I find the Roman concepts of auctoritas, dignitas, and potestas to be quite helpful for understanding how allegedly flat organizations self organize. Please note that I’m not saying they apply directly, they don’t, but it helps to understand social status is multidimensional.
No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
181–190 of 325 posts
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#182Give half the people guns and half the people knives. Now you have hierarchy. Repeat til convergence.
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Suddenly everything becomes easy and self organized.
Unfortunately not. A technocracy works great works great when choices are straight-forward, but one of the great responsibilities of leadership is taking decisions when things are anything but.
A good leader is not one who always knows the right answer, but one who knows how to figure out a good enough answer more often than not. And who does so under confusing circumstances, competing interests, and intense time pressure.
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
I've heard that too (though not as part of any official education), but I'm not sure I really like it. As far as I know, men have always had the upper hand in the part of history that shaped most of our current society. When prompted about it, it's easy to go "oh no, I didn't mean it has to be a man, I meant it generally", while the word still obviously refers to a male. It almost certainly reinforces an expectation of male leadership. I sometimes use the 'wrong' gender on purpose ("she" when talking about male-dominated professions and vice versa), just to make the reader realize that's an option, hopefully getting used to the idea and not frowning when they hear of an actual case where an uncommonly gendered person is (studying for / a candidate for) $profession/$role.
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When "everything becomes easy and self organized", it's generally because there is an implicit leader that makes it so. You may not see the leader, as he or she may have no title or recognition. But it's the person that people go to when they have problems, it's the person people turn their head to during disagreements in meetings, it's the person that will go from party to party to discuss "off-the-record" and do the real negotiations, it's the person that show example, encourage efforts and discourage disruption.
You just think it's self organized because a good leader makes you feel you are part of a whole, not that you are working under someone.
I've yet to see a group a human, working together over time, that doesn't see one leader emerge from the group. We can't help it.
I've went to NGO stating they were a flat org, hippie events where they promote the team spirit, eco-villages with community driven systems. They all have unacknowledged leaders.
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#186I 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…
When you are talking about complex dynamic systems like human group behavior you can always find counter examples to anything anyone points at.
Here's an example of from Niall Ferguson's book The Square and the Tower - "Formally, the directors of the East India Company (EIC) in London controlled a substantial part of the trade between India and western Europe. In reality, as the records of over 4,500 voyages by Company traders show, ship’s captains often made illicit side trips, buying and selling on their own account. By the late eighteenth century the number of ports in the resulting trade network was more than a hundred, ranging from open emporia such as Madras to regulated markets such as Canton (Guangzhou). In effect, private trading provided the weak links that knitted together otherwise disconnected regional clusters. This network had a life of its own that the Company’s directors in London simply did not control. Indeed, that was one of the keys to the success of the EIC: it was more a network than a hierarchy. Significantly, its Dutch rival banned private trade by its employees. This may help explain why it ended up being superseded"
What works and what doesn't varies a lot from org to org.
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people who advocate flat or structureless organizations actually have philosophical problems with even direct democracy for decision making. The big objection is to making majority (or even supermajority) decisions binding on the minority, which is seen as coercive. Smaller objections to things like elected positions and parliamentary procedure, which are seen as too hierarchical.
> A lot of people who advocate flat or structureless organizations actually have philosophical problems with even direct democracy for decision making. It seems to me they have a problem with anything, frankly. Mainly I just wanted to point out that democracy is also a flat system and has no kings. Still, majority in democracy happens ad hoc. You don't know on which side of the fence you will sit. At least, in the me…
> Mainly I just wanted to point out that democracy is also a flat system and has no kings.
Having no kings is not the same as being flat. Democracies have no kings, because any leaders are elected (instead of inheriting/being installed/etc.). But democracies can be anything but flat. Consider Germany, where you have three tiers of government (municipal, state, and federal), and each tier is further subdivided in its hierarchy of power (e.g. Member of Parliament, cabinet minister, chancellor).
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago I joined a company with "self-organizing" teams, which have many similarities to "structureless". It was an awful experience, for me at least. Many important choices were made by people trying to avoid ruffling the feathers of the least-mature team member. My woes were likely compounded by being mildly affected by Asperger syndrome: First, I have an innate preference for clear organization and structu…
I prefer the Scandinavian (specifically Swedish approach) that I experienced at a prior company. It has its shortcomings of course. But put simply, there is a clear hierarchy, but generally most decisions are made by establishing consensus or compromise between all involved parties, the "manager/boss" only steps in to resolve or veto/tie break if none can be reached. It's not structure-less, and there are certainly t…
That's interesting. I've had the almost exact opposite experience. In my case, leadership by consensus seemed to be a way to defer decisions (sometimes indefinitely in the case of hard/unpopular decisions) and diffuse accountability. I wonder if the method works better in some cultures but not others.
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#189Have been thinking about this a lot lately. Not just decision making, but how to actually function in a healthy way in the day-to-day, in a flat org. The place I work recently restructured from a more traditional hierarchical structure to SAFe - so the business has a well defined hierarchy, while engineering teams are completely flat. Almost 4 PI's on (~9 months) the promise of "self organizing teams" has not been re…
You're using some lingo I never saw before, what's a SAFe and a PI?
Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?
#190Answer: you get lucky by having a great flat organization. Great people and great cohesion.
Structure is a pricey insurance premium. You best case will never be as good, but neither will your worst be as bad.