Nucor
https://nucor.com/ is a confederation of 75 divisions. People, who work for each of the divisions, do everything themselves - including research and development, sales, marketing, strategy, safety, engineering, compliance and purchasing. Example # 1 When teams in the Blytheville division decided to change from 5-day eight-hour shifts to 4-day twelve hour shifts, they did not ask management for permission. Example # 2 When people buy things, for example new equipment, they consult with people, they work with to get input. People take the purchase decision themselves. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 Pages 103 and 115.
On average, managers account for 2% of employment. The Blytheville beam division has 1000 employees and 7 managers. Nucor's excecutive ranks include only the CEO and the CFO.
People select, give feedback to and fire managers. There is a formal process for giving feedback to everyone - including to managers. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 Pages 103, 114 and 115.
To innovate, small ad hoc teams in each division do, for example, this: 1. Brainstorm to create new opportunities. 2. Visit other divisions learn from colleagues. 3. Meet with external people - including customers and suppliers - to share new ideas and have conversations about how to develop new opportunities. For example, they ask customers how they can improve steel they make to better fit machines they use. 4. Try out ideas and experiment with new products and methods. When a plant's capacity is underutilized, people will also ask managers what they are doing to help them innovate and find new customers. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 Pages 103, 105, 111, 116 and 117.
Base salary levels are set by the https://nucor.com/ head office and are lower than the average in the industry.
However, when a team's output exceeds 80% of the plant's capacity, the team gets a bonus. In other words, the more steel the team produces for a given amount of capital, the more bonus the team gets. This means that the team will increase efforts to reduce costs and speed up workflows. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 Pages 103 and 105.
When new people want to contribute, these are among the questions they are asked: 1. What are you passionate about? 2. What is something you have fixed in your life? 3. How do you go about learning something new? 4. What is an example of a mistake you made at work? 5. What have you learned from this mistake? 6. What do you do, when a person, you work with, can't stand you? https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 Page 108.
To learn, people, who work for https://nucor.com/ share everything openly, decide to move across teams and divisions and work on other tasks with other people, learn from mistakes they make. It is very typical that managers say to people, “If you are not failing, you are not pushing the limits of your abilities.”
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3397074094 Pages 109 and 117.