What If Your Employees Could Set Their Own Salaries?

Dr. Niklas Richter · 2026-07-16

Imagine a company with no managers, no hierarchy, and no internal emails for nine years straight. Jan Van Lishout did more than imagine it—he built it. After a thirty-year climb to managing director at IBM, Progress Software, and a former Philips division, he walked away from corporate life entirely. Nine years ago, he started Qteal, a software consultancy in Herentals, without investors, without org charts, and without name badges. And it’s thriving. In a recent conversation, Jan shared how a self-managing organization actually works in practice—not in theory, but day to day. How decisions get made when nobody has the final say. How salaries are completely transparent, from the newest hire to the founder. And how employees set their own pay and choose their own vacation days. The biggest challenge at first? Nobody dared to ask for a raise. ### The Freedom That Nobody Wanted When Qteal first introduced self-set salaries, they expected enthusiasm. Instead, they got silence. Employees were so conditioned to traditional hierarchies that they couldn’t bring themselves to name their own number. It took months of coaching and cultural shifts before people started to trust the system. Jan’s lesson: freedom without structure can be paralyzing. The solution wasn’t to fix people—it was to fix the system. This is the core of Jan’s philosophy: “People don’t need to be fixed. Systems do.” At Qteal, they design processes that remove fear and encourage ownership. For example, all salaries are public. Everyone knows what everyone else earns, from the founder down. That transparency creates peer pressure, sure, but it also builds trust. If someone thinks they’re underpaid, they can see exactly what their colleagues earn and make a case. No secrets, no politics. ### The Trap of Consensus One of the biggest pitfalls in a self-managing company is decision-making by committee. Without a boss, teams can fall into endless discussions trying to reach unanimous agreement. Jan calls this the “consensus trap.” At Qteal, they avoid it by using a simple rule: anyone can make a decision, as long as they inform everyone else first. If no one objects within a set time frame, the decision stands. This keeps things moving without slowing down progress. ### Radical Transparency in Action Qteal’s transparency extends beyond salaries. They welcome social audits with open login credentials instead of closed books. They introduced a mobility budget seven years before it became law in Belgium. And they’re building a future model: an internal crowdfunding system where employees decide where the company invests its profits. Using virtual Monopoly money earned from company performance, team members vote on projects. It’s gamified, democratic, and surprisingly effective. - No internal emails for nine years (they use Slack and face-to-face chats) - No managers, no hierarchy, no name badges - Full salary transparency for everyone - Self-set vacation days - Internal crowdfunding for investment decisions ### Why This Matters for American Entrepreneurs You might be thinking, “This works in Belgium, but could it work here?” The principles are universal. Self-management isn’t about abandoning structure—it’s about designing better ones. For U.S. companies struggling with turnover, burnout, or disengagement, Qteal’s model offers a radical alternative. It challenges the assumption that people need to be controlled. Jan’s experience suggests that when you trust people to manage their own pay, time, and decisions, they step up. This episode is for every entrepreneur who’s ever wondered if there’s a better way. Spoiler: there is. And Jan Van Lishout is living proof that it works.