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

No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

doist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 325 posts

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#151

Post by iguy »

wayoutthere wrote: post #90
dpeck wrote: post #2

Easy, you simply make the decisions within the confines of the shadow hierarchy that exists within all flat organizations.

Exactly! Business schools use a framework of formal power (job title, authority, etc) and informal power (influence and likability). The most effective organizations are the ones where the formal power structures are very close to informal ones. People know how to make decisions. Flat organizations end up being run by the loudest voices in the room. Ironically, flat organizations with largely informal power structure…

"The most effective organizations are the ones where the formal power structures are very close to informal ones "

There's a nice parallel here to how parliamentary democracy arose. And conversely, there's no point having a chamber full of the people who you wish had power, if they don't have it.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#152

Post by davesque »

It just seems too fashionable to talk about flat organizations nowadays. And, as many have pointed out, it's a bit ironic since organizations that claim to be flat tend not to be in practice. It's obnoxious when people claim that things are one way when, in fact, they are another.

It seems people have developed some kind of allergy to leader figures. In the US, this probably has a lot to do with the political situation. The current president is non other than the antithesis of a good leader --- and he's "on top", if not literally, then figuratively. Elsewhere, it's probably just cyclical. We're at the bottom of a leadership trough in history.

However, I can't count the number of times I've wished for a good leader lately. Call me mentally lazy or a conformist, but I want someone to give me a sense of direction and purpose. I want someone I feel like I can relate to and trust. Maybe I'm just the type that gets a lot out of mentoring relationships.

I guess it's just one of those things where you need to be the change you want to see in the world, eh?

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#153

Post by Matticus_Rex »

kitsune_ wrote: post #103

Sounds a lot like consent (not consensus) as practiced in Sociocracy or Holacracy. https://patterns.sociocracy30.org/consent-decision-making.ht...

There's a distinction between the Sociocracy consent process and Holacracy's process with objection validity, but yeah on the continuum of similar processes I'd put chaos consensus (which is what a lot of people who attack self-management/flat are actually critiquing) at one end and Holacracy on the other, with this and Sociocracy about 3/4 toward the Holacracy end.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#154

Post by blueboo »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #85

Interesting that most comments deal with why flat structure doesn't work. Newsflash: of course there is always a boss. Someone needs to sign the paycheck after all. But the term "flat structure" usually refers to lack of middle management. And yes, that can work, and much better than traditional hierarchical organization. But it takes a great leader and capable employees to achieve that. I am lucky to work at such pl…

Indeed, like any management strategy, it can be done poorly, inadvertently incentivizing people to form shadow organizations, or it can be done well, encouraging people to engage in good faith and reaping the promised benefits.

In practice, we get lumpy mix of good and bad implementations within organizations. It takes a lot, however, to overcome the near-term, personal-empire-building incentive. "This way is better for everyone" isn't going to cut it for a significant proportion of folks. If you bake it into the bones of your recruitment process and in your management training, there's a chance it'll be an authentic value of the org. And even then it's hard to shake the suspicion that this strategy only further rewards showhorses and marginalizes in-the-trenches doing-thankless-work types.

If you get an extraordinary manager, she can mitigate that, but your culture isn't robust if it relies on the extraordinary.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#155

Post by ellard »

1337biz wrote: post #121
parsnips wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading suggestion WRT to this approach: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/d...

Can you elaborate a bit?

If I remember the section of that book correctly, Andrew Grove talks about how you want to handle decision making as a manager. According to Andrew, you want to have folks come to a decision with minimal intervention from you. Part of it is having people feel ownership, another is managing your own political capital. In terms of when you intervene, you should step in and help break ties. You should also be able to ultimately make a decision if the group is unable to do so either because they're taking way too long to deliberate, if their arguments are going full circle, etc.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#156

Post by syntaxing »

stevenpetryk wrote: post #62
pinkfoot wrote: post #8

Find out who can approve an invoice for payment. He's the boss.

It takes really little effort to use "they" instead of "he" to include all people.

Serious question, I was taught in High School that he is grammatically correct as a gender neutral pronoun where the gender is unknown[0]. Is this not the case anymore?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_h...

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#157

Post by Matticus_Rex »

pinkfoot wrote: post #8

Find out who can approve an invoice for payment. He's the boss.

In my company (which runs on Holacracy), we have a process for that rather than a person, with defined rules around how that happens and for what sizes of spend. It's not perfect, but it manages to provide firm rules that aren't in any single person's hands and which everyone has equal access to using. There are clear guidelines where clear guidelines are possible, and then process around determining what good judgment is for the areas where clear guidelines are tough.

I'm not defending "flat" (which Holacracy isn't), but there's a lot more nuance in the serious Teal/self-management community than the public debate in threads like this appears to know about.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#158

Post by dondawest »

jadbox wrote: post #110
kristianc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about democracy? It is a clear rule (one person one vote) and yet it is not hierarchical. Most, if not all societies do not implement direct democracy, where decisions are truly made by one person one vote. Most at least employ an abstraction such as representative democracy, and the United States employs an abstraction upon an abstraction with the electoral college.

Couldn't you have both? You have the right to a direct vote, but you also have the option to bestow your vote to a representative to cast for you. Seems like a neat idea and solves many of these structureless problems. Many people know that a topic is out of their reach or interest, but they may know someone knowledgable to give their vote to to cast for them. If they feel that person doesn't represent them, they can…

Yes, this already exists and is called Liquid Democracy or Delegative Democracy. It’s awesome

https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-true-d...

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#159

Post by andrei_says_ »

sametmax wrote: post #80
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #9

I would like to refer to the following - The Tyranny of Structurelessness, originally meant to address the concerns regarding 'flat' organizations. "This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a sm…

Most flat org I've seen are not flat. The people naturally organised in tribes that are only known by themself, and that are in no organigram. Each tribe have an implicit leader that bears no title yet influences all decisions just by regular social interractions. Tribes communicate, negociate even, through the implicit leaders even if not directly. Some kind of overuling bdfl also oversees all tribes, like a king, i…

Also, authority by expertise vs authority by hierarchy make a big difference.

As in, people have the security guy vet their security decisions — not because he has power over them but because they trust his expertise.

Suddenly everything becomes easy and self organized.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#160

Post by Matticus_Rex »

Joeri wrote: post #131

A good resource to learn more about scaling flat self-organizing organizations is the book Reinventing Organizations . It's a curious mix of dreamy hippie philosophy interspersed with very practical examples of flat orgs and how they remain flat while still getting things done.

+1, I love RO. The Holacracy book is also a great read for an implementation of what a built-out Teal (though not quite flat) system can look like (and how it responds to objections like the ones seen in a lot of these comments). Of course, you have to unlearn all the stuff you learned about Holacracy from bad business mag articles....
Post reply on HN