No Bosses, No Drama: How This 300-Person Manufacturing Company Thrives Without Hierarchy

The space opened into a huge circle.

The factory is built in three rings, with invisible divisions like slices of a pie.

At the center are the offices.
Behind large glass walls we saw entire teams at work.
No more than thirty people per slice.

Sales, engineers, and production specialists were all sitting together.

From their desks they looked straight out onto their own machines and logistics lines.

That glass wall is the only boundary.

Beyond it lies the production floor, and further out the logistics ring.

But there are no real walls, no silos.

Each team owns its slice, but they are all part of one whole.

From packaging foil to machines

We sat down with Richard Nieuwenhuis, one of the owners and the son of the founder, and Anne Poortman - Ten Berge, passionate about the people side of things at Niverplast.

Richard began to tell the company’s story.

His father started the business back in 1986, selling packaging foil. It was small scale, just buying and selling with a little margin.

Before long, customers asked for something more.

Could they speed up the endless task of pulling bags off a roll and fitting them into crates?

Together with a local engineer, they built a machine that did just that.
It was faster, cheaper, and solved a big headache for their clients.

That seems to have been the real beginning of Niverplast.

What started as trading foil grew into building packaging machines. The company slowly shifted from selling materials to designing technology.

The technical shift was big.

The cultural shift was likely even bigger.

Richard’s father, raised in a strict and hierarchical environment, realized he did not want to run his business the same way.

When people came to him with questions, he started asking them back: “What would you do yourself?”

It was a small change, but it planted the seeds of self-management.

Finding confidence in Semco

At some point, the family came across Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick, in which Semler details the unusual story of turning Semco into a bossless organization.

Reading it felt like looking into a mirror.

They recognized their own instincts in Semler’s way of working.

Here was proof that a company could grow without bosses, without strict hierarchies, and without endless rules.

It gave them the confidence to push further.

A principle called geweldloos

When I asked what guides their way of working today, the answer surprised me. A single word: geweldloos.

Literally: non-violent.

At Niverplast, it means no one can use force to get their way.
Titles do not give you power.
Forcing a colleague to act because of your position is seen as a form of violence.

And the principle goes further.

It is about communication, about how people treat each other, suppliers, and customers.

Of course, they admit it is not perfect. “Every day we fail in small ways,” Richard said.

“But every day we come back to it.”

The bold step of 2019: cells

By 2019 the company had grown to 180 people. They noticed something was off.

Projects dragged on with fifty colleagues from different departments involved.

Handovers slowed everything down.
People started to feel like small cogs in a big machine.

So they made a bold move.

They scrapped departments altogether.

Instead, they split into autonomous cells of no more than thirty people.
Each cell covers an entire product market.
From sales to engineering to service, everything is inside the team. Each runs its own profit and loss, takes its own decisions, and operates like a small company within the bigger whole.

They call it "groot worden door klein te blijven".

Grow big by staying small.

Walking through the building, it suddenly made sense. Each cell’s slice of the circle was visible.

The architecture clearly supported the philosophy

Democracy in action

Self-management at Niverplast is not endless consensus. They have built simple mechanisms to balance autonomy with accountability.

• Cell leaders are democratically chosen. They are never only leaders. They work alongside their colleagues in the cell, while also taking the lead on the harder edges like financials.
• Buddies (sort of coaches) are elected every two years. Around one in ten colleagues holds this role. They are trained in coaching and personal leadership. Buddies form the heart of the culture, supporting colleagues with the human side of work.

It struck me how no-nonsense everything felt inside the company.

No drama, no slogans.

Just common sense as the building block for everything.

Hiring without HR departments

Recruitment at Niverplast works differently too. There is no HR manager pulling the strings. Instead, the team decides.

Candidates meet several colleagues, spend trial days on the floor, and then both sides reflect.

The goal is to test cultural fit as much as technical skill.

Status-driven people, or those who crave titles, will not fit in here.

But people who thrive on autonomy and trust feel at home.

What struck me most

On paper, Niverplast’s system looks radical. But visiting them made it feel normal.

There is no corporate theater.
No glossy mission posters.
No one bragging about being innovative.

Instead, everything is practical.

The circular building.
The cells with their own P&L.
The buddies that support the culture.

It is all designed to cut waste, create ownership, and keep people close to the work that matters.

And it works.

Niverplast has grown steadily to around 300 people without losing its soul.

Why it matters

Most companies hit a wall as they grow. They add more managers, more layers, more complexity. Energy drains away.

Niverplast chose another path. They grow big by staying small.

Their story is proof that scale and self-management do not have to be opposites. With courage, trust, and a few simple principles, it is possible to build an organization that remains human as it grows.

Walking out of the building, I looked back at the circular factory.

It felt less like a workplace and more like a living system.

Transparent, democratic, and above all, human.

Precisely the kind of companies we love so dearly.