The Decentralised Business

I believe that we are moving into an era of the decentralised business.

No longer should it be necessary for workers to commute back and forth to an expensive office to carry out their work. The tools are now available for (pretty much) all businesses to be operating across towns, states or countries with the majority of workers carrying out their work from home.

Why incur the time and cost wastage of commutes in this day and age?

In addition to the operation of a business being spread geographically rather than within a centralised office or location, I can also see more decentralised or 'flatter' management structures. These less vertical structures create a more participatory working environment. An environment where workers are more akin to team-players and are encouraged to spread best practice and ideas across the organisation. The more ideas that a team-member contributes that are acted upon, the more kudos that gravitates towards them.

These decentralised entities will also have a more decentralised reward structure. Workers will participate in the profits that they help the business produce, rather than flowing the profits upwards solely to the top-tier managers and business owner(s). Profit sharing will be more regular than a 'year-end bonus'. The rewards will flow in real-time as the business flourishes within the monthly or weekly pay.

Workers won't miss out on 'water-cooler' chats as the technology exists for everyone to be able to communicate using video hangouts, forums and other communication channels. In fact, I suspect that workers will feel more connected than ever under this decentralised model.

Productivity and absence can be monitored using technology to ensure that everyone is pulling their weight despite their remote working environment. But I suspect that if everyone was engaged within this new paradigm of business with full recognition for efforts, minimal management, regular profit-sharing, zero commute and greater engagement, the risk of workers playing the system will reduce.

We have all the tools. The question now is: do we have the ambition and daring to shift from the centralised model of business to the dencentralised model of business?