The Advice Process

We wrote this playbook to share our ongoing experience of a real-world implementation of the Advice Process at Equal Experts, and related non-conventional approaches to running a company.

This playbook is written for two audiences - people working within the Equal Experts network (EE), who want to learn more about the Advice Process (AP), and those outside our organisation who are curious to learn more about how it works (possibly with a view to trying it within their own organisations).

If you’re in the latter group, you can learn more about Equal Experts at our website, equalexperts.com.

As our understanding of how to run EE matures, we’ve come to a point where we’re more confident about presenting some of the less mainstream ways that we work within the network. We’ve long talked about providing a haven or a place where we treat people like grown-ups, but words are wind; these ambitions only become real once you start to change your policies and working practices to align with them.

This playbook reflects on our journey so far, and provides a few hints and tips for any other organisations that may wish to break out of the increasingly outdated management practices that we’re all so used to.

While there are some great books that outline alternative management practices, we’ve found there’s a limited number of real-world examples of performing the changes described at scale (notable exceptions include AES, Morning Star and Buurtzorg). As Equal Experts’ turnover now passes £100 million, with offices around the world, we hope this playbook will add to the collection of case studies.

The backbone of our management practices is based on the Advice Process as described by Dennis W. Bakke in Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach To Fun on the Job. We’ve learnt new things along our journey and so have adapted various parts to suit our needs and particular context.