Why Culture Work is the Foundation for Self-Managing Teams
By removing layers of management, teams have to learn to stear, guide, and decide by themselves. Without a supporting culture, they are lost.
Removing managers doesn’t create self-management. This reductionist view is fundamentally flawed. The structure that is being removed in the org chart has to shift into the culture. And culture doesn’t build itself.
The Promise and the Trap
There’s a movement gaining momentum in the world of work — and for good reason.
Self-management. Flat hierarchies. Distributed decision-making. Autonomous teams. Organizations where people don’t need permission to do their best work.
The names are familiar: Buurtzorg. Morning Star. Haier. Patagonia. And increasingly, companies like ABN AMRO, LEGO, and Bosch are experimenting with radical new leadership models that strip away traditional command-and-control structures.
One of the latest and most ambitious kid on the block: Bayer with its Dynamic Shared Ownership model.
As it happens, I’ll be attending the Nex Day Leadership Conference in Tallinn this Thursday, which is all about self-management.
The promise is compelling: when you remove unnecessary hierarchy, you unleash human potential. People become more creative, more engaged, more accountable. Decision-making speeds up. Innovation flourishes. Bureaucracy dies.
I believe in this promise. Deeply.
I believe it is a critical stepping stone towards more mature organizations.
But having worked with organizations navigating this transition, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat itself so often that I’ve come to think of it as the self-management trap:
⚠️The trap: Organizations remove the hierarchy without building the culture that makes self-management work. They change the structure but not the soil. And then they wonder why nothing grows.
However, the challenges starts much earlier, even without a big transformation project. When working with leaders and teams that want to take a seemingly ‘easy’ first step, I’ve seen how they fall into the trap.
Asking people to take more responsibility and accountability, ‘empowering’ people without changing the underlying dynamics and tenets.
And so, instead of liberation, people mostly experience confusion. Power vacuums. Unspoken hierarchies that are worse than the official ones because they’re invisible and unaccountable. Conflict that festers because no one knows how to address it. Talented people leaving because “flat” turned out to mean “no one is responsible for anything.”
Self-managing teams don’t just happen by removing managers. They require the most intentional culture work an organization will ever do.
This article is about that work — and the framework I’ve developed to guide it.
Part I: Why Structure Isn’t Enough
The Iceberg Illusion
When organizations look at successful self-managing companies, they see the visible part — the structure:
No traditional managers
Teams that set their own goals
Distributed decision-making
Radical transparency
People choosing their own roles
What they don’t see — the part beneath the waterline — is everything that makes those structures work:
Deep interpersonal trust built over months or years
Shared language for navigating conflict
Psychological safety so robust that people can challenge each other without fear
Clear purpose that aligns decisions without a boss telling people what to do
Individual self-awareness about strengths, blind spots, and working styles
Practiced skills in giving and receiving feedback
Vulnerability-based relationships where people know each other as whole humans
The structure is the 10% above the waterline. The culture is the 90% below.
Most organizations try to copy the 10% and skip the 90%. But like so often, it’s the invisible parts that matter most.
What Actually Holds Teams Together
In a traditional hierarchy, the manager is the connective tissue. The manager:
Resolves conflicts
Sets direction
Allocates resources
Gives feedback
Maintains accountability
Makes the hard calls
When you remove the manager, all of these functions still need to happen. They don’t disappear, but need to be distributed across the team instead.
That either happens by chance of intention. Either way, a challenge most teams face is that they’ve never been taught how to do any of them.
We spend years training managers to manage. Then we remove management and expect teams to self-manage with no training whatsoever. It’s like removing the pilot from a cockpit and expecting the passengers to land the plane because they’ve watched a few in-flight safety videos.
The functions previously held by the manager must now be held by the culture — the shared agreements, practices, skills, and relational quality of the team itself.
That culture doesn’t build itself. It requires deliberate, ongoing investment. And frameworks like the one below can help navigate that journey.
Part II: The Supercharging Pyramid
— Five Culture Layers Self-Managing Teams Need
Through my work with organizations, I’ve developed a framework I call the Supercharging Pyramid — a five-layered model for building the cultural foundations that make self-management not just possible, but powerful. Each layer builds on the one below it, and while each can yield results independently, the compounding effect of the full stack is where the real transformation happens.
But before we climb the pyramid, we need to talk about what holds the whole thing together.
The Container: Trust and Psychological Safety
The question: Can I be honest here without being punished?
Trust and psychological safety are not a layer in the pyramid. They are the container — the soil from which the entire pyramid grows. Without them, no layer holds. With them, every layer is amplified.
In hierarchical organizations, people hide behind the protection (and excuse) of the chain of command. Self-management removes that protection. Suddenly, you’re exposed. Your ideas, your mistakes, your disagreements — all visible to the team, with no manager to buffer the impact.
Amy Edmondson’s research is unequivocal: psychological safety is the single most important factor in team performance. Not talent. Not resources. Not strategy. Safety.
And safety doesn’t emerge from removing hierarchy. It emerges from vulnerability-based trust — the kind of trust that comes from people knowing each other as whole humans, not just as job functions.
