Follow the leader: Fishbowl inventory's leadership style is just crazy enough to work.

• Author: Vanek, Jeff
• Position: Lessons Learned

Innovation is revered in the business world, but one aspect of corporate America has been slow to change: the cumbersome management structures that can impede progress, put the brakes on risk-taking and stifle creative thinking.

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But at Fishbowl Inventory, CEO David Williams has upended traditional management structures and practices. Meetings? Not on the schedule. Financial information? All of it is readily available to any interested employee. Middle managers? Nope.

Though some may consider Williams' untraditional management style radical and unstable, Williams has proven that his unique style is just what Orem-based Fishbowl Inventory needed to achieve continued growth and prosperity. "There are those who say we can't run a company this way, but we are he says.

Indeed, the company has been recognized for both innovation and financial performance in local and national press. Fishbowl debuted on the Inc. 500/5000 list in 2008 and has remained on the list every year since. It has also received a number of awards for its performance, including the Inc. Hire Power Award in 2012 and the Red Herring North America and Global awards in 2012.

The Non-negotiables

The foundation for Fishbowl's success is its seven non-negotiable principles. "It is these principles that guide everything done at the company--respect, belief, loyalty, commitment, trust, courage and gratitude explains Williams.

"Everything I do needs to be about our people and be governed by the seven non-negotiable principles," he says. "If our financials are down, we talk about the seven non-negotiables. We talk about behavior, not numbers. We always go back to the non-negotiables, back to our principles. For example, maybe we need to talk about what it means for us to be more committed to the customer who is buying our product."

Team Play

These non-negotiable principles are put into play through Fishbowl's "flat" leadership structure. Everyone, from developers to customer service representatives, is part of a paired team. This includes the CEO and president, who work together as a pair and share responsibility. There are no middle managers--only a pair of executive vice presidents, who also work together as a team.

The idea for Fishbowl's paired structure throughout the entire organization came to Williams from the practice of agile software development, a group of software development methods in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration...