Here are some companies which are large and successful, but have either a non-hierarchical management structure, or an unusual pattern of ownership. Not everything profitable is stock market listed with an all-powerful CEO.

• Ocean Spray may at first glance look like a huge top-down Coca-Cola-but-for-juice corporation. But it’s not, it’s a co-operative owned by 650 cranberry farmers.
• Gore & Associates (of GORE-TEX fabric fame) have associates rather than employees. There’s no chain of command, nobody has a job title, there’s no office-ghetto for sales separate from research.When a product group gets too large (above 150?) it splits into two.
• Semco have a democratic management system. Managers are elected by their workers, and everybody has to justify decisions to their peers. There’s a book by CEO Ricardo Semler about it.

Any more?

The main disadvantage of renting property is that you can’t control things if your landlord decides to sell it. In the long term, I feel like there should be something clever halfway between renting and leasehold which gives you more rights over the freeholder. But until somebody works out what that is, I suggest getting a landlord who lets you move with him!

Today is completion day, although at what time it completes I’m not quite sure. House buying is much more ephemeral than I thought, with solicitors talking by telephone. I always imagined exchanging contracts would be round a table in a smoke-filled room. As you can see from the photo, I’m sitting on the floor of the large new living room, which is filled with all my and Mark’s worldly possessions.

I’ve moved barely a mile, to in many ways an area even more central. It is less on the tourist track and the university; instead nearer the station, and nearer where most people that I know live. It’s a characterful place known as the Kite. Built in the early C19, when it was mainly full of criminals and vagrants, half of it was controverisally knocked down to build a shopping centre in the 70s. Now, of course, it is incredibly gentrified, and still right next to Midsummer Common, my favourite meadow in the world.

I’m no longer sleeping in a basement which is lovely. Pop round for tea while you’re shopping.

Good customer service story of the day: For the new flat, I ordered NTL broadband internet about 10 days ago. I was amazed this morning when not only did the NTL engineer arrive on the dot of 12 noon (when the time slot booked extended until 6pm), but he rang 15 minutes before hand to remind me. He didn’t bat an eyelid that I use Linux, and everything was working perfectly within minutes. I’m going to have to set up ntl:heaven to tell people about it! It was extra amusing that when the engineer arrived and I booted up my laptop, it unintentionally connected to an open wireless access point nearby. Replete with internet.

Imagine a school with a set of complicated rules. It’s an old school, very old. About 1000 years. Numerous head teachers have modified the rules over time – banning running in corridors, or creating tort for pencil poking. Occasionally the deputy head of timetabling thinks they are getting a bit complicated, and simplifies them a little. But this doesn’t keep up at all with advances in technology – new rules about smart whiteboards, PFI and computer hacking. So it gets harder and harder to understand all the rules as time goes on.

Even though the rules are quite complicated, they’re by and large pretty good, and the kids agree with them. However, sometimes, accidentally or deliberately they break one, and end up in detention. The kids try as hard as they can to obey the rules, but they still get it wrong. Why? Because the staff won’t let them see the rules.

There’s a copy of the rules in the staffroom, but the kids aren’t allowed in there. They put up parts of recent rules on the school website, but these are meaningless without the older rules that they modify. There are several private publishing companies which sell the rules. The publishing companies are so old they have their own copies of the rules, and they have lots of staff to maintain them. But not all the kids have rich enough parents to afford to buy those rules.

Sounds crazy? It’s worse than that. The school’s a country, and it’s called the United Kingdom. And the rules are “statute law”; that is the law “as amended” by acts. i.e. The law in force today that we have to obey.

Just recently, I’ve tried requesting the database of statute law under the new Freedom of Information act. Unfortunately, the request has been denied on grounds of cost. The Department of Constitutional Affairs claim that making an SQL Server database dump takes more than three and a half days.

By and large, all of Google’s services are astonishingly usable. That is, both people who are comfortable with computers, and those who are new to them, find the interface clean, fast, and understand how to use it. Recently I’ve become aware of two major flaws, which are both enlightening.

