Ep. 11 Joost Minnar - Tackling the Fundamental Problems of Organising at Scale

In this episode, we talk to Joost Minnaar, co-founder of the blog Corporate-Rebels.com in 2015. Joost travels the world researching progressive organisations, blogs about the discoveries he makes and advises on workplace issues. Joost is the co-author of the book 'Corporate Rebels, Make Work More Fun' (2020), winner of the Thinkers50 Radar Award (2019) and a Doctoral Candidate at the Amsterdam Business Research Institute (VU University, Amsterdam). We also have the pleasure to collaborate with Joost and his colleagues in our work on the Haier Group model (check-up our upcoming webinar: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/adopting-haier-model-webinar/). 

In our conversation with Joost, we get quite practical about the three “fundamental problems” of organising at scale, as he frames it, and how organisations tackle them. We loved how this episode helped us nail down some key thoughts into discernable patterns, drawing on Joost's rich library of experiences from researching so many great organisations.

 

Read our Medium publication to access our key insights and the interview transcript.

Here are some important links from the conversation:

Work by Joost and Corporate Rebels:

> Corporate Rebels Blog: https://corporate-rebels.com/

> Joost Minnaar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joost_minnaar

>Joost Minnaar, Corporate Rebels, “Solving Organizational Complexity With Simplicity”:

https://corporate-rebels.com/how-fast-can-you-scale/

> Joost Minnaar, Corporate Rebels. “How To Organize A Large Company Without Middle Management”: https://corporate-rebels.com/how-to-organize-a-large-organization-without-middle-management/

 

> Pim de Morree, Corporate Rebels, “A Radical And Proven Approach To Self-Management” (Ner Group), https://corporate-rebels.com/ner-group

Other mentions and references

> Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies: https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582

> Geoffrey West profile https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west

> Principle of least action, http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Principle_of_least_action

 

> Deborah Frieze, From Scaling Up to Scaling Across: https://medium.com/in-praise-of-scaling-down/from-scaling-up-to-scaling-across-ed5092acd22f

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio find his portfolio here: https://audiojungle.net/user/liosound/portfolio?utf8=%E2%9C%93&order_by=sales

Recorded on May 4th 2020