How do you know which kind of workplace works best for you?

We all want to be part of a great organisation and a high-performance workplace. We want to be at our best, surrounded by colleagues who help and challenge us, doing work that is financially rewarding and personally meaningful. But there's more than one kind of successful organisation, and there are many kinds of productive workplaces.

Some of the world’s most creative, energetic and productive workplaces take vastly different approaches. Here are four examples:

– The company as community: Trust, teamwork and peer-to-peer loyalty are bedrock principles of this kind of workplace. It elevates the needs of employees above all other constituencies.

– A constellation of stars: These organisations are a collection of hard-driving, fiercely competitive individuals, who measure their success against personal goals, and even against one another. It’s a tough environment, but it’s the right one for talented people who aspire to be superstars.

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– Not just a company, a cause: In this environment, employees worry less about individual triumphs and more about their collective impact. There’s a willingness to make sacrifices and go to extraordinary lengths to keep promises to customers.

– Small is beautiful: Certain people are at their best in environments that are easy to navigate, where there are few obstacles between ideas and action. In this kind of workplace, human scale matters more than massive revenue and big market share. – Copyright Harvard Business Review 2017