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

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

#251

Post by patman »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #243
ellard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ul…

If managers only exist to break ties why not simply create teams with odd numbers of members and they would no longer be required?

Breaking ties is not only between equal numbers of people. It can be between one person with a very strong point of view and five others that oppose that decision.

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

#252

Post by nilkn »

achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

Unfortunately, this sort of ignores that many academic departments are often crippled by overwhelming internal politics, and they rarely scale beyond a few dozen people at most. Moreover, many academicians within a department often work on completely separate projects requiring little or no coordination of any kind. This is dramatically different from what is encountered in many commercial organizations and companies.

My experience is that flat structures in large commercial enterprises usually reproduce stratified structures embedded within them, and they actually enhance the degree of stratification by obscuring who makes decisions and creating unassailable cliques.

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

#253

Post by AmericanChopper »

achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

If your organisation already has good management, then promoting the right people isn’t that hard of a problem to solve.

> Self organizing teams still have a leader, but the team selects the leader.

People who are good leaders will naturally start to show leadership aptitude, without being given any management position. If you have good management, then those people can be fostered. They can be given extra responsibility (without being given a promotion), and if it goes well, they can be promoted. If it goes poorly, they can go back to what they were doing, no harm done.

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

#254

Post by taneq »

aeternus wrote: post #230
veddox wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why democracies have terms of office, and that's exactly what we do in our student organisation. You're right: there has to be a way to get somebody out of a misfitting leadership role without completely humiliating him. Regular elections are a great way of doing so, and giving many different people the chance to lead benefits both them and the organisation.

One method I've found to work well, especially with engineers: Make it clear to the team that the new leader is stepping up temporarily to fill a significant business need. That the engineer is doing the team a favor by doing this and that the plan is for it to be temporary because that engineer is a great IC. It then becomes very easy for the new leader to go back to being an IC. They can even be thanked for steppin…

That last bit makes the rest look like a rather transparent attempt to mask a trial period.

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

#255

Post by colordrops »

wang_li wrote: post #177
colordrops wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a "flat" organization is not that there is no hierarchy or structure, but that it is not officially prescribed, and instead emerges organically. This allows the structure to change as the needs and members of the team change, whereas in a traditional organization, the leadership and structure often long outlive their usefulness.

Unless everyone can spend money drawn from the corporate account, and everyone can fire anyone else, the structure isn't flat. It's just that management is choosing not to manage. There is a difference.

There are many different layers and dimensions to an organization. Finances and hiring are just a couple. There are also product, sales, marketing, support, IT, and many others. Some can be flat while others are not, and in that case, yes, management responsibilities are de facto, temporary, and built through consensus.

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

#257

Post by jacques_chester »

colordrops wrote: post #255
wang_li wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless everyone can spend money drawn from the corporate account, and everyone can fire