In the photo with me is Mr. Nagesh Hanchate, who joined us as an office admin in 2006. He was a university-graduated auto-rickshaw driver and eventually became the chief account officer and personal assistant to the CEO. Mr. Hanchate was the greatest manager I have ever worked with, and he made my life easy. Unfortunately, he passed away earlier this year in May 2024.

At Shimbi Labs, we've always been about simplicity and empowering individuals, and that’s why we’ve embraced a no-managers philosophy. This means that we don’t have full-time managers whose only job is to supervise others. Everyone, including senior team members, takes care of management tasks on the side, while focusing on their main role as individual contributors. And guess what? It works like a charm.

Now, don’t think we’ve thrown out management completely. Performance reviews? We’ve got those. Onboarding? Absolutely. Mentoring the new folks? You bet. But here’s the twist—these tasks aren’t bundled up and handed over to a handful of full-time managers. Instead, they’re sprinkled across our senior team members. Everyone takes a small bite of the management pie, which means nobody is spending all day bossing people around.

And the beauty of it? No more endless meetings. No more “scheduled check-ins” that feel like they exist just to fill a calendar. We’ve made management super lean. We automate status updates, and instead of one person babysitting a team of six or seven, each senior member mentors just one junior. Quality over quantity, right?

By spreading management tasks out like this, we’ve managed to dodge the curse of Parkinson’s Law—that old saying that work will always expand to fill the time available. Guess what happens when everyone’s itching to get back to their realwork? They handle management as quickly as possible. Some weeks, management duties barely exist because people are too busy crushing their projects. Good luck pulling that off in a traditional company, where managers have to keep themselves busy for 40 hours just to justify their role.

This setup is perfect for a company our size. It really shines when you’ve got the right people—those who we like to call "managers of one." These are the self-starters, the doers, the people who don’t need a manager breathing down their necks to stay motivated. They set their own agenda, dive deep into their work, and push things forward, all without needing a weekly pep talk. This kind of autonomy is exactly what we look for at Shimbi Labs. We hire people who can handle the responsibility and run with it.

And there’s another bonus: When the person guiding you is also great at doing the work themselves, the mentorship clicks in a whole new way. It's like getting taught by a Jedi, not just a trainer with a checklist. Steve Jobs once said something about managers who “knew how to manage but didn’t know how to do anything.” Well, we’re definitely not about that. We believe in being led by example—if you’re going to be managed, it should be by someone who can do the job better than you, not just talk about it.

Now, I won’t lie—this isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The hardest part of this model? Dealing with underperformance and conflict. It’s easy to mentor someone who’s on fire and doing great, but if someone’s struggling, it’s a different story. Not every senior team member wants to jump into that fire. When someone’s consistently falling behind, those situations eventually end up at the top for resolution. But hey, if there’s a deeper issue—like we’re hiring the wrong people or not setting clear expectations—it’s something we need to fix at the root. And that’s on us as leaders.

But here’s the best part—when this approach works, it’s like magic. Teams of talented people, who don’t need micromanagement, move fast. They focus, they execute, and they get that incredible feeling of making a real impact. There’s no better reward than the satisfaction of knowing your work truly matters, and you didn’t need to sit through a dozen meetings to make it happen.

After years of working this way, I can’t imagine going back to the traditional manager-heavy structure. We’ve tried it, and it only confirmed one thing: We’re sticking with our no-manager model. It’s either this, or we go down trying—but trust me, we’re doing just fine!