This container must be actively nurtured at every stage of the pyramid:
Trust-building practices and vulnerability exercises
Regular check-ins that go beyond task updates
Explicit team agreements about how conflict will be handled
Leaders who go first — modeling the vulnerability they want to see
Think of trust and psychological safety as the oxygen in the room. You don’t list it as an agenda item — but without it, nothing on the agenda matters.
Now, let’s climb.
Layer 1: Belonging
The question: Why do we exist — and do I belong here?
The base of the pyramid is Belonging — and it starts with purpose.
In a traditional organization, the boss provides direction. In a self-managing one, purpose provides direction. But purpose only works as a navigational tool when it’s:
Specific enough to guide daily decisions (”Should we take on this client?” “Should we invest in this technology?”)
Shared deeply — not as a poster on a wall, but as a lived conviction that every team member can articulate in their own words
Connected to values that translate into observable behaviors
When purpose is alive and shared, something powerful happens: people feel they belong. Not because they’ve been assigned a role, but because they’ve chosen to be part of something that matters. This sense of belonging creates the foundation for everything above — it’s the soil from which the pyramid emerges.
Without clear, shared purpose, self-management becomes a free-for-all. People make decisions based on personal preferences rather than collective direction. Priorities conflict. Energy scatters. And belonging erodes.
The culture work: Regular purpose conversations. Not once-a-year retreats, but ongoing dialogue about why the team exists, who it serves, and what success actually looks like beyond financial metrics. Hiring and onboarding that prioritize cultural fit alongside competence. Creating spaces where people feel seen and valued as whole humans.
Layer 2: Mindset
The question: Are we aligned in how we show up — and do we have a shared ambition?
Belonging tells you why you’re here. Mindset determines how you show up.
It’s not enough to have people who believe in the purpose. Self-managing teams need people with the right attitude — a growth mindset, a shared ambition, and the willingness to bring their best. These aren’t skills you train — they’re dispositions you hire for, cultivate, and protect.
In hierarchical organizations, a manager can compensate for individual mindset gaps — redirecting, motivating, course-correcting. In self-managing teams, every person’s mindset becomes a structural element. One person who is brilliant but lacks humility, or is highly talented but shows little ambition, can destabilize the entire system.
Mindset also means collective ambition — the alignment between personal goals and the team’s shared direction. When individual ambition and collective purpose point in the same direction, energy multiplies. When they diverge, self-management becomes a polite word for everyone pursuing their own agenda.
The culture work: Probing for mindset alignment during hiring — not just skills. Regular conversations about personal and collective ambition. Creating a learning culture where growth is expected, not optional. Naming and addressing mindset misalignments early, with care and directness.
Layer 3: Fulfillment
The question: Am I doing work that fills me with energy and joy?
This is the core of the pyramid — and the layer most organizations skip entirely.
For people to show up as their whole selves and do extraordinary work, they need more than purpose and the right mindset. They need to be doing work that energizes them. Not just work they’re good at — work that genuinely lights them up.
This is where strenghts tools like The Six Types of Working Genius become invaluable. I like this tool because its simple and immediately actionable. The assessment takes only 10 minutes, but the conversation that follows changes teams permanently. The moment people understand why certain work energizes them and other work depletes them — and see the same pattern in their teammates — something shifts. Frustration turns into appreciation. Blame turns into redesign.
It does not so much matter which tool is used, they all serve the same purpose: create mutual awareness for people’s strengths, preferences, and struggles, and through that increase mutual understanding and appreciation for everyone’s unique contribution.
When people are fulfilled by their work, they bring more of themselves to the team. They’re more resilient, more creative, more generous. Fulfillment is a key ingredient for sustained high performance.
The culture work: Regular use of strengths-based tools. Team mapping of who does what best. Job crafting conversations that reallocate work based on genius rather than job title. Ongoing practice of seeing colleagues through the lens of their gifts rather than their gaps.
I’ve created a practical guide to unlocking team energy, reducing friction, and building teams that actually work — using the Working Genius framework.
Layer 4: Collaboration
The question: How do we work together — and how do we disagree well?
The first three layers focus on the individual in relation to the team. Collaboration is where the team becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Putting effort into any of the layers below will improve the work environment. But the true impact unfolds through new levels of collaboration — teams that can think together, disagree productively, commit decisively, and hold each other accountable.
In hierarchical organizations, the manager is the conflict resolution mechanism. Take away the manager, and you need a new one. That mechanism is the team itself — but only if the team has been equipped with the skills and agreements to handle friction.
Most teams avoid conflict like the plague. They mistake harmony for health. They confuse niceness with trust. And so tension accumulates beneath the surface, leaking out as passive aggression, silent disengagement, or sudden explosions.
However, when teams can engage in productive conflict — passionate, unfiltered debate about ideas that leads to better decisions. And from healthy conflict flows commitment, accountability, and a focus on collective results.
