Jos De Blok: Ditching Hierarchy and Building a Thriving Culture in Buurtzorg
Meet Jos De Blok, the founder and CEO of Buurtzorg. Buurtzorg Nederland was founded in 2006 by Jos and a small team of professional nurses who were dissatisfied with the delivery of health care by traditional home care organizations in the Netherlands. Together, they decided to create a new model of patient-centered care focused on facilitating and maintaining independence and autonomy for the individual for as long as possible. Episode Highlights In this interview, Jos and I discuss: How Buurzorg grew from a team of 4 to 14,000+ with a simple and flat structure, no departmentalization, minimal back-office functions, and minimal employee monitoring and controlling functions Buurzorg’s experience with independent, autonomous, self-managing teams with no team leaders and under no line-managerial direction or control Scaling company culture through a collection of loosely connected teams, unified by a common purpose The role technology played in Buurzorg’s success The critical importance of creating a positive social impact for businesses today The key success factors and key obstacles that Jos experienced while building the company