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found out, much to his surprise, that several of them actually appeared to be more intelligent than he, and almost all of them had what in many cases was an expert competence in something that he found either baffling or difficult.

Being a reasonable man, he at once implemented a new system of office management based on trust that allowed everyone more freedom with much less micro-supervision. He reported that productivity soared, morale improved, and he actually made a few new friends out of people whom he had, essentially, previously considered faceless blobs.

The CEO, however, did not take the ultimate step and share ownership (and the rights of ownership) with the workers. Evidently he trusted them more, but not completely. Ownership sharing, when combined with the rights of ownership (such as a pro rata dividend payment) and "participatory management" (that is, input into decisions directly affecting their jobs, not management by committee or collective action or voting on every decision) builds the greatest amount of trust in the workplace. More obviously, ownership sharing along these lines results in monetary rewards in excess of what would otherwise be expected. The National Center for Employee Ownership in Berkeley, California, for example, reports that when worker-owned companies have profit sharing programs and participatory management, they out-perform otherwise comparable firms by a factor of 1.5.

The bottom line in trusting your co-workers to the extent of going the whole way and sharing ownership and the rights of ownership is thus . . . the bottom line. Not only are morale and efficiency improved, everybody benefits monetarily.

Learn more about this author, Michael Greaney.
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