Ep. 106 Isaac Getz on why the CEO's ego is the biggest obstacle to liberated companies

Isaac Getz is a business philosopher and professor at ESCP Business School, and the co-author, with Brian Carney, of Freedom, Inc., the book that gave us the idea of the liberated company and sparked a movement that included 500 organisations at its peak.

We talk about why a liberated company is a philosophy rather than a blueprint, and what inner work this asks of a leader. We also cover why liberated companies tolerate tries rather than errors, why you uncover your values rather than invent them, and why none of this is laissez-faire.

Resources:

• Freedom, Inc. book site

• "The rarest commodity is leadership without ego" TEDx talk by Leadership Without Ego book co-author and liberating leader Bob Davids  

• "Liberating leadership: How the initiative-freeing radical organizational form has been successfully adopted" seminal California Management Review article 

• "The liberated company theoretical concept: current issues and the intimidating complexity of organizational design" Journal of Organization Design article

• Related Leadermorphosis episodes:

  • Ep. 55 with Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organisations

  • Ep. 41 with Michael Y. Lee on what the academic world is learning about decentralised organisations

  • Ep. 12 with Karin Tenelius, co-founder of Tuff