Haier
Roughly 80,000 people reorganized into more than 4,000 self-managing microenterprises.
McKinsey, Shattering the status quo: a conversation with Haier's Zhang Ruimin
interview
Haier corporate materials and RenDanHeYi advocacy sources
ongoing
From 2005 Zhang Ruimin restructured the Chinese appliance maker around a model called RenDanHeYi, linking employee value to user value. Haier broke into thousands of microenterprises contracting with each other and with a shared platform, organized around a purpose stated as zero distance to the user. Roughly 10,000 middle-management positions were removed.
Zhang has been direct about the cost, telling McKinsey that adopting the model means giving up powers including decision-making, hiring and firing, and setting compensation. It is the most radical living experiment in organizational design and the anchor for the Microenterprise Mesh pattern.
Read it critically. Much of the available material originates with Haier or with advocacy sources, and independent longitudinal evaluation is thinner than the model's fame suggests.
What is the smallest unit that can own a customer outcome end to end?
What orients a person and an agent when neither can see the whole system?
What are people paid for once output is no longer the scarce thing?