Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

jofreeman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#11

Post by ap22213 »

quanticle wrote: post #3

This brings to mind something I said a while ago about Holocracy. Holocracy doesn't get rid of your managers. Rather it just prevents you from knowing who your manager is. Instead of having clearly defined priorities (e.g. I need to handle requests from person A before I handle requests from person B), you have to do a subtle political calculation, evaluating the relative social capital of person A and person B befor…

I had never had heard of Holacracy. But, this also commonly occurs in traditional organizational structures: the multiple bosses pattern. It results from a lot of different types of system dynamics, and although it inefficiently organizes resources, it seems innately baked into Human behavior.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#12

Post by mwfunk »

Whenever someone wistfully posts about how great it would be if their > 100 (heck, even > 10) employee company had a flat structure like Valve, I can't help but cringe a little. If you don't have an explicit organizational structure, how is it not inevitable (if not present from the outset) that you end up with an implicit organizational structure, one that's even more based on socializing, old boy networks, etc.

IMO whenever someone speaks longingly for such a thing, they imagine a meritocracy in which they are somehow more valued/important/influential than they are at their current job. I don't think anyone would advocate a structure in which they themselves would be less valued than they are currently, that's for sure.

It's hard not to see calls for flat orgs as being much more than an unconscious expression of professional narcissism- "I know better than my stupid manager, if only I could do things exactly how I wanted to, on my own schedule, everyone would be better off!". I've got to think that that statement might be true in some cases, but for every valid case there are 100 or 1000 people who are thinking the exact same thing simply because they overvalue the things that they care about, undervalue the things that other people care about, and in general don't know what they don't know. Even dumber would be those who assume that they would end up at or near the top of the magical, Utopian meritocracy that would emerge from such an arrangement.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#13

Post by jacobolus »

todayiamme wrote: post #7

> Since the movement at large is just as Unstructured as most of its constituent groups, it is similarly susceptible to indirect influence. But the phenomenon manifests itself differently. On a local level most groups can operate autonomously; but the only groups that can organize a national activity are nationally organized groups. Thus, it is often the Structured feminist organizations that provide national directi…

This is hardly a new idea.

I recommend the classic sociology paper Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400–1434, http://home.uchicago.edu/~jpadgett/papers/published/robust.p...

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#14

Post by Joof »

mwfunk wrote: post #12

Whenever someone wistfully posts about how great it would be if their > 100 (heck, even > 10) employee company had a flat structure like Valve, I can't help but cringe a little. If you don't have an explicit organizational structure, how is it not inevitable (if not present from the outset) that you end up with an implicit organizational structure, one that's even more based on socializing, old boy networks, etc. IMO…

Or maybe it would validate the manager's value in the eyes of people who fit in the organization. Instead of having current managers / CEOs or whoever being the validating authority. Different values would grow; valve has a more engineering / artist minded culture than most other companies do.

Converting a regular organization to a flat one does sound particularly bad though.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#15

Post by ilostmykeys »

Basically, if you give yourself freedom to act on your impulses then your impulses will own you. Managers are supposed to be the rational decision makers. That cannot be true of every manager. In my opinion, if each person acted rationally we would not need any managers and we would only have to deal with one tyranny: rationality.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#16

Post by futuravenir »

I'm in the middle of reading "Reinventing Organisations" and it's absolutely wonderful. It examines a handful of organisations that are doing it differently (including Holocracy) and takes notes about how their techniques compare and what they might have in common.

It's basically the blueprints towards building the next most efficient organisation. I highly recommend it. http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#17

Post by wfn »

todayiamme wrote: post #7

> Since the movement at large is just as Unstructured as most of its constituent groups, it is similarly susceptible to indirect influence. But the phenomenon manifests itself differently. On a local level most groups can operate autonomously; but the only groups that can organize a national activity are nationally organized groups. Thus, it is often the Structured feminist organizations that provide national directi…

This reminds me of one particular video by Adam Curtis (he uses Serkov as an example, too): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyop0d30UqQ

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#18

Post by Aelinsaar »

erikb wrote: post #9
quanticle wrote: post #3

This brings to mind something I said a while ago about Holocracy. Holocracy doesn't get rid of your managers. Rather it just prevents you from knowing who your manager is. Instead of having clearly defined priorities (e.g. I need to handle requests from person A before I handle requests from person B), you have to do a subtle political calculation, evaluating the relative social capital of person A and person B befor…

A clear structure does not relieve us from social power or political power or information power. It may be that A is the manager of B, but right now, concerning you B has more power over you than A, so you better follow B's wishes instead of A's. It may even be that you are both people's manager and still better follow their desires at this point in time.

Unclear and diffuse structure probably does insulate decision makers against legal action, blame, and other kinds of sanction though. It's the managerial equivalent of firing rockets from the roof of a hospital.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)

#19

Post by dalke »

golemotron wrote: post #10
quanticle wrote: post #3

This brings to mind something I said a while ago about Holocracy. Holocracy doesn't get rid of your managers. Rather it just prevents you from knowing who your manager is. Instead of having clearly defined priorities (e.g. I need to handle requests from person A before I handle requests from person B), you have to do a subtle political calculation, evaluating the relative social capital of person A and person B befor…

The challenge for society going forward is to recognize this and to not reflexively try to remove all authority and hierarchy. OSS does well with the BDFL model ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life ). The people who practice it best use their authority to set tone and agenda and then step back to let people own their participation. They step back in only when they have to. In universities toda…

There are two aspects to the BDFL model: 1) a BD, 2) FL. There are several OSS projects with a BD, but who is not FL. For example, I co-founded the Biopython project, which has rotated through several leaders.

Jo Freeman encourages several principles, one of which is:

> Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person's "property" and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.

This is an argument against a BDFL. Note that even in Python development, van Rossum does not always have the final say. Mark Shannon was the "BDFL-Delegate" for the type hints PEP 484.

The main point of the essay is not that overt power is inherently abuse, but rather describes methods to limit abuse of both overt and implicit power. Emphasis mine in the following:

> If the movement is to grow beyond these elementary stages of development, it will have to disabuse itself of some of its prejudices about organization and structure. There is nothing inherently bad about either of these. They can be and often are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused is to deny ourselves the necessary tools to further development.

Post reply on HN