• You can drag Google maps to scroll the map around. i.e. Press and hold the mouse down on the map, and then move the mouse around, and the map moves, as if you were sliding it about on a table. Everyone talked about this in blog posts when Google first came out, so all the techy people and Google watchers know that it is the main advance above older internet mapping services. But it isn’t obvious the first time you go to Google maps that you can do this. Solution: They need to add arrows on the edge of the map. Much as it will ruin the clean design, at the moment most users probably find it worse than multimap. I can’t think of a way to help people discover that they can drag the map, except putting some text below it, which hardly anyone will read.
• What does Froogle mean? On the front page of Google, with a prominent “new!” flash next to it, is a button saying “Froogle”. It isn’t at all obvious that this is a price comparison service. It’s the most brilliant pun ever (the only other common word that rhymes with Google is “bugel”, apart from “frugal”). So when I first read about it on some technology website, I remembered it because of this cleverness. Solution: Rename it to Google Shopping, or Google Prices. Their traffic will immediately jump, as at the moment it is impossible to discover Google have a price comparison service.

OK, now can I have my cut of the millions of dollars in advertising revenue the above two suggestions are worth, please?

So today, I’m filling in my self-employed tax return for the last tax year. I’ve never used the website for doing this before, and in general I’m quite impressed. However, it had two simple but major usability flaws, both of which nearly stopped me using the service at all.

• The address gateway.gov.uk doesn’t work at all, it gives an error. You have to remember to type in the www, as in www.gateway.gov.uk. Luckily, a friend figured this out for me.
• When you’ve registered with the gateway, it doesn’t tell you what to do next to get to the form. There is no link from the gateway, even though it lists that you are enrolled for self-assessment online. You have to go to hmrc.gov.uk and log in using the gateway user id and password. I had to ring a customer support helpline to find this out.

There are lessons here in both attention to detail, and in how large corporate bodies can make fatal mistakes. Apparently there used to be a link from the gateway to the HMRC form, but someone got rid of it. The only reason I can imagine for this is some internal bureaucracy failure caused because the gateway is run by different people to the tax office. But who knows.

Meanwhile, you might like to read about Freesteel. This is important software, the stuff that turns virtual products designed in the memory of a computer into detailed movements for a drill to cut moulds and stamps out of metal blocks. Nearly everything you use, from car bodywork and mobile phone cases to wheelbarrows and plastic telephones, is now made like this.

When I first moved to Cambridge, I used to code Machining Stategist at a company called NC Graphics. Since then there is a dramatic international story of love, betrayal, hope, tragedy and triply forking software. You can read Julian’s turbulant account of Machining Strategist history (scroll down to History) over at the Freesteel site. It’s also on the topic of being self employed.

OK, maybe I lied about the tragedy. But there’s definitely love, hope and betrayal in there.

It’s getting on for a year ago that I posted about organic bodies, and the quest for a form of incorporation that I actually like. One that lets you organise a group of people, is efficient and agile enough to compete with for-profit companies, but which doesn’t sell out the world down the line. A form of incorporation which you could use to start a Google, that would enable it to grow just as large, but with a guarantee of “don’t be evil” that a stock-listed corporation could never have.

When I last wrote, Limited Liability Partnerships were the newest shiniest form of incorporation. In the fast-paced, heady world of organic body legislation, early adopters have already moved on from LLPs. The cools kids are getting ready to set up the first Community Interest Company (CIC) when the new legislation comes into force in July. And they look more relevant to me than LLPs.

• A Community Interest Company (CIC) is a slight modification of an LLC (Limited Liability Company, whether by shares or guarantee, or a public limited company). This is a good start, as it isn’t a wild new structure. You can easily convert an LLC to a CIC.
• The company must pass a community interest test that “a reasonable person could consider the CIC’s activities to benefit the community”. The definition of community is quite broad. Basically, any largish group of people other than the employees or owners of the company.
• The directors have to sign and file a “community interest statement” that the company will serve the community rather than private profit motives. The company must produce an annual community interest report, filed to Company House with their accounts. This records what the CIC has done to persue the company interest in the year.
• An “asset lock” keeps capital within the company, you can only transfer assets out of it at full market value, or by giving them to another CIC or charity. If the CIC issues shares to get investment, the dividends are capped by the CIC regulator. Similary, pay that directors receive must be considered justified for the benefit they give, or the asset lock and hence the community interest test is broken. And if the company winds up, money must go to another CIC or charity.

