Ricardo Semler’s radical book Maverick is now 30 years old. Happy was an early adopter of some of its key principles, and when software company cofounder Zahid Malik was looking for implementation examples, Happy was just about the only one he found.

As Semler’s work suggests, implementing a culture of trust, freedom, and autonomy can have a transformative impact on a company. By allowing employees to make decisions, fostering open communication, and providing guidelines and frameworks, organisations can create a happy and productive workplace. But it’s important to strike a balance and ensure that the right people are in the organisation who can thrive in a Maverick environment.

Zahid is the founder of called Risr. They specialise in providing software for education and training organisations to help them manage and run their assessments, exams, and continuing professional development. While he’s faced challenges in implementing the principles of Maverick, he’s striven to create autonomous units within his organisation, allowing teams to make decisions and operate in ways that best serve their customers.

Zahid’s top tips for a happy workplace

1. Having freedom and autonomy is crucial for a happy workplace. Allowing employees to make decisions and have control over their work contributes to their overall satisfaction.
2. But not everyone may thrive in an environment like this, so it's essential to ensure that employees align with the company's values and ways of working.
3. Providing employees with clear guidelines and boundaries within which they can exercise their freedom helps bring structure and prevents chaos in the workplace.

Links

• Connect with Zahid via LinkedIn
• Risr – Zahid’s company
• Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workshop, by Ricardo Semler
• Creating joy at work – Episode 2 with Cathy Busani
• Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness, by Frederic Laloux
• Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do About it, by David Graeber

Hello, I'm Henry.

And I'm Maureen, Maureen Egbe.

And today we have Zahid Malik from Ris R Slash, who runs a

self-managing organization, and has worked with Happy for many years.

And I'll be talking to him about Maverick by Ricardo Semler about, um, uh,

whether, uh, workers should set their own salaries, um, and all kinds of things.

So tell me, Maureen, what has been joyful for you?

Well, I was thinking about this and I had to go and look at my diaries,

like what's happened this week?

So thank you for the opportunity to actually take time and reflect on this.

And um, what came up for me was a discussion I had of an

apprentice who's on our global majority apprenticeship program.

And she just, she shared with me, um, a situation that happened

in the workplace where she's now taken on a new role as a manager.

And she was all excited and just sent an email to the team.

We're gonna implement this new strategy and we are gonna do this new process.

And guess what happened?

Henry, what do you think?

What?

What happened?

Pushback.

No.

She was telling them what she wanted to do.

And then she said to me, she, it hit her.

She sent an email and apologized straight away and acknowledged the importance of

the team, and she wanted their feedback to discuss what, how they could go forwards.

So we sat and we celebrated this, this reflection, this insight,

and it was that whole thing of acknowledging and valuing your team.

So that really gave me joy to hear that.

So what, what was your joyful moment?

Well this, uh, this morning I was speaking at the Hackney Social Founders Network

led by Carolyn Deal, and there's a whole range of of founders there, uh, in.

Incredibly inclusive.

There was, uh, a jazz cafe where people pay what they want.

There was somebody who worked in the pandemic and got 6,000

meals every day to people.

Um, there, there, there's, there's people who work with ex prisoners who,

uh, reintegrate them into society.

There's people who work with disadvantaged children to make sure

that they get back into, into society.

Oh, it was just, just amazing.

Sounds awesome.

What were you speaking about?

I was speaking about happy as a founder, as a founder of

Awesome.

Awesome.

That sounds.

But the other interesting thing was, um, one of the founders had

a daughter there who, and she explained how she used TikTok on her

founders, on the, the founder's site.

And I'm getting together with her to see if I can use TikTok.

I feel you'll be awesome on TikTok.

With all of those colorful shirts?

I feel that it needs to be, the POD podcast is not good

enough to show your shirts.

You need to be on TikTok.

so we'll find out later whether, whether I get, use tikTok.

Okay, so now over to Zahid Malik of Ris R Slash.

So Saed, um, we've been working together quite a long time, haven't we?

We first, uh, got together over Maverick.

This is going back to I think the mid nineties, when I was an academic at

Imperial College, I think I first heard of Ricardo Semler, I think it was a sort

of a clip on the B B C, either news or a documentary about this sort of, uh,

about this company called Semco, um, and then I found out that there was a book

about that called Maverick by Ricardo Semler which I bought and was sort of,

you know, was blown away by it, really..

I was amazed that you could, um, that you could have a

company that worked like this.

Um, and the more I read about it, the more I became interested in business

and sort of, you know, I, I, I was, I was doing sort of research at, at,

at university, but it was in, in the electrical engineering department.

but they always encouraged us to have an interest in business and, uh, we were

always talking to companies, uh, you know, electronic companies and so on.

