there has been a bit of, in response to “Reinventing Organizations” by Frederic Laloux, I think there is a sort of a fan base of people who have become quite allergic to the idea of leadership in any way almost – that the idea that someone might have a vision or might be setting some kind of direction in some way is quite scary to some of the Teal fanatics.

So I think it’s really important to have these discussions about getting a balance right and that it’s completely healthy and okay for someone who has a vision to go with that and to lead with that, so long as people are given a choice and so long as people are aligned with that vision themselves.

Are there any other things for you at the moment – because one of the things I liked about you when we first met and had a conversation was that you have this natural sort of skepticism and, dare I say, cynicism, which maybe comes from the fact that you’re an engineer. You have this kind of scientific approach to things. Are there any things in the world of self-management and new ways of organizing and things like that that you’re a bit skeptical about or a bit concerned about?

Joost: Yeah, sure. There are a few. First of all, I would like to emphasize that we are not just looking at self-management, but we come across a lot of self-management organizations. But it’s not like key focus points for us to only learn about self-management. We just want to visit and learn from organizations that are very progressive and have an engaged workforce.

And what we see there is that, after visiting so many, diversity is key – it’s not one size fits all. And that is something that frustrates us sometimes – to see people talking about models that can solve all your solutions. And then yeah, this is like a management fad, I think.

When the model becomes more important than the philosophy that’s behind it, and you can easily see that happen around a few models like Teal, for example. But you can also see it about the Spotify model – like it’s not about the tribes and it’s not about the squads and how you name it, but it’s about the philosophy. So why do they work like this? Why did they give the developers so much freedom? I think that’s much more important than the model and how you call it.

Same you see happen with “Reinventing Organizations” and people starting about green organizations or teal organizations or orange organizations. Well, this is obviously nonsense – such things don’t exist. There are no such things as teal organizations or orange organizations. So this is like – I would say I’m a bit skeptical about that, too, when people start talking models because I don’t think any organization or even any team likes to work the same as another team. Everyone, everybody is unique; you always all have to find your own unique ways of working. So that’s one thing that I don’t really like.

The other thing I’m skeptical about is all the artificial stuff – like artificial stuff like giving each other high-fives, doing little dances, dressing up in a bunny suit at work and expecting people to be happy. Like we are invited to lots of conferences, and more and more people start to talk about it. Like, “Go on! This is it!” No, it’s not about that.

We – maybe in the short term, you will get a little bit higher engagement scores, and you can give free fruits and bananas or stuff, but on the long term, it doesn’t fix anything. So we are way more focused on what you can do to really transform and really change your organization to be successful in the long term.

And then you come back to the same points: like, have a vision and ask your employees what they want, and be ready to implement the things that employees come up with because they are the ones that know what they need. You just have to facilitate them with it.

Lisa: I think the appeal to so many people of Corporate Rebels in the articles that you write, and now the events that you do and the consulting work that you’re starting to do, is that you have a real no-jargon, human approach to sharing real case studies of real organizations – not so that people can copy them, but to offer some inspiration and then to help people find their own way of doing things and discover and co-create their own ways of transforming their organization and creating a more engaged workforce. So I think there’s something refreshing about that.

Joost: I’m happy you are referring to that because that’s exactly what we want. We want to share those stories and not to copy it, but just for inspiration. And read it and take what is what you want to use in your organization. And don’t think this is the next model and we are going to implement that, because it’s not – the world just doesn’t work like that.

Lisa: And you now have gone from being researchers and writers to starting to work with organizations and help them transform. And so you’re starting to grow your team now, which is exciting, and you’re entering into a new phase of Corporate Rebels. Have you found, as you’re recruiting new full-time members of the team, have you found that you’re having to start to apply some of these ideas that you’ve learned and researched? And how have you found that?

Joost: Yeah, absolutely. We try to implement the book, soak as much as we can. And that’s sometimes difficult. So some months ago, Freek started with us. He was a new member, and we were really sure that we took lots of time for his onboarding, and we actually let him work for a few weeks next to us so he would be completely on board of anything we are doing.

We defined values together with the three of us. We took a day and we discussed with each other what we find important, what we value in each other, but also in our teamwork. So we set up this kind of values with the three of us, and we really try to stick to them.

So we have a – we made a – we all got an app on our telephone where we get like a daily question where we can see how the teamwork is going and what kind of feedback we can give to each other. And we really try to meet every week in an informal way to really discuss like what goes well, what can be better, and where we can improve.

Lisa: Is the app you mention – is that like a public app, or is that something that you’ve created?

Joost: It’s actually – it’s an app of one of our bucket list companies, which is called – the app is called Murmur. But I’m not sure if it’s already publicly available. We have some trial software. But if you are interested, you can always send us an email. You can – anyway, or everyone that’s listening to this podcast can always just send us and connect to us in any way you want. We are on all the social media and stuff. So if you have any question about that, I can share it, and we’ll be happy to refer you to the company that’s making it.

