Q: What’s a good way to show employee recognition and provide helpful feedback?

A: sweetriot, a New York based company makes all-natural chocolate treats called "peaces", while working to create a more just and celebrated multicultural world. At sweetriot, the company performs an annual review of its overall performance.

Additionally, the employees have a recognition system called Shazam! Sha-zams are done at their weekly team sweetings (meetings), and at other times to recognize when one of the staff members has done something great. The recipient and his or her achievement is recognized and applauded. The leadership feels that supportive feedback is crucial to the growth of the team and company.

Mastermind and Chief Rioter, Sarah Endline, explains, "Companies are just people at the end of the day. In fact, at sweetriot we call our people “thumbprints.” Each thumbprint is unique and has its own unique strengths to bring to the organization. Thus, if you under-empower and under-inform your thumbprints, you under-optimize your company. A democratic model brings everyone into the fold and keeps the focus on moving your organization forward, together."

To learn more about sweetriot and their democratic practices aside from reflection and evaluation, click here.

Q: How can I structure my company democratically rather than the traditional command and control model?

A: Touchstone is a management-consulting firm, based in Washington, DC that helps leaders develop, launch and manage their strategies. They have used the democratic principle of decentralization to help overcome the conventional staff hierarchy that characterizes most companies.

Touchstone uses a democratic "Bubble" structure, which means that any person at any level of the organization can lead a group of staff – not just managers or senior-level people. The leader of the team can ask for and receive whatever level of talent they need to achieve the mission of the project. One result is that senior staff sometimes ends up working under a less-senior staff person who is managing a given project. The reasoning is that the leader is in charge of the deliverable, and has the freedom to develop and implement the project as they fit with the team they need to get the job done well.

Touchstone’s Vice President and Director of Consulting, Tony Summerlin explains their reasoning for having a democratic workplace when he states: "We practice democracy in the workplace because we believe democracy is the foundation for all civil liberties and personal freedoms. We believe democracy instills trust, new thinking, and entrepreneurship in our staff. At Touchstone, people are not focused on their own personal agenda; they take responsibility for themselves and their neighbors."

For more information on Touchstone and their democratic practices aside from decentralization, click here.

WorldBlu's new StudioBlu podcast series launched today featuring interviews with Bill Taylor, Founding Editor of Fast Company magazine and author of the new book, Practically Radical, Brian Scudamore, Founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, Mark Dowds, Founder and CEO of Brainpark,  Derek Sivers, Founder of CD Baby, and Bill Morales, Founder and CEO of Tracer.

Axiom News also spotlighted the launch of our new series in a news article published today entitled, "Business Leaders Relate Best Practices, Benefits and Challenges of Democratic Workplaces: WorldBlu launches podcast series featuring conversations about workplace democracy."

We hope you enjoy our new podcast series and look forward to your feedback!

Q: What’s an effective way to engage employees of different departments with each other and promote communication?

A: WONGDOODY, a LA-based marketing, interactive, and branding agency has the slogan, “The Democracy of Ideas.” At WONGDOODY, one of the ways they practice the democratization of ideas is through their practice of dialogue and listening. WONGDOODY encourages staff members to engage with each other in ways that are meaningful both personally and professionally.

For example, employees recently organized a research-oriented "Field Trip" -- an afternoon where the entire office went out in the field to gather new consumer and marketing insights in order to inspire interpersonal communication and better inform their client work. Staff members were divided into teams and each team consisted of employees from various areas of the agency, in order to strengthed communication between different department groups.

CEO Ben Wiener explains, "WONGDOODY's business is all about adding value for our clients through great ideas. The more people we have focused on generating, evaluating and improving ideas, the more value we can add. If we want to be smarter and better than the typical advertising agency, we need to take ideation out of a single department and make it everyone's job."

To learn more about WONGDOODY and their democratic practices, click here.

Q: How can I promote new ideas within the workplace while also supporting my employees’ personal development?

A: Seventh Generation, a Vermont-based company, is committed to becoming the world's most trusted brand of authentic, safe, and environmentally-responsible products for a healthy home.

In the past year, Seventh Generation has replaced their traditional performance management system, which was based on management-driven goal-setting, with a completely new Personal Development process, the key part of which they're calling Promises Beyond Ableness (or PBAs).

The Promises Beyond Ablness process invites employees to identify what THEY would most like to contribute to in support of the company’s strategy – rather than the company TELLING them what they will contribute. Their PBA plan is not limited to their identified function either, but can be expansive in scope. Employees are then invited to develop these ideas into a plan of action.

Seventh Generation Founder Jeffrey Hollender explains, "As I've long maintained, 'you can't grow a business without growing people.' There's no doubt in my mind that our investment in people and their capacity to contribute to our success is working. Over the course of time, we've created a huge amount of new capability, capability that's reflected in sales growth, but more importantly, in the personal growth of individuals with the capacity to lead us into the new frontier of values-led business."

For more information on Seventh Generation and their democratic practices, click here.