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Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

fortune.com

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Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#261

Post by KaiserPro »

Using Meta as a source of good management is a fallacy that needs to be tackled.

Meta has only managed to release one new "domestic" product since facebook advertising (threads) and only one of the features released on the main apps has stuck (reels)

there is no strategic direction at meta, its a mass of noise, poor project management and bloated orgs craving for any metric of success other than what makes the user happy.

Meta is only successful because it has one team that brings in >90% of all income(Ads). Not only that but its incredibly good at it. Every other department is effectively a cost center.

Now Bayer might have ossified, given that it actually has a rule book (meta does not, it smears industrial quantities of docs at a wall to see what sticks)

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#262

Post by rjvs »

adastra22 wrote: post #253
tsimionescu wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some limit to how many people you can manage effectively. So, in a company with, say, 10,000 employees, you can't have just one layer of management between COs and ICs. You'd either need each manager to work with 500 direct reports, or you'd need the COs to work with 500 managers. If we look at 100,000 employee orgs, this gets even sillier. If you even attempt something like this, what will actually happen w…

Works for the Vatican just fine. Your point is generally good, but not universally true. Mostly-flat organizations do work in certain contexts.

Does this structure explain the organisational response to the (myriad) accounts of terrible behaviour by individuals within it at many levels?

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#263

Post by defrost »

adastra22 wrote: post #259
defrost wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for the Vatican just fine? It's a long way from being mostly flat, decisions are made at a crawling pace, and is convoluted enough to hide substantial theft, and shield large numbers of pedophiles .. even those rising to the Vatican C-suite level.

The catholic church is famously held up as an example of a nearly-flat organization in many business schools.

Yet in reality it has as many layers as other governments and businesses of a similar size.

"Administration" in https://www.britannica.com/topic/Holy-See gives a rough overview.

There's layered mangement for multiple domains of interest.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#264

Post by ano-ther »

bjornsing wrote: post #34

> Stewart Butterfield, former CEO of Slack, recently described a dynamic within tech companies behind much of the over-hiring. He noted on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast in late May that when there’s no real constraint on hiring, “you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people.” The reason is that “the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in th…

Here’s the real culprit that a CEO could do something about:

> when there’s no real constraint on hiring

Of course there’s empire building because of prestige. And even more, the enthusiasm of people who joined your growth company to make an impact, who then see all the possibilities if they just hired a little.

Keeping all those bad and good instincts balanced with the actual company needs is the task of management.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#265

Post by tsimionescu »

adastra22 wrote: post #259
defrost wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for the Vatican just fine? It's a long way from being mostly flat, decisions are made at a crawling pace, and is convoluted enough to hide substantial theft, and shield large numbers of pedophiles .. even those rising to the Vatican C-suite level.

The catholic church is famously held up as an example of a nearly-flat organization in many business schools.

I think it's also possible that says a lot more about the shoddy metaphors of most business schools than the actual level of hierarchy in the Catholic church (beyond the other discussion we were having about how atypical the CC is as an organization).

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#266

Post by andyjohnson0 »

thechao wrote: post #179
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies will have a counter force, the 'cutter'. The 'cutter's compensation is tied to how much they cut. Of course, they will also need a team, to more efficiently cut other teams. And they in turn will also be incentivized to grow their team, the manager of the cutting team isn't immune to wanting to grow their team. But then it gets up to CEO, who has someone reporting to them who's only goal is cutting. Th…

When I was at Intel 10+ years ago, they had this down to an art . They had a name for it, like, "the pool"; they'd reorg all the time. Everyone went into the pool, then the mgrs would pick teams. Your actual progress through your career was loosely tied to how quickly you were chosen. Especially bad IC's never got out of the pool; if you didn't have a req (or title) then you were let go after a year. This had the nic…

> Everyone went into the pool, then the mgrs would pick teams. Your actual progress through your career was loosely tied to how quickly you were chosen.

Reminiscent of choosing teams in PE/sports lessons at school. The sporty kids who were good at the teacher's favourite sport get to pick, and kids like I was get left to the end. Nice way to get familiar with the pecking order at an early stage.

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#267

Post by lotsofpulp »

arkh wrote: post #260
whoknowsidont wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. Every time I've seen this sentiment and asked for something concrete on what made them good managers I get answered with platitudes or "nice-isms." At this point in my career, the emperor has no clothes. There are no good managers, only good peers.

A good manager is simple to see: success is the team's, failure is their fault. If it is not the case, you have a bad manager.

Is it possible for the manager to be given insufficient resources by their manager? Such as insufficient pay to hire sufficiently skilled people, or insufficient budget to hire sufficient people?

Whose fault is the failure then?

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#268

Post by gverrilla »

esel2k wrote: post #153

« It is just lots of noise » thats what people told me who know him/worked for him. The reality is that Bayer is in deep mud with their lawsuit and laying off lots of people in Germany is difficulty. If you pack it under a nice « we are modern, amazing shift » package, then he will get more support and also shareholders will be pleased (for a while). That’s my theory.

I work close to Bayer, and it seems they are reorganizing deeply here in LatAm. Doesn't seem to be only about layoffs at all. And I'm talking about Sales departments, so that's directly correlated to bottom-line...

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#269

Post by [deleted] »

siliconc0w wrote: post #182

I do sometimes think a self organized hierarchy is better than one organized by fiat. Everyone always will say, "Ah - but then you just get an implicit hierarchy rather than an explicit one" with these types of systems but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, There shouldn't necessarily be one escalation channel for all types of conflict - technical decisions may get resolved differently than intra-person…

[deleted]

Re: Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’

#270

Post by ta1243 »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #161
pyuser583 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. That’s why I find this idea so horrible. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had to “self-organize.”

>I’ve been fortunate to have some very good managers. Every time I've seen this sentiment and asked for something concrete on what made them good managers I get answered with platitudes or "nice-isms." At this point in my career, the emperor has no clothes. There are no good managers, only good peers.

A good manager provides air stops shit falling down while letting through all the credit
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