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delegation,” inspired by Jean-Christian Fauvet, one of Zobrist’s intellectual mentors. His book, Understanding Social Conflicts,7 written in 1973, analyzed why top-down company organization inherently leads to conflicts and underperformance. Like Townsend, who was writing at the same time, and McGregor, writing a decade earlier, he believed in management “by the people” and not “by the procedures.” He recognized that some rules are necessary but insisted that they have to be invented by the people on the ground, and he proposed ways for companies to self-organize. Zobrist first came across his theory while attending Fauvet’s seminar in Paris, but now these self-organization ideas connected to what he was trying to do at FAVI.

In fact, “backward delegation” was new only to the corporate world. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth-century theologian—who, among other things, was interested in the methods of government—had espoused the same principle seven hundred years earlier under the name of a “subsidiarity.” Translated to companies, it means that all authority starts with the frontline people, not those at the top. The frontline people then pass authority for certain decisions or actions they deem uncritical to their work up the chain. This leaves the CEO with the decisions and tasks that no one below him was willing or able to do. Note that this is essentially the same as Robert Townsend’s idea of the CEO as a blocking back or water boy, for whom no job is too menial if it helps other players to advance toward their objectives. It also dovetails with Zobrist’s initial intention of not having to make decisions after three years.

The mini-plants assumed authority for all the roles they deemed essential for getting their job done right. This meant not merely the manufacturing itself, which had traditionally been their only sphere of authority, but also purchasing, finance, recruitment, training, and more. Existing and newly hired engineers in FAVI were simply asked, as at W. L. Gore & Associates, to find the areas where they’d like to contribute. This, naturally, ended up being the areas left out of the production teams, such as R&D or initiating continuous improvement methods.

This is radically different from a traditional delegation model, in which the you-know-what rolls downhill, and each layer of management takes whatever piece of authority is available and attractive to grab, leaving what remains for those at the bottom. It is also quite different from some periodically popular forms of “decentralization.” Most of these begin with the assumption that all power resides in the center, to be doled out strategically by the center. But under this approach, people may be given authority or responsibilities that interfere with their jobs, while being denied freedom of action in areas vital to their work. Most important, “delegation” and “decentralization” don’t question the “how” managerial practices, but, perhaps, legitimize them by making their impact less harmful. “Backward delegation,” by contrast, lets the frontline workers decide for themselves which pieces of authority they need to do their jobs before the higher-ups can do it. In that, it’s a radical departure from traditional managerial practices, so radical that it may not need traditional managers at all.

The second principle concerned not so much the transformation of managerial practices as the role of the CEO in them. Zobrist—an avid student of ancient China and history in general—opens his book, La belle histoire de FAVI, with the following mantra, inspired by China scholar François Julien: “The good prince is one who, by eliminating the constraints and the exclusions, allows everyone to blossom as he wishes.” Zobrist dramatically eliminated everything in the old structure that he felt treated people as if they were “bad” and prevented them from “being good,” from “doing a good job” by making the customer happy, and from achieving personal happiness and high performance for the company. As Zobrist said in his “prostitute” speech, he can’t do the work, so