09 · Culture
Would I enjoy working at Cercle?
The way we work is not designed to please everyone. That is deliberate.
The eight preceding chapters promise things that, taken separately, are easy to like. Autonomy. Trust. Little reporting. Explicit decisions. No individual ratings. The right to contradict. The right to say a commitment is impossible.
But each of these freedoms has a counterpart. That counterpart is what you need to look at to know whether you would genuinely enjoy working at Cercle.
Twelve legitimate expectations, twelve counterparts. Unfold them and answer honestly: nothing is recorded, nothing is transmitted. It is an exercise in lucidity, not a hiring questionnaire.
The twelve counterparts
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I like being left to work autonomously.
Very well.
But am I comfortable with the idea that no one will come and hand me my work neatly portioned out?
At Cercle, more autonomy means more responsibility: understanding what is expected, drawing a reasonable commitment from it, making a difficulty visible and asking for help before it turns into a crisis.
We do not replace micromanagement with an absence of responsibility.
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I like being trusted.
Very well.
But am I prepared to make my commitments, my decisions and my reasoning visible enough for that trust to be verified?
Trust at Cercle is not “no one is watching”.
It is “we do not need to watch you, because what matters is explicit”.
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I hate pointless meetings.
So do we.
But am I willing to write?
Removing an information meeting without producing information accessible to those who were not there does not create an asynchronous organisation. It creates a poorly informed one.
Writing sometimes takes more immediate effort than speaking. In return, it makes that effort available to everyone who comes after.
See chapter 06 · Writing what must survive, deciding without theatre
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I want to be able to speak my mind, even to someone far more senior.
You will be able to. We even expect it.
But am I able to accept that after I have defended my point of view, someone decides otherwise?
At Cercle, disagreement is neither insubordination nor a permanent sport.
We want a lot of contradiction before the decision, and a lot of commitment after it.
See chapter 06 · Writing what must survive, deciding without theatre
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I want my expertise to be recognised.
So do we.
But is my expertise still mine when a colleague becomes able to do without me what only I could do yesterday?
Making others autonomous does not weaken your value: it demonstrates it.
Being indispensable is not the ultimate goal of an expert. Passing knowledge on is far more so.
See chapter 08 · Progressing without playing employee of the month
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I like organising my work freely.
Very well.
But am I able to say no to a new commitment when I know I no longer have the capacity to keep it properly?
The freedom to pull your own work implies the responsibility not to promise just anything.
Your overload does not become a manager’s fault simply because no one stopped you from creating it.
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I appreciate not being judged on my hours or my ticket count.
We will not judge you on them.
But am I comfortable with the fact that the bar gets no lower for it, quite the opposite?
We do not want to measure how much you move. We look at what remains after you have passed through: a skill mastered, a solid decision, a problem avoided, a person made autonomous, a commitment kept or properly renegotiated.
It is possible to work a great deal and produce little value. It is also possible to avoid six months of work by asking one excellent question.
See chapter 08 · Progressing without playing employee of the month
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I want the right to flag a problem.
You have it.
But am I prepared to use it when everyone would rather I kept quiet?
Three days before the demonstration. When the client is waiting. When the problem is not in your scope. When the person who made the commitment is one of the founders.
The right of interruption only has value in the moments when using it is uncomfortable.
See chapter 07 · Being able to say stop before it is too late
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I want to be able to learn and to get things wrong.
Of course.
But am I able to write clearly: “my hypothesis was wrong”?
We value a lead seriously explored and then eliminated. That assumes not turning your idea, your architecture or your initial choice into a matter of ego.
We want to be able to kill a bad idea before it becomes a bad product, including when it comes from someone very experienced.
See chapter 06 · Writing what must survive, deciding without theatre
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I am senior: organisational theatre no longer interests me.
That is one of the reasons we are building this system.
But am I still willing to be challenged by someone with far less experience than me?
Experience is extremely valuable. The status it confers is not proof.
A veteran able to pass on ten years of avoided mistakes is an extraordinary asset for a team. A veteran who regards those ten years as ten additional years of entitlement to be right, far less so.
See chapter 03 · Five perfectly reasonable habits that end up breaking organisations
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I am a junior: I want to be trusted quickly.
That is the goal as well.
But am I ready to say “I do not know” as easily as “let me try”?
We do not ask juniors to wait five years for the right to think. Nor do we ask them to pretend to know in order to prove their potential.
Taking on responsibility early only works if asking for help early is just as normal.
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I want a company without internal politics.
We would like to be able to promise that. We cannot.
Every human organisation creates preferences, affinities, disagreements and power dynamics.
The real question is rather: am I ready to operate in a system that tries to make power explicit, decisions traceable and rules enforceable?
We do not claim to remove structure. We prefer it visible rather than hidden.
See chapter 06 · Writing what must survive, deciding without theatre
So?
If, several times over, your reaction was “yes, obviously, why would anyone do otherwise?”, that is probably a good signal.
If some counterparts made you hesitate, that is also a good signal: this system requires habits that many companies specifically teach people not to have.
And if you thought “no, I have no desire to work like that”, this page has done its job perfectly.
We are not trying to convince everyone to join Cercle. We are trying to let the right people recognise us, and to spare everyone else a waste of their time.
A successful hire does not begin when someone accepts an offer. It begins when both parties know well enough what they are committing to, to be able to say yes, or no, with full knowledge.