Cynical hot take: great, now everyone might have veto power over doing things, rather than just my chain of command.
No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#72This article, as many others have pointed out, is pretty misleading. If you want to read about a company that functions mostly as a traditional business with no CEO, look into the Mondragon Corporation.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#73Sweden, when Tumblr turns into a country
We've asked you repeatedly to stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. We ban accounts that use HN this way, so please stop.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#74Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#75It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…
This is also a firm that basically consists of agile priests and people who (I assume) like experimenting with organization and management.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The DNA of having employees pay the company to work instead of the other way around?!? Of course, the BBC article wants you to think "DNA" as in "no CEO" instead of "workers paying a rent". This is missing the point (full disclosure: I know several people working at Crisp and co-organise workshops with them in Sweden). I remember hearing Henrik Kniberg talk about this at Oredev a while ago, and we ended up restruct…
This is how law firms work. In that sense, this is more like a partnership than a corporation.
So law firms, barber shops and software consultants can have a no CEO organization. Full news at 11.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#77It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…
Agreed. I've noticed that organizations that often times claim to be 'leaderless', just have other implicit ways of exerting power and influence. Truly leaderless is difficult, and requires humility from all it's members.
Yep. It only works as long as everyone knows each other. I've been arguing this point for years with my anarchist friends (both left and right varieties), who seem unwilling to grapple with basic concepts like scale and externalities.
I don't think straight hierarchies are the only possible organizational structure but it does seem like more people want to be told what to do than to think for themselves. .
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#78It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…
> The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150.
The problems also start when there's a potentially extremely large, but uncertain to happen, reward looming over the horizon. In crude terms, when there's a huge money bag that everyone could potentially snap up. Then all sorts of perverse incentives start to manifest.
I'm thinking of stereotypical Wall St. companies, and also of many Silicon Valley "startups" in recent years.
The no-leader scenario is stable when everyone is looking forward to having a regular job as a middle class citizen. It's also stable when EVERYONE is motivated by ideals other than money - great scientific breakthrough, big humanitarian cause, etc. That's when people cooperate with each other easily, there's the rule of the law, civilization as we understand it.
But when huge piles of money could potentially materialize on the table, things revert to a much more primal state.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#79It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus after a round of informal discussions. The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the nu…
I assume that your number of 150 comes from Robin Dunbar.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
I actually don't recall where I read that. It was one of the following 2 books:
https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d...
https://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Homecoming-Belonging-Sebastian-...
I wouldn't be surprised if the book derived that number from the link you gave either.
Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Acess to capital is the real killer
There are ways around that. Cooperatives can raise cash through subordinated capital campaigns (essentially an investor-backed loan at a capped rate of return) and other methods. Even capital-intensive industries like manufacturing have big, successful worker cooperatives operating in them. Honestly, too many people make too big a deal out of the inability for cooperatives to trade ownership for cash. And yet bootstr…
> too many people make too big a deal out of the inability for cooperatives to trade ownership for cash
It doesn't need to be impossible to raise cash, it just needs to add enough incremental difficulty and expense to outweigh the other benefits of being a cooperative.