Traci Fenton, WorldBlu

What are the fundamental principles by which we run our organizations? When they grow up, what do we want them to be? I know for most of us, we start our careers as 20-somethings, spend the next two years figuring out how it all works – and before you know it, have been acculturated into accepting the way it all works now as “normal.”

Traci Fenton  is the founder and CEO of WorldBlu, a leadership and business design studio specializing in organizational democracy and freedom-centered leadership. They’re best known for the annual list of the most democratic workplaces, but they also run WorldBlu Live, a conference around organizational democracy and host the WorldBlu Council for CEOs of democratic companies.  Traci’s been featured in all sorts of media as an expert in this field, so I felt lucky to speak to her on how to make Great Work flourish.

Amongst other topics during our interview, Traci and I kick around:

• Three key reasons why a democratic workplace is necessary to succeed and flourish
• The ten principles that lie behind “democracy”
• How Linden Labs – the creators of Second Life – approach being a democratic organization
• The role of accountability in all of this
• And how’s she tackling her own Great Work Project of 20,000 democratic companies by 2020.

Listen to my interview with Traci Fenton

0:16    Michael introduces Traci Fenton, CEO of WorldBlu
4:24    How Traci is tackling her own Great Work Project of 20,000 democratic companies by 2020
6:01    Three key reasons why a democratic workplace is necessary to succeed and flourish
10:00  The ten principles that lie behind “democracy”
11:39   How Linden Labs – the creators of Second Life – approach being a democratic company
12:55   The role of accountability in all of this
18:36   What gets in the way of democracy
21:47   How to find out more about Traci Fenton
25:37   Michael closes the interview

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