Photo by Dane Deaner

In 2017, the company Matters conducted a social experiment to give power, trust and a budget to everyone.

We gave a $100 per month per person to perform whatever needs to be done at their own discretion. Everyone from the front desk to the top executives participated.

Trust everybody; delegate a part of the budget to everyone

As strength comes in number, people submitted their ideas on a collaborative platform we built called Teamstarter. It is comparable to Kickstarter and it helps communicate ideas and collect funds from their coworkers.

People love to support their colleagues' ideas more than the CEO ideas :)

Managers were the biggest barriers to this empowerment program: we were imagining the worst that could happen.

Losing focus when empowering?

I remember a wrong decision I made because of my entire dedication to the mission.

One day, an employee suggested to experiment with an emerging technology, but I didn't see why it could make a difference. I said no. The employee eventually left, became a leader in that soon-to-become the hottest trend.

What did this experience teach me?

Success doesn't come in chasing only one target. Contradicting tentatives do not need to be tried in different iterations. When I worked at Apple, I discovered the power of saying no, but also the power of letting people innovate and do what needs to be done.

Overall, even if an idea does not seem relevant, the energy that drives the idea is what matters.

Letting others experiment helps taking a few steps back and making sure we are hitting the right target.

No result when practicing bottom-up?

Our innovation tentatives are often moonshots; companies with x30 ROI like Apple or Google practice them regularly. Disruptive innovations are somewhat terrifying for a manager like me: we tend to avoid high-risk high-reward strategies.

What if the success of innovation programs are not the results, but the knowledge gained?

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. Carl Friedich Gauss

Empowerment may lead to no-tangible results, but that's okay. For us, the idea is to take that journey and discover what's at the end of that road.

On our end, the results were tremendous

What empowerment brought us

Crazy cool birthdays!

We helped an association to protect women and children from physical abuse

A team built a website to report sexual harassment

Standing desks anyone?

In 2017, A total of 33 projects got funded and done by everyone. Some of them improve our image, others just make life better at work, all would not have been done without finding this extra energy from empowerment.

Empowerment is mandatory for the best performance

Awesome team, empowered and supportive of each other!

At Matters, when we welcome everyone's input and ideas, what sticks is what is aligned with the mission, which delivers the best result. The market decides in the end the best proposition, and not what we, the managers, picked.

Should I really trust my colleagues? The answer is a resounding yes.

Matters is a startup studio based in San Francisco and Paris. If you wish to empower your team the same way, please check out https://teamstarter.co.