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In this video interview, W.L. Gore & Associates CEO Bret Snyder explains how the company behind Gore-Tex succeeds with 12,000 employees but no traditional hierarchy, no job titles, and no bosses.
What happens when you run a $4.8 billion company with no bosses? At W.L. Gore & Associates, the maker of Gore-Tex, 12,000 employees have been finding out for 67 years — and thriving.
In this episode of Leaders at All Levels, Gore CEO Bret Snyder reveals the counterintuitive principles behind distributed leadership that he applies — insights that challenge traditional thinking about organizational design.
The Gore Playbook: Borrow These Ideas
- Gore puts all project data where everyone can see it. And with access to that data, “there’s a lot of ‘Boy, there’s a lot of little projects here that don’t look like they’re going to have a big impact. Should we really be doing these?’” Teams are often able to decide for themselves whether to kill their underperforming projects.
- The “no jerks” rule is nonnegotiable and has led to the dismissal of people who failed to follow it. “Being a leader at Gore is not necessarily easy,” Snyder acknowledges. “You have to lead with influence and positivity.”
- When evaluating employee performance, get a “holistic perspective of how much that person has contributed to the success of the enterprise,” Snyder advises. Ask, “How much better is the company based on what that person has contributed?” In fact, Gore calls its people associates to reinforce an ownership mindset.
- The waterline principle: Drill holes above the waterline all day — experiment, fail, learn. But anything that could sink the ship requires peer consultation. Many companies get this backward, requiring manager approval to order office supplies while executives make billion-dollar bets on their own, Snyder says.
Keys to Leadership at Gore
Snyder has three pieces of advice for people who want to foster leadership qualities in others:
- Lead with humility. “Being curious and listening — they go together,” Snyder says. “Our best ideas … come from others.”
- Treat everyone with respect. “This is the ‘no jerks’ rule,” he says. “You respect everybody. It doesn’t matter what their job is.”
- Be clear on what success looks like. Ask, “What are you aiming to do, and how will you know if you’re successful?”
Listen as hosts Kate W. Isaacs and Michele Zanini dig into the practical details of how distributed leadership works at scale at Gore, uncovering insights that other leaders can apply.
Video Credits
Bret Snyder is the president and CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates.
Kate W. Isaacs is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Michele Zanini is the director of MLab and coauthor of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Humanocracy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).
M. Shawn Read is the multimedia editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.