# Conditions of Workplace Freedom: Skin in the Game By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-01-06 Realizing true freedom at work requires many things, but probably one of the most critical elements is skin in the game. In other words, everybody has a significant and vested interest in the outcomes and working together. I'm not talking about trivial ownership stakes like 0.01%, but significant and proportional skin in the game. Saying that "everyone is an owner" when you have 75% of the shares and everyone else has 0.01% is the height of technically correct bullshit. Real skin-in-the-game is not checking a box of technicality. It means emotional and physical investment tied to a person's self-actualization, development, and achievement. If everyone has skin in the game, discussions and actions suddenly transform from top-down command and control to self-organization. This is a subtle yet significant difference. Leaders and hierarchies will still emerge, but the dynamic is very different when everyone is free to express themselves as proportionally invested individuals. This is not communism or socialism. Companies will still fail. Employees will still be let go. Market forces still exist. However, the company is no longer a bunch of mercenaries, but a self-organizing force to not take lightly. It is easy to take down a system with a few nodes of control (e.g. current top-down management), but it is nearly impossible to take down a self-organizing network (e.g. the internet). Which company strategy will survive the longest? Which one would you bet on? #### Related Items [[Freedom]] [[Work]] [[Business]] [[Management]] [[Self-organization]] [[Self-Actualization]] [[Complex Systems]]