Founded in 1980 by Thierry Pick in his parents' garage in France, Clinitex is now a major player in professional cleaning, with over 4,000 employees and 6,000 customers. What distinguishes this company, beyond its success, is its unique management model, strongly inspired by the principles of Montessori pedagogy.
Montessori pedagogy was created by Maria Montessori almost 50 years ago. It was first developed for children and then applied to teenagers. Rather than feeding children with facts, Montessori education strives to nurture each child’s natural desire for knowledge, understanding, and respect. This pedagogy wants children to learn on their own or in groups by doing their experiments. Children follow their curiosity at their own pace, taking the time they need to understand each concept. The child practices self-regulation and self-assessment, he should look critically at his work and recognize, correct, and learn from his errors. Children in a Montessori classroom have different ages, 3 different years are encompassed within a classroom, so the oldest students mentor the younger ones recreating a ‘family environment’. This pedagogy enables children and teenagers to work in groups where each one listens to their needs while taking the group into account. Furthermore, children follow their pace for learning which then makes them have higher social-emotional skills than people following a traditional educational path because they listen to their needs. They learn to listen to themselves and others, creating a more adapted and human pedagogy. This approach is based on children's and adolescents' cognitive psychology and aims to help them be self-confident, respectful, and autonomous in their learning.
The Clinitex approach is based on transparency and autonomy, a work structure that overturns traditional enterprise hierarchies.
At Clinitex, all employees have access to 100% of the company's information. This transparency aims to avoid power struggles and promote a climate of trust. One outstanding feature is the publication of all salaries on the intranet. This implies that remuneration must be fair and “mountable”, creating an environment where everyone knows what others earn, thus reinforcing pay equity.
Employee remuneration is based on three main components: Base salary, salary variables, which depend on individual performance and dividends, representing the risk premium for shareholders who decide not to sell their shares. This results-oriented approach enables each employee to better understand the value of his or her work and its impact on the company.
Unlike traditional management practices where employees are evaluated by line managers, at Clinitex there are no formal appraisals. For Thierry Pick, a traditional appraisal reinforces a relationship of superiority. Instead, employees are asked to carry out a self-assessment. Then, to obtain external feedback, they must seek the opinion of a colleague. This process doesn’t take place in an office, but on a walk, encouraging an informal and open discussion of annual performance. This approach reflects Clinitex's spirit of trust and autonomy. If an employee doesn't get a self-evaluation from his colleagues, it means he's not reliable enough for others to validate his work.
Clinitex goes even further in its horizontal approach: there is no Human Resources Director. Each employee is free to hire someone according to his or her own criteria if there is a need. Working hours are not imposed, and telecommuting is widely encouraged. For Thierry Pick, control is a brake on agility and trust: “You have to trust people,” he says, illustrating his belief that autonomous employees are more committed and productive.
In an interview, Thierry Pick also criticizes the traditional capitalist model. While he acknowledges that capitalism is the “least bad of systems”, he warns against the infinite quest for profit. He compares this phenomenon to nature: wild animals, like giraffes or lions, reach a threshold of satiation and never consume beyond their needs. In his view, companies should have a “prosperity threshold”, a level beyond which they stop accumulating profits and redistribute them equitably among employees and shareholders.
We can see that this business model indeed has roots in Montessori pedagogy by encouraging employee autonomy and responsibility and fostering trust within the company. Clinitex employees are encouraged to assess themselves, take responsibility for their actions, and manage their work independently. Montessori pedagogy also advocates the intellectual, emotional, social, and physical development of children, values that are echoed in Clinitex's operations, where employee well-being is paramount.
Clinitex is proof that a different business model, inspired by educational concepts such as Montessori pedagogy, can succeed in a world traditionally dominated by strict hierarchical structures and the pursuit of profit at all costs. By promoting transparency, trust, autonomy, and a deep sense of fairness, Clinitex shows that capitalism can be humanized while remaining competitive and flourishing.
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