But I always imagined that business was sort of, very.

I guess hierarchical, uh, very salesy.

I mean, a lot of academics have a fairly, fairly poor, well, not that's unfair,

but, you know, quite a few academics, a fairly poor, uh, view of, of businessmen

and, and what they tried to do.

Um, but I was amazed in, in, in what was described in Maverick and

how Semco worked on what seemed like completely unbelievable,

uh, and unconventional lines.

It certainly did transform my business as well.

It transformed Happy from being a micromanaging company to one that

was based on trust and freedom.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I mean, you know, one of the sort of questions you

sent me earlier is what, you know, how did it transform your company?

Well, I didn't have a company, so it didn't transform a company at all.

I just, it just made me want to start a company.

Um, and that's, that's really one of the reasons why I thought, well, actually,

do these companies really exist?

So I tried to look, uh, 'cause I was deciding between academia or

moving into some other, and I was always interested in technology.

You know, we, I'd set some of the first servers of, on the internet

back in the early nineties.

Um, so, so yeah, it was always an interest of, of mine 'cause I'd worked closely

with computers for, for a long time.

Um, and I thought it'd be great to set up a company, uh, around

technology basically, and software.

Um, but I couldn't find, um, anything, any companies that we talked about,

Maverick or Semler or any of the ideas except for one called Happy.

So I was amazed to see that it was actually in London, you know?

So, um, I think I called you and, or sent you an email and

said, uh, I'd love to hear more.

And, and that's how we, how we met.

And that's, um, how I started sort of thinking about how I could set up a

company, uh, with, with some friends to do, to sort of essentially do

sort of software, but really try and apply, uh, these, uh, these principles

that, that I'm sort of reading about.

And have you managed to apply them?

I've tried Henry, but oh God, it, what is it?

It's now so 22 years later and it's, it's not as easy as it seems in

the books as, as I've found anyway.

Well, there's a few things I guess, that it's, it's, it's easier to, to,

well, you don't, you don't ha you hardly need them when you're small.

So when there's just a few of you, uh, you know, if it's sort of.

Hacker News styles of eating ramen and just building software in your,

in your sort of bedroom, it's, it's sort of, you know, you don't really

need these principles that much.

You just work, you know?

So tell me what Risr does.

Oh yeah.

Sorry.

Yes.

So, um, we're a software service provider for education training.

So essentially we, we provide the software that helps, uh, organizations

manage and run their assessments.

So exams, practical exams, uh, workplace based assessments.

And, and not just that, also sort of, you know, apprenticeships, continuing

profession development and so on.

And we started in the medical field.

Um, so, uh, significant number of undergraduates, say in the UK are assessed

using our, our software, um, as well as postgraduates in royal colleges in the

UK, Ireland, um, and we, we have offices in, in the uk, uh, Australia and Canada.

Okay.

And tell, tell us, based on Maverick, how have you managed to

get outta the way as the founder?

Okay.

Well, well, well, COVID helped a lot.

Uh, um, I, I think what, what, well, I kind of liked about what, what Ricardo

Semler sort of described is that, and he would often sort of get things going

and then start stepping away once, once he sort of, you know, started them.

So I kind of took that sort of mantra to, to heart mostly not,

not always, but as much as I could.

So I'd start something and then hopefully somebody else would get interested and I'd

start sort of walking away from it and, and letting those people, uh, take it on.

And I can honestly say for.

I, I think several years I've not been involved in any real

customer engagements with anything.

You know, I don't, don't, I don't make those sort of decisions at all.

Uh, uh, you know, I just focus more on the structure, the finance, uh,

but the structure and what, what we're trying to do and how we achieve it.

But I don't get in the way of, of people trying to do any of those things.

So can you give examples of where people do have trust and freedom?

So our, our idea is basically to have autonomous units, i e autonomous

teams, which are able to make as much decisions as they feel comfortable with.

But if they really have issues and they can't decide, then they need

more information either from HQ as we call it, or they need to talk to other

teams, which they obviously can, that's, that's sort of, uh, straightforward.

So with, within, within each of those units, they are free to decide on.

Where to find new customers, how to, service those customers, how to grow the

accounts, how to support those customers.

Um, but what we try and do is then provide, uh, an underlying kind kind of

layer, which allows that they don't have to reinvent stuff so they don't have to

think about payroll or how to do sort of compliance and admin, so all those

sort of systems are provided for them.

But, but within those systems, um, and obviously, you know, How to communicate

sort of our Slack channels and, and, and, and sort of email and so on.