So that’s one point – one side we try – how we try to onboard new people and how we keep experimenting with how we work. And on the other side, we really provide people from the beginning with a lot of freedom, a lot of ownership. We want people to become co-owners of Corporate Rebels so that they feel ownership of our mission and of our organization.

And we want to create equal level between all of us. And we keep trying to experiment like every week with new experiments to improve our way of working and to improve our relationships with each other.

But yeah, of course, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to let go of your own organization, in fact, and to share everything. It’s difficult, but you have to work on it.

Nobody is telling us that this kind of way of working, this progressive way of working, is easier than the traditional way of working. I think it’s actually harder, and you have to work on it. And if you work hard on it, I think you can be successful.

Lisa: That’s something I hear a lot actually – is that working in these more autonomous ways of working, most people tell me it’s harder than working in a hierarchy or top-down way of working. And I think that’s partly because that’s been a dominant paradigm for such a long time that it’s become kind of part of our – it’s just become so embedded in our culture that we don’t even question it. We sort of take it for granted.

So these new ways of working are so new and emerging. And I’ve read a lot of things about people saying that in general, as human beings, we haven’t really learned how to be with each other in relationships in general. And we’re just now learning that, and there are so many practices that are emerging in lots of other fields as well, like Art of Hosting and all of these different practices that are all about having conversations and connecting and listening in a different way to people. So it’s really interesting.

Joost: I don’t know if it’s something new. Like, we are already living like that in our private life for many, many years, right? So we establish certain relationships, and we’re working in our family life and our friends – we have already this kind of self-managed structures and way of treating each other.

What I find difficult, I think, is when you have a certain amount of power to distribute, your authority – we are used to control certain things, and all these control mechanisms and power mechanisms, they are distributed once you give everybody ownership and when you are working in a more transparent way. So you cannot anymore hide yourself; you have to share your failures, which is harder than sharing your successes.

So these are all kinds of things that I think in professional life, yeah, you have to learn how to do it. But I hope most of the people do that already in their private life.

Lisa: Yeah, I think – I think people do to a certain extent, but I also think in many marriages and families, you know, it’s – we’re quite used to not telling the truth to each other. Or maybe that’s more true in British culture. Anyway, we’re very repressed and polite.

I think in work now, organizations working like this – people, I hear people telling me that they are learning new ways of listening and communicating that they’re transferring to their personal lives as well. And it’s opening up a whole other dimension of their personal lives as well.

Joost: Yeah, but like on the other hand, if it becomes too hard to work that way – like progressively or in new ways of working – if it becomes too hard, then you should also question if that’s the right way, you know?

Because at the end, you define with your team – I believe that the team decides for themselves how they want to work together. And if you experience that this way of working is too hard or too confronting or you don’t like it, then I think you should change the way of working.

And if you are in a team of 15 and you agree on the fact that you would like to work in a traditional way or top-down way, and everybody is on the same line, why would you not work like that?

Only if you are visiting organizations that work – that give their employees freedom to work how they want, not often, almost rarely, you come across people that say, “We want to work traditional.”

Lisa: I think there’s a key theme in everything that you’re saying, I think, which is about choice and about asking people what they want and what they need. Because if you’re enforcing self-management, for example, with a bunch of people who don’t want to work in a self-managing way and aren’t interested in talking about governance or strategy, then that’s no better than a top-down autocratic organization.

Joost: Exactly. The reason – the reason why you implement it should be the right one.

Lisa: What final advice would you give to listeners who are interested in experimenting with new ways of working? What kind of pearl of wisdom would you offer them?

Joost: We don’t say it’s a pearl of wisdom, but I would – there are some ways I think you can start experimenting.

So, you should first start to create a vision. That’s very important. So create a vision – where do you want to go or what do you want to achieve? Then I would say just go to our website, download the canvas, and take this canvas. Sit down with everybody that’s involved in the process with you and your team of making where you work. Fill in the canvas, and you will find some focus points.

But be sure, stick to one or two. Design around those focus points. Design experiments. You don’t have to come up with your own experiments, but just find inspiration from inside your company or from outside, from other people, because probably other people already solved this.

Take inspiration, design your own experiment, and then really do it. Try it. Try it for at least like a month, for example, a serious amount of time. And after this month, you review. You review what went well, what was a success, what was a failure. Do we like it? Don’t we like it? Are we more successful? Are we not? And decide if you go on with it or not.

And if you don’t like it, start a new experiment. Try something else and improve. And if you do it step by step, small steps, you will slowly be able to change your traditional way of working. And hopefully, you will be able to build a movement that spreads around the organization, and then you might have the power to completely change the organization from the inside out.

Lisa: Thank you.