(Links to the factsheets with this info on are at the DTI website.)

It’s not quite clear that this legislation was really designed for people setting up businesses in general areas of industry. Business link gives leisure centres and housing associations as examples. But also, to be fair, worker-owned co-operatives.

So is this thing useful? It allows normal competitive trading, and has a light regulatory touch. It doesn’t prevent corporate buyout or floating on the stock exchange. But it makes sure that if either of those things happen, the goals of the company have to stay the same, and any profit can’t be sucked out of it. Perhaps this is the new corporate form to take over the world. A cautious thumbs up. Comments?

“I will give 10 pounds towards the 500 pounds needed for Engineers Without Borders UK’s project in Suriname but only if 49 other people will too.”

• What were your first, and subsequent reactions on seeing the sentence/link above?
• If you followed the link, what was your first rection to the page?
• Could you understand the page? In particular, describe any false lines of understanding which the page layout or text led you down before you understood it.

I’m going to pretend this is a “usability study” by asking you the above follow up questions (you may think I really just want you to sign up and if we succeed to give money, but actually I want to improve PledgeBank as well). Do answer in the comments, or if you like by email…

There are lots of different approaches to deciding how to vote, and to the power relation between politicans and you. Here is a list of them (courtesy of Arthur Edwards in Holland, who studies these things). Excuse the posh names for them, just pretend we’re in a university for a paragraph or two.

• Promissory – Voter judges representative on how well they carried out their promises (made in manifesto before last election)
• Anticipatory – Representative acts in a way that he hopes the voter likes, so he is voted for at next election. This opens up the possibility of the representative changing the voters mind.
• Gyroscopic – Based on character, the voter selects an MP from a background, with a biography, that he believes they are likely to act well.
• Surrogate – Representation by somebody you can’t elect. e.g. A congressman who represents all gays.

Of course our beautiful ad-hoc British democratic system flitters shiftily between these categories. And all the crazy kids who spit out new websites faster than you can keep up, have produced lots of ways for you to work out how to vote.

• Political Survey 2005 is based on real opinion poll data, and fancy maths, to genuinely find out the axes of disagreement in UK politics and where you are on them. And they’re not exactly the left/right axes you expect. This isn’t really useful for working out how you should vote, except by telling you which tribe you are in.
• Public Whip’s How They Voted idealistically judges MPs based on how they actually voted in parliament over the last four years. It asks for your view on 7 key controversial issues such as foundation hospitals and identity cards, then compares that to your ex-MP (if they’re standing again) and all the political parties, and tells you which to vote for. (This one is my fault).
• Who Should You Vote For takes stated policy positions of all the parties, asks what you think of them, and then recommends which party you should pick.
• Tactical Voter cynically and very practically tries to get you to vote for a party you don’t like the most. This didn’t work very well for me, as it negatively says in Cambridge tactical voting is pointless. Which appears true from the figures, but the local situation is the Lib Dems stand a small chance even this election.

Comments please, have you tried any of the above, and what did you think of them?

I just can’t be bothered to vote. Or even to tell the world why I can’t be bothered to vote.

Thanks to Sam and Matthew B for building such a great site. It is mySociety’s first one that was made entirely by volunteers. It’s nice to launch a whole website when all I had to do was configure the web server and write a deploy script :)

Soon you’re going to have to vote for a new MP, so it seems fitting to have a quick look at how your last one voted on your behalf. For example, my MP Anne Campbell voted:

• Very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.
• Moderately for introducing student top-up fees.
• Quite strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
• A mixture of for and against the Iraq war.
• Moderately for introducing ID cards.
• Very strongly for the fox hunting ban.
• Very strongly for equal gay rights.

To have a look at your own, stick your postcode in to TheyWorkForYou.com. This is all done by taking a monstrous slice of Public Whip and barbarically simplifying it into TheyWorkForYou. Pass it on.