That's all provided as well.

Um, but within that, they are free to, to operate on how, uh,

on the best way of servicing their customers and their markets.

'Cause, you know, look from the UK we said the Australia team.

From the UK during Covid.

So that, that was not, that was not easy.

But we just knew that as much as, you know, we speak the same language, but

we're not Australians, so we don't know how Australians might think, how

they might operate would make much more sense for those units themselves to be

making as much decisions as possible.

Um, so, so effectively each unit is free to make what decisions it

thinks is right for their customers, unless it impacts other, other units

or center or something like that, in which case they can then seek advice.

So that's how we try and operate.

Um, a long time ago we were trying to figure out how to do profit share, you

know, so 25% of the profit when we make a profit is divided, uh, among staff.

So we weren't sure what was the fairest way of doing that.

You know, should we, we, you know, we had said developers in.

In Eastern Europe, you know, we had, uh, people in London, we had

people living in the countryside, we had people, you know, overseas.

Uh, what, what's a fair way of dividing out profit?

Should we do it by percentage?

Obviously that favors people who earn more money.

Um, should we do it by, um, an absolute amount or should we do it depending on

if you are a developer, that's worth more than if you are a project manager,

you know, all, all sorts of issues.

And I remember my.

Uh, so co-founder and I, mark sat down, we sort of going back

and forth for quite a long time.

And in the end I said, Marcus, there's never gonna be a fair way where

every single person is gonna be happy with whatever formula we come up

with, and it'll just be impossible.

Uh, why don't we just say this every year, if we make a profit, say this is

a profit this year, you guys and, and, and women, uh, uh, decide on how you're

gonna divide this yourselves and you vote on it, and the majority will go.

So the, the first year we did it, they CC'd us in on all their

email conversation, which did go on for quite a long time.

It's, it's quite a, quite an interesting discussion, you know, with, with sort

of developers, sort of, you know, almost working out algorithms for

why they, they were, they were more important than say, project managers.

So there's a lot of back and forth, you know, uh, and it went off a

few weeks and in the end they'd such divide it evenly by amount.

It didn't pour out if you were part-time or full-time, but it was even by amount.

Um, wherever you were, uh, whatever you did, uh, it didn't matter.

You know, you, you just divided it.

The next year, it took people a day to decide the same thing.

And then the year after that, it was just same as last time, yes, same as last time.

So now we've effectively incorporated that and said, look, it, it, we divided

priority even the, uh, by amount, uh, the profit, which seems to work

well, you know, that sort of, um, It means that we, we, we haven't had

to fight and have issues and, and so on and try and work out some, some

fair method and in general, we don't seem to have any complaints about it.

And, and that's, that's quite, that's quite good.

'cause that means that people, your staff themselves, are involved.

Whereas if, if you'd done it with Marcus, there would've been a

lot of people probably weren't, who weren't satisfied with it.

We did try and let people set their own salaries.

Um, I'd thought about it a lot and I'd read a lot of, sort of, you know,

articles and blog posts about how, you know, it's great to let people set their

own salary and, and so on, and here's, here's, here's what you should do.

And so we tried an experiment and we sort of got a group of, I think

it was about 12 people, and said, look, You know, here's, obviously we

can't give more money than there is in the, in, in the, in the budget.

But here's, here's effectively the, uh, lump sumer money, which will, from

which your salaries would be worked out, you know, for the next year.

We sit together and we've got sort of, you know, we give 'em guidelines, you

know, you can benchmarks, you can sort of, you know, here's a process that we

suggest, you know, you discuss about what you contributed, you know, what

you think you're worth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, what you might get in

the marketplace, all these things that we've read about, which sounded great, and

then work out what your salary should be.

And I'd thought about it quite a lot and a few of my major concerns are I don't

want to be the sort of organization where office politics rules, um, hence

the lack of hierarchy and, uh, and having autonomous teams and so on.

Uh, and I don't want to be the sort of organization where it sort

of rewards people to make it look like they're doing good work rather

than doing good work, you know?

So it's sort of, you know, trying to avoid those sort of traps, which I feel

quite a few organizations fall into.

But anyway, the upshot was that we didn't get unanimous, uh, uh, agreement.

So we abandoned that, uh, and said, okay, that didn't work.

Uh, and then I remember, I remember I'd read, you know, glowing

blog post about how this worked.

And I remember ringing up the CEO of a company came up with sort

of first a second on Google when you typed in self set salaries.

And I said, how did it go?

'cause we, we, we couldn't do it.

He said, oh, no, no, we failed as well.