Self-managing teams need:
Explicit conflict protocols — “This is how we handle disagreements here”
Regular retrospectives — structured time to surface what’s working and what’s not
Consent-based decision-making — not consensus (which is slow and produces compromise), but consent (can you live with this decision? yes → we move)
Peer feedback norms — a culture where feedback is expected, not exceptional
The courage to hold each other accountable — and the skill to do it with respect and care
This is the layer most teams never fully master. And it’s the one that determines whether self-management is real or just a nice idea. Because you can only hold someone accountable if you trust them, can engage in conflict with them, and have shared commitments to hold them to.
The culture work: Conflict training. Regular team retrospectives. Facilitated conversations when tension is high. Establishing team rhythms for check-ins and accountability. Creating norms where holding someone accountable is an act of care, not an act of aggression. Celebrating people who have the courage to raise difficult issues.
Layer 5: Flow
The question: Can we access optimal performance — together?
The top of the pyramid. The place where everything comes together.
When belonging is solid, mindset is aligned, fulfillment is present, and collaboration is practiced — something remarkable becomes possible: flow. Both individual flow and, at its most powerful, team flow.
Flow — the state of optimal consciousness where we feel and perform our best — is not something you can mandate or manage. It’s something you can only create the conditions for. And those conditions map almost perfectly to the layers below.
Research on team flow identifies seven prerequisites: a common goal, aligned personal goals, high skill integration, open communication, psychological safety, mutual commitment, and collective ambition. Look at that list carefully. Every single prerequisite is addressed by the layers of the Supercharging Pyramid and the trust container that holds it.
When teams access flow together, productivity increases dramatically — not through pressure, but through the natural consequence of people doing meaningful work with people they trust, in ways that leverage their strengths, within a culture that supports honest collaboration.
This is the ultimate promise of self-management: not just freedom from hierarchy, but freedom to do the best work of your life, together. Not as a fleeting peak experience, but as a sustainable way of working.
The culture work: Designing work for flow — clear goals, immediate feedback, challenge-skills balance. Protecting deep work time. Removing organizational friction. Tracking and celebrating flow moments. Understanding the full flow cycle — including the struggle and recovery phases that most organizations try to skip.
Part III: The Role of a Culture Architect
So if self-managing teams need all of this culture work — the container of trust, the five layers of the pyramid — who does it?
This is where I believe a new kind of leadership role is essential. Not a manager. Not a boss. A culture architect — someone whose job is to create and maintain the conditions for the team to function at its best.
I call this role the Chief Flourishing Officer — and I’ve written about it before. In the context of self-management, the CFLO’s job is to:
Build and protect the container — ensuring trust and psychological safety are actively nurtured at every level
Facilitate belonging through purpose work and values alignment
Cultivate the right mindset through hiring, onboarding, and ongoing development
Unlock fulfillment through strengths-based tools like the Working Genius
Coach teams through the hard work of real collaboration and healthy conflict
Create the conditions for flow — designing environments where peak performance is the natural outcome
It’s culture companionship rather than management, walking alongside teams as they learn to lead themselves, providing the skills and frameworks they need along the way.
Part IV: The Nex.Day Question
On Thursday, I’ll be at Nex.Day in Tallinn — a conference dedicated to the future of work, featuring leaders from ABN AMRO, LEGO, Bosch, and other organizations pushing the boundaries of self-management.
I’m going with one question:
What does the culture work look like inside these organizations?
Not the structure. Not the org chart. Not the decision-making framework. The culture. The invisible infrastructure that makes everything else work.
Because I believe the future of work is not about removing managers. It’s about building the cultural capacity that makes management unnecessary. And that requires climbing the full pyramid — from belonging to flow — within a container of trust.
If you’re at Nex.Day, I’d love to explore this with you. And if you’re navigating a transition to self-management and wondering why it’s not working as promised — the answer is almost certainly below the waterline. Or more precisely: somewhere in the layers of the pyramid you haven’t built yet.
The structure is easy. The culture is everything.
Practical Starting Points
If your organization is considering or in the middle of a transition to self-management, here are five things you can do this week — one for each layer of the Supercharging Pyramid:
Belonging — Have a purpose conversation. Not “What’s our mission statement?” but “Why does this team exist? What would be lost if we disappeared tomorrow? Are we aligned on what matters most?”
Mindset — Check your collective ambition. Ask each team member: “What are you personally hungry to achieve? How does it connect to what we’re building together?” Listen for alignment — and for gaps.
Fulfillment — Run a Working Genius assessment with your team. 10 minutes per person, then a 90-minute team conversation. You’ll learn more about how your team actually functions than a year of traditional team-building.
Collaboration — Establish a conflict protocol. Agree as a team: “When we disagree, here’s how we’ll handle it.” Write it down. Practice it. Revisit it. And create accountability rhythms — weekly check-ins where each person shares: What did I commit to? What did I deliver? Where do I need help?
Flow — Ask the conditions question. “When was the last time this team was truly in the zone? What was present? What was absent?” Start designing for more of those moments.
And before all of this: ask the safety question. Anonymously or in a facilitated setting: “On a scale of 1-10, how safe do you feel to disagree openly in this team?” If the average is below 7, that’s your first priority — because without the container, the pyramid can’t stand.
These are initial small steps, but they build the invisible infrastructure that self-management depends on. They’re the soil that allows the structure grow.