"Employees are the engine of every business.  Ensuring they’re inspired is critical to motivation and success.  A democratic culture creates a foundation of belief and togetherness that allows passion and inspiration to bloom"—Dave Balter

At DreamHost one thing is very clear, "motivation leads to more productive employees and it is fostered by organizational democracy". 

During our search for companies with similar values we found BetterWorld Telecom, a company with a very unique business model. Better World Telecom and Nearsoft are both part of the WorldBlu's list of Most Democratic Workplaces 2009. We interviewed Matt Bauer, President and Co-founder.

We had the opportunity to interview Tim Besse, co-founder of Glassdoor.com, which is not only based on transparency, but also offers transparency as an online free service.

We first published this reading list on June 9, 2009 of books for people interested in creating great workplaces.  This is the first update to the list to include my review of The Starbucks Experience by Joseph Michelli (hint: not recommended)

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Blogs, Luke Hohmann talks about how Innovation Games can help improve the Democratic (political) process.  The nice thing is that they can also be used to improve the democracy@work process.

I thought I knew what a strategy is (versus, say, tactics or execution); you probably think the same.  Well, I was wrong (and so are you).  The authors of Tribal Leadership managed to surprise me with their definition of "strategy" and all I can say is "wow" (and write a post about it).

We've been reading a lot of books that have to do with culture building, nurturing, etc.  In particular, we are interested in every aspect of how to create a place where people feel respected.  Where they feel "safe" making mistakes and encouraged to make great stuff happen.

We want to spread the word about "Democracy at work". Just like Nearsoft, Brainpark is also one of the most democratic workplaces (WorldBlu List) in the world. Here is an interview with Mark Dowds, CEO of Brainpark.   

Yesterday, while talking to a friend of mine about her job, she told me that her boss was not letting her grow and was limiting her and her peers' participation in the company.