Just said that it.

So we abandoned it in the end.

We couldn't, we couldn't.

I said, but you're still all over the internet, sort of talking about it.

He said, we should probably sort of take those blog posts

down or sort of date them.

But yeah, so it, that was an example which was, we, we learned a lot.

We definitely learned a lot.

Um, and, you know, but it was certainly something, it made me, it made me

realize that it's, it's much harder than it looks, um, and you do need help

getting this stuff to work properly.

You really do,

And how has Happy helped you on this journey?

Well, first of all, it's been great talking to you.

But especially in those days, it was very difficult to find anyone who, I

mean, everyone thought these ideas were.

But really quite crazy, didn't they?

I mean, I think they did it back in the mid nineties and early two thousands.

It was sort of, you know, this is just nonsense, so it was actually wonderful

to be able to speak to someone who'd actually been through it and, and sort

of understood what the issues were.

Uh, we love the Happy conferences, which are, is that, again, you're

meeting a whole bunch of other people who, who are thinking on similar

lines, have had lot of the similar problems and sort of, you know, ideas

on how to improve them and so on.

Um, quite a few people go on your leadership courses, , and we love your

coaching, you know, Cathy Busani who sort of, I dunno how many people, people

she coaches from, uh, in the company, but I think it's quite a few, including

me, and, and they're invaluable.

because you're now, you're now a very profitable company, aren't you?

Yes.

I mean, that's almost by fluke rather than just design.

well, we, you know, COVID.

Was great for us because, you know, we'd, uh, for years we'd been

sort of helping people move to, um, paperless sort of assessment.

And so not, you know, people would use a lot of paper, people use a lot of,

test centers or, or, or, or, and so, you know, they, they're used to doing

things the old way, which is fine.

But obviously more and more people had to move to, to sort of

move things online and, and, and sort of, um, remotely and so on.

Uh, and then Covid hit, and then suddenly people saying to us, uh,

you know, when we want to do that over three years with you, we now do

that in sort of the next five weeks.

You know, suddenly everything accelerated, uh, which I think, you know, was

incredibly difficult time for us in one way because we had sort of, you know,

deliver and grow and, and, and, and improve the product and add, add, add

sort of features to, to help video remote assessment and, and so on, which, which,

which we managed to do, managed to do.

So, yeah, that's been, that's been good.

So, we grew a lot during Covid, so, you know, we.

So the, the teams in in Canada and Australia and UK grew significantly.

I think we would've at least doubled in size, um, quite quickly, which

again caused us as issues in terms of scaling some of these ideas and

understanding what we need to do.

Um, but yes, no, and I, hopefully that is down to, you know, the way

we work, uh, and the way we operate.

Uh, I, I don't, I honestly don't think it would've been as easy for us to respond

too quickly, without that sort of freedom and autonomy that people had to just

suggest things, try things, and, and stop working with customers more quickly.

I think if we'd have been more hierarchical, it would've taken a

lot longer to get approval and, you know, we probably would've spent a lot

longer and not being able to innovate quickly enough, um, so I think that's,

that's been really good for us.

Excellent.

And tell me, Z, what are your three top tips for a happy workplace?

Do you, you honest answer?

I really don't know.

Um, and know this is like, you're, you're a company called Happy, but,

you, you, you, you remove a whole bunch of other problems, right?

So, you know, my, for me it's like, okay, I would say personally

freedom, you know, having freedom and autonomy is really important.

Uh, and I, and I imagine that's important for most people.

And I think, and I think a lot of people absolutely, agree

with that and they like that.

The flip side of it is that, you know, all these things come at a cost.

So if you have freedom and autonomy, that means that everyone in your

organization has freedom and autonomy.

Um, and then if you're used to telling people what to do and, and, uh,

you know, you suddenly can't or if you so, so, so, so, so, I, I guess

it's a slightly long-winded way of saying that you, you just make sure

you've got the right sort of people.

If you are a certain sort of organization, and if you're a good fit for certain sort

of people, it's great, but other people might not be that happy, you know, because

they're, they're not actually a good fit and I'm not, and I don't even think that

necessarily everyone wants freedom and, and so it's not necessarily, but for me,

I, I think they do.

I mean, when I talk to audiences, they all seem to want, they don't,

nobody likes being told what to do.

No, but does everyone then like being in a company where you

can't tell anyone what to do?

that

You know, you know, my, my philosophy is that, that you,

people don't want complete freedom.

They want freedom within guidelines.

Yes.

And it, it took us a while to discover that, Henry and thank you to you and, uh,

you know, and Kathy to help us navigate.

