I estimate that the ratio of useless to relevant reading material is about twenty to one. With that in mind, my advice it to reduce the literary inflow to a maximum of two newspapers a day, two weekly magazines, and two publications in a specialized field. Get off distribution lists. The reward will be an opportunity to engage in that underappreciated occupation, contemplation.

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To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise, lets tribal customs thrive, and fosters a power that is derived from respect, not rules. In other words, the successful companies will be the ones that put quality of life first. Do this and the rest—quality of product, productivity of workers, profits for all—will follow.

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But when cards are held close to the vest, communication will be faulty, and anxieties, misunderstandings, insecurity, and eventually hostility will manifest itself. No amount of “we’re-all-in-this-together-because-we’re-all-one-big-family” sloganeering will compensate.

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Nothing is harder work than democracy, I keep telling myself… But I’ll gladly bite my lip when I disagree with a judgment made by consensus, because I believe that unfettered democracy is much more important (and even more profitable in the long run) than prevailing over our managers in a way that takes you back to the days in which seesaws and sandboxes were important parts of the world.

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I have called our structure new, but it isn’t much different from the organization used 500,000 generations ago when man was a hunter. The person who saw the mammoth first became the Spotter. The one who chased the fastest after the mammoth was the Runner. The one who threw the spear most accurately was the Marksman. Whoever managed to impose himself as the leader was the Chief.

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The crucial information is at the top of the page. If you want to know more, read a paragraph or two. But there are no second pages. All our memos, minutes, letters, reports, even market surveys, are restricted to a single page. This has not only reduced unnecessary paperwork, but has also helped us avoid meetings that were often needed to clarify ambiguous memos. Concision is worth the investment. The longer the message, the greater the chance of misinterpretation.

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A company makes, sells, bills, and, God willing, collects. It doesn’t need to know if the taxi ride being claimed by a manager was for business. Or if another manager couldn’t have stayed in a hotel with three stars rather than four stars. With few exceptions, rules and regulations only serve to:

1. Divert attention from a company’s objectives.
2. Provide a false sense of security for executives.
3. Create work for the bean counters.
4. Teach men to stone dinosaurs and start fires with sticks.

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How progressive do you have to be, after all, to ask someone else’s opinion? And to listen to that opinion—well, that’s a start. But it’s only when the bosses give up decision making and let their employees govern themselves that the possibility exists for a business jointly managed by workers and executives. And that is true participative management as opposed to merely playing lip service to it.

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