On Topic: You’re not the boss of me

Ah, I said to myself, there you are.

The Big Reveal came as I knew it would, given all the clues that had been billboarded throughout the story like so many advertising signs along an interstate, but not until about halfway into an especially robust article in the May 21st Wall Street Journal: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, the online retailer of shoes and more, the story notes, 'has said he is more interested in the Zappos culture than footwear.”

That explains a lot.

I unearthed this bit of truth-telling in a story about the company's now monthlong experiment with what it labels 'holacracy.” Holons is Greek and refers to self-reliant units, but in this system also are part of a hierarchy.

Hsieh in a 4,700-word company memo also referred to the structure as 'self-management” - a more direct term, if not as Harvard-Business-School sounding.

In Zappos-land, that means since the end of April there have been no bosses to tell employees what, when or how to do stuff. Workers have are forming 'circles” (also known as teams, I'd be willing to bet) so they can carry on with getting things done.

Former managers have received no promise their pay won't be reduced in the future, given they no longer are, well, managers.

The philosophy change at the Nevada-based company comes during a reorganization, and Amazon-owned Zappos is not the first to give the notion of self-organizing teams a whirl. And, to be fair, it's really only been a few weeks - Hsieh told the WSJ a successful transition might take up to five years.

But, I don't know, call me cautious - there's a reason why more experienced people tend to set the guidelines for newer people. That's because they most often (though I admit not always) have seen how it's done and generally know how to avoid non-starters, back alleys, dead ends and already-determined plain-old crummy ideas.

Of course, Zappos might pull it off. Businesses of all stripes need to innovate, and in half-a-decade's time holacracy could be the big thing.

But it's not for every company or for every employee. The WSJ story noted that slightly more than 200 out of about 1,500 Zappos folk had decided they intend to leave.

I recall interviewing at a publisher elsewhere in the Midwest that prided itself on the ever-present beer keg and pizza available in the middle of the main office. Articles were peer-reviewed, I was informed by one smiling young potential co-worker, and writers/editors each quarter with the most approvals won a prize - say, a weekend a dude ranch.

Now maybe had I been twenty-something, as were most of the folk there, I might have found this appealing. But this was only a few years ago, and I knew this setup wasn't for me. (The peer-review was bad enough, but I mean, seriously, horses, for goodness sakes.)

So I wished them and beer keg well and drove off into the sunset.

Maybe in a few years we'll all work at companies without supervisors and be feed pizza all day long.

And we will happily dream of dude ranches.

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Here's another reminder to nominate your company, organization or supplier for the Business 380 Excellence 2015 Business Awards, hosted by The Gazette and KCRG-TV9. Go to thegazette.com/BusinessAwards2015 to fill out an application.

You also can reserve a table at the Sept. 3 awards banquet and networking event. The keynote will be by Debi Durham, head of the Iowa Economic Development Authority, and Paul Trombino, Iowa Department of Transportation director.

You can look it up on your smartphone.

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise editor and business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michael.castranova@thegazette.com