So, you know, so, so, so that, that's exactly it.

So what I think what we sort of swung too far the other way, uh, in the

early days, um, people had a lot of freedom and they didn't really have any

guidelines, 'cause we didn't really need them 'cause there were only a few of us.

And, and that culture I think probably carried on a bit too far.

And it's only when.

I started talking to you and sort of, you know, reading other books

like, know Frederic Laloux, you know, Reinventing Organizations.

I love that book.

Uh, Bert So, and Jo Block, you know, all the ideas, content within that.

And I realized actually they have frameworks.

You know, they have guidelines.

Without that, it's just sort of, you know, it's, it's, it's sort of chaos, you know.

And that's what we spent quite a lot of time.

Putting in place, uh, and ensuring that people have those, those

guidelines within which to make, make those decisions be free.

You have to have some framework.

I think that's, that's one of the top lessons that, that we've realized.

Um, so I think definitely that I think look, working in a, in an

organization and company that is actually trying to do something

worthwhile in the world, you know?

Um, so actually helping train and, and educate people, to me personally

seems like real worthwhile thing to do.

I think everyone who works here does, uh, you know, if I was working in some

other, I don't know, gambling or some of the, some other, the company, it wouldn't

be, you know, I wouldn't be happy.

Maybe some people would be.

But I just, you know, it's basically you have to have a company that align with

your, your, um, your, your goals, I guess.

Um, being able to do what you enjoy I think is important, or at least

being able to see that what you are doing, even if you're not enjoying

it in the moment, which let's face it, we all have to do, but you know,

that it's, it's for something that is worthwhile or is something that

will lead to, you know, enjoyment.

So that, and for me, uh, not having company politics, uh, not having,

you know, this sort of, climbing a hierarchy, you know, that sort

of thing is really important.

I mean, I've, I've partly read, I dunno if you ever read Bullshit Jobs, um,

by, uh, David Graeber, I think it is.

it's fascinating.

Uh, and, uh, you know, one of the things he says is that essentially capitalism

is supposed to be, you know, a really efficient deployment of resources

and so on, and obviously he's got a certain viewpoint, but if you start

looking at, uh, and, and trying to understand how the, how sort of like

corporate organizations work, it's almost like a feudal hierarchy has been

brought into a corporate organization.

It's really all about that.

You know, and that's, it's not efficient at all, you know, and it's actually

just feudal court politics, you know?

And that's, and I just, just hate the idea of that, you know?

So again, not having that, uh, sort of, you know, negative, I guess.

would, would, I think, make me happy and hopefully make other people happy as well.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much, Zahid.

That's been, that's been a fabulous, uh, fabulous session.

Thank you, Henry.

it was really good to hear the honesty and the authenticity of Zahid.

Know, It is the fact that he said it was not easy to implement

any of these strategies.

You know, when you wanna change your organization, it's difficult.

So the whole thing of keeping with, it's really important.

But even at the end when you talked about what your top

tips and he said, I don't know.

You know, again, love that, you know, just being honest.

Um, but what really stood out for me was the conversation about profit sharing.

You know, where it took, he was very brave in asking everybody about

what they think or how they think that the profit should be shared.

And they voted.

And they've come to a point where everybody gets the same pro rata

but it's shared equally across.

Well, what was interesting was obviously that, um, the, the salaries thing, um,

that people chose their own, people that he, well, no, he, he looked at people

choosing their own salaries, but they didn't actually, in the end, go with it.

Now at Happy.

We, we haven't done that, have we?

We haven't done that.

Um, what we've done at Happy is we have a democratically elected salary

panel, which everybody votes for.

Um, we then choose, um, what, what should be in the pot, based on last

year's, uh, last year's profit and this, this year's projected profit,

we look at what should be in the pot and everybody then votes on that.

Um, and then people, uh, put in their salary to the

Democratic elected salary panel.

And I think that that works better.

I mean, I dunno if there are any people who have adopted choose your own salary.

And I think Ricard Seminar did at some point, and the, I the, I think the idea

there was that you would, you would say what salary you wanted and then the team

would decide whether you, whether, whether they'd take you on board with that.

Okay.

Alright, so maybe we should put a shout out.

If anybody, any organizations that have done that, we'd love to hear from

you, you know, to see how that works.

Absolutely.

That would be good.

That would be good.

Okay.

So, check out happy.co.uk..

And our podcast site.

And please leave a comment, share any ideas or anything

that you would like to discuss.

You know, and again, a shout out for anybody that, uh, that has a

organization where you choose your own salary, would love to hear from you.

So let's create happy workplaces.