Scaling with Stok: A case study in building on trust and autonomy
We’ve been working with Stok, a team of interdisciplinary experts in the built environment creating “a radically better world for all”, since 2020. We’ve been helping to develop their leaders and evolve their employee experience as they scale up. Much like Within People, Stok is organized on principles of self-management, allowing for a flatter structure, greater equity and decision-making at all levels based on delegated authority. Stok’s CFO Burke Pemberton sums it up best:
When we started Stok, we knew we wanted to do something different. We felt like a lot of the old systems were broken and not as efficient as they could be. We didn't want to hire people for their strengths and their skills, and then as soon as they start, take their power away from them. We wanted to create a system that enabled them to have the power to do what they are professionals at, and what their subject matter expertise is. There's a lot of trust built into that system, and that's how we wanted to operate. We heard about self-management, and we just ran with it.
What follows is a snapshot of our journey together, and some learnings we’ve picked up along the road.
We spoke to Burke, Stok’s self-management evangelist (my words not his), on our Reimagining Work from Within podcast. Our talk was a riff on freedom at work, and the possibilities and pitfalls of leading, growing and working in a self-managed business.
During our conversation, Jeff shared an anecdote from a recent Thanksgiving dinner that almost made him spit out his stuffing. A tech COO brusquely dismissed self-management as “bullsh*t that never scales.” But Stok has proved that wrong, definitively. Since Within first met Stok, the company has doubled in size. What’s more, one of the strategic organising principles Stok has identified for its next five years of growth is self-management.
Burke’s challenge for us at the start of our relationship was: how would Stok double down on its purpose and values to grow? How could their culture and way of operating become their secret scaling weapon?
Here are five learnings from our journey together we want to pass on to leaders who are looking to increase trust and autonomy in their teams. While self-management is our lens, these approaches apply, whatever your org design.
1. Clear structures and processes are mission-critical
There’s a common misconception that self-management is about ripping out responsibility, and letting everyone have at it. However, while self-management de-emphasizes the need for bosses, and scraps the concept of things like line management, it replaces them with more distributed systems of accountability, and equitable approaches to decision-making. As Burke clarified:
It's not a free-for-all. It's not anarchy. There's actually a lot more processes and rules that we all have to collectively agree to follow in order to make this thing work. Anybody can propose one of those rules, which is a difference in our system, but without the structure and the processes in place to support it, the wheels can fall off pretty quickly.
We’ve helped Stok reinforce the structures and systems they need to grow in line with their ethos. For every aspect of their organisational design we have touched, we have come back to Stok’s “flavour” of self-management, asked them to be clear about how they want their system to work, and built clear processes around their vision of equity and autonomy.
2. Leadership needs a set of defining principles
Leadership takes on an even more pivotal role in self-managed businesses – because instead of command and control, leaders are called to step into new ways of guiding and supporting their people. Trust is the grease in its gears, and leaders must draw on humanity more than seniority. Empathy, curiosity, courage and vulnerability are vital qualities of leadership wherever you find it, but in a system where people are encouraged to find solutions for themselves, these ways of leading become central to creating conditions where that can happen. As Burke put it:
It's more about how leadership is wielded – less of telling people what to do, more of holding them accountable, and more of providing them with the resources that they need to be successful.
We worked with Stok’s leaders to distill what it means to lead at Stok. Their manifesto is a series of commitments that establish expectations – like growing the business by “celebrating wins and championing quality feedback.” The leadership development program we developed is based on coaching leaders to step into these commitments with confidence.
3. Empowerment requires self-responsibility
Traditional management structures have a purpose. They cut the complexity of decision-making in groups, giving a handful of individuals power. With self-management, distributed decision-making empowers everyone to make the calls. For people coming in from traditional organisations, this can be a challenge, because it asks each person to be accountable. But that’s the point. As Burke says:
With great power comes great responsibility. [That’s] flipped around for self-management: with great responsibility comes great power.
We coached Stok’s leaders to revise their decision-making processes, helping them bring structure and clarity to making collective decisions, without always waiting for consensus. Developing this framework involved learning how to listen, find shared space for people to challenge one another constructively, and then make a decision that everyone can get behind, even if they disagree with it.
4. Self-guided growth supports meaningful work
It’s not that self-managed organizations have no hierarchy. It’s that they recognize more than one. They value people’s passions, skills and proximity to problems – not just their rank and position in the organization. A feature of self-management is the ability for employees to align their role with their passion, and point their development in that direction.
We’ve been helping Stok reimagine their personal development process, shifting it from an incremental, linear journey into something more like a purpose-led “choose your own adventure,” guided by a promise that people can choose their own path in line with Stok’s collective vision. As part of this evolution, Within had a 1:1 with every member of the Stok team to identify the skills they wanted to build and master, enabling them to make an impact that’s meaningful to them and to Stok.
5. Clear promises shape an equitable employee experience
Whether or not you’re self-managed, getting clear on your employee experience is important. For a rapidly growing business in transition to a hybrid working style, it’s essential. As Stok’s team members imagine their next five years of growth, they see that culture will be the enabler of the impact they want to make in the world.
Helping define the promises that will shape how Stokers experience their culture means distilling what’s core to their self-managed system, alongside the shifts they need to make as they grow. Working closely with folks across the business, we’ve mapped out an employee experience strategy to support their growth, and help deliver the impact their purpose demands.
Within and Stok: a match made in culture
At the end of our conversation, we admitted there is a lot more to talk about - so keep an eye out for episode two. To wrap up, we asked Burke which brands out there he admires, and he was generous enough to say this:
I mean, if anyone else were asking me this question, I would say, it's you guys. I’m constantly talking about how much Within have helped us. We went through several different sets of consultants to try and help us on this journey of self-management. And I think the way that you guys approach it philosophically has just fundamentally really helped improve our organisation.
For our part, when we met Stok – a purpose-driven, self-managed business looking to scale through culture – we thought we had found a unicorn client. Almost three years later, having worked with Burke and every one of his 85-plus employees, we’re still firm believers in mythical creatures.
Learn more about our approach to designing equitable employee experiences.
Learn more about how we develop more human leaders.
And if you’re interested in embracing (or just exploring) self-management and the approaches we’ve used with Stok to scale a more human, equitable and empowered business, get in touch with us.