Power to the people: W.L. Gore succeeds by eliminating the rules and boundaries typical of a billion-dollar organization. Here's how. (profile).(Company Profile)

THIS THING, this unsightly creature that John Cusick holds in his hands, looks a little bit like a mutant bowling trophy. It is made of brownish-yellow bronze, and it consists of a scrubbed Mr. Clean head grafted to the body of an octopus. And this thing is clutching the company logo, the word gore nestled in its tentacles.

This thing does, in fact, have a proper name. It is called the Proud Octopus, and every quarter at W.L. Gore and Associates, the Proud Octopus is bequeathed to industrial products salespeople for what Cusick, a veteran sales executive for the company, calls special achievement.

Special achievement at Gore, though, has a meaning that is not easily appreciated by outsiders. When one field salesman brought a Proud Octopus home to his wife, she glared at it and said, "You're going to keep that thing in your office, right?"

Despite its looks, the Proud Octopus is a purposeful little creature. The tentacles represent the diverse products and applications that fall under the Gore umbrella; the Proud Octopus is a symbol of success. And yet it is odd and effective and misunderstood, much like Gore itself. "Our customers have a tough time comprehending us," says Tom Erickson, another Gore sales veteran. "Every so often they'll ask, `Who's in charge around here?' And I'll say, `Well, it all depends on how you want to take that question.'"

Most companies have a structure they depend on. Employees have titles. They know who their bosses are. Quotas are disseminated to salespeople from management. But not here. Not at W.L. Gore, the Newark, Delaware-based company that makes and sells the key plastic (called poly-tetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE) in everything from surgical tubes to guitar strings to winter jackets to space suits. This is a company where no one, from CEO to receptionist, holds an official title beyond associate, and where no one is technically anyone else's boss. This is a company in which employees decide who gets hired, and employees decide how well their peers get compensated. It is a company in which innovation is encouraged, even though that innovation sometimes leads to failure.

At Gore, no one office is bigger than any other, and no salesperson is an island. Every employee has a sponsor or a mentor, and work gets done by small communities, by clusters, by teams. The company rests on what its founder, …