[Edit: apologies for the wall of text. A lot of pent up emotion around Creo.]

Best place I ever worked.

This was “the Creo Philosophy”:

Our priority is to provide unique and sustainable value to our customers.

1. All decisions must be based on sound economics.

2. Key decisions are made in consensus, with full team agreement to accept and implement the decision.

3. We believe that people are most effective when self-managed.

4. Compensation is based on contribution, gauged largely by an annual peer review.

5. All employees share the wealth created by their hard work and innovation.

Creo was extremely proud of how “flat” the organization was but my primary take-away from there as an ex-employee is actually how important management is.

First and foremost, management created a shared vision of the future. Not silly posters to laugh at but a real shared mission. It was exciting and motivating. Every Creoite knew how the world would be changed when we were successful. Decisions could be distributed because it was obvious which outcomes were aligned with the companies goals. Trying to push outcomes not aligned with the goals was hard ( as it should be ).

Second, there was a strong framework for how decisions were made and how to identify good decisions from bad ones. Economic thinking and consensus were two important principles that you were expected to follow unless you could demonstrate very good reasons not to.

Third, management provided a great deal of mentorship, both through direct education and through calling re-enforcing the primacy of the principles. One of the reason Creo could be so “flat” is because everybody knew how the executives would behave if they were in the room and they could insist that others act accordingly. It was easy to assume executive sponsorship without having to resort to politics. “We do not tolerate politics” was an important mantra through the best parts of the company history.

Most importantly, I got to experience the everyday effectiveness of the organization under three different CEO’s: Ken Spencer, Amos Michelson, and Mark Dance. The “culture” was only as good as the man at the helm.

At Creo, we made the claim all the time that we basically did not have hierarchal management. It was true we did not always have “supervisors” but we had the best management I have ever worked for.

As said above, Creo stopped working when it acquired a rival that had more employees than it had. The politics exploded. The effectiveness disappeared. Financial performance followed. The company was sold to avoid a shareholder revolt. A sad end for a spectacular organization.

The original Creo employees stuck to the principles. Well, except management. Hierarchical authority was suddenly more important. Decisions did not have to make economic sense. What mattered was who was doing the deciding. Consensus stopped being a requirement. Speaking truth to power stopped being a path to better decisions and started becoming a career mistake. Executive sponsorship became real and aligning with people in position became the most important criteria for individual success. Empire building replaced shared vision. The lack of alignment between making the company successful and being successful as an employee completely broke. The company failed.

Managers and employees looked at Creo folks and their “philosophy” like naive children. Sure “the philosophy” worked well enough for Creo to beat them to begin with but, once merged, the acquired were right. Creo was idealistic and naive. But this was not inevitable.

Why did Creo fail? Did “the philosophy” not scale as the final CEO I think believed? I do not think so. I see it purely as a failure of management.

The final CEO provided little vision. Other than a focus on the bottom line, there was no insistence on economic decision making ( eg. instead of breaking up meetings because they had too many people in them - too expensive - he held meetings with dozens of people in them ). Instead of coming down on politics and insisting on consensus, executive authority became sacred. In fact, the term “consensus” became most often used when an executive used it as an excuse for their own lack of leadership by claiming the team should have to solve its own problems.

If strong management had provided the leadership, the mentorship, the vision, and support for the culture ( most importantly the principles of good vs bad decision making ), Creo would still be with us. If I was lucky, I would still be working there.

Creo ruined me in a way. I have never been able to accept why things cannot be as good anywhere else. Such simple ideas. So dramatically effective. Unfortunately, good management ( executive level ) is an absolute requirement. Even hundreds or thousands of well trained employees was not enough to make these principles work without strong management behind them. Management matters.

I got to experience some amazing leadership for a while. All I can do is try to emulate those role models as best I can. And everywhere I go, I try to make economic thinking an important part of how decisions get made.

RIP Creo. You left us too soon.