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No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

bbc.co.uk

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Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#91

Post by Pica_soO »

whack wrote: post #19

It'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…

What if you never allow it to grow over 40? What if those bossless creatures form a swarm, with diplomats, connecting to other "tribes"? A swarm of headless amoebas, hunting down and eating a giant.. its a mad world - we might see it.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#92

Post by azernik »

amirmc wrote: post #29
RubenSandwich wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This seems like an opportune moment to remind people about the Tyranny of Structurelessness article. If you haven't come across it before, it's definitely worth a read. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I was just about to post this. I find Freeman's description of successful "unstructured" groups to be an uncanny description of the idealized early-stage startup, despite her very different context.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#94

Post by azernik »

xutopia wrote: post #30
whack wrote: post #19

It'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…

Maybe that's the natural size for a company and growing beyond that is simply an aberration!

The "natural" size of a company is determined by the relationship between transaction costs and the costs of organization. See this seminal paper for a fuller exploration of the topic: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937....

I would not be surprised, though, if there is a sudden increase in organizational costs above a certain threshold due to the limitations of human social capacities.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#95

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

anigbrowl wrote: post #77
RubenSandwich wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. .

> but it does seem like more people want to be told what to do than to think for themselves

I just want to have some clarity around what my role is and where my responsibilities begin and end. Necessarily sometimes I'm required to reach beyond my regular duties.

In that context, then, being told what to do vs thinking for myself is a false dichotomy. The two are a nested-hierarchy, whereby I think for myself within the role required.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#96

Post by wagonman »

jasode wrote: post #37

This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you first read the company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence: - "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth of what you bill." After making a mental note o…

i have met some of these guys, my understanding is it is more like a group of consultants who pool together.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#97

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

anigbrowl wrote: post #90
dpc59 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience working with anarchist friends is that something as simple as leadership creates a certain hierarchy. Obviously if there's nothing formal everyone is pretty cool, but in the organisation of a society and a longer time frame I can see how it can lead to our historical material conditions.

If you're interested, I've been toying with the idea of an organizational structure that's loosely but explicitly modeled on the human body. My basic idea is that since bodies are complex interdependent structures that mostly Just Work, social structures that explicitly recapitulate human anatomy should be inherently more robust.

Would this open the social structure to all sorts of disease states in a similar way to the human body?

Then you would need teams within the social structure who's role it is to seek out pathogenic agents / sub-structures and terminate them. An immune system, if you will. Analogy could be a police force to deal with auto-immune issues, and a military to deal with foreign invaders.

Well, in a way, our social / structural systems already do mimic bacterial colonies: reproduce by consuming all available resources until the host system dies or the infection is cleared.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#98

Post by dghughes »

whack wrote: post #19

It'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…

Lindy Beige on YouTube discusses the size of military units and how it relates to that. Platoons have 30 men (with smaller squads), a Company 100 men or so but not over 150 for the same reasons.

Re: No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge

#99

Post by danieltillett »

whack wrote: post #19

It'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 actual number is a bit higher than 150 (290 according to Bernard-Killworth [1]), but the real cost is all the social grooming required to hold a large leaderless group together becomes an increasing drag on the organisation's efficiency.

The ideal leaderless company size is going to be a function of the efficiency gained by having increased specialisation (each person can focus on fewer things) against the cost of social grooming. Having a hierarchical structure allows the cost of social grooming to be constrained vertically rather than across the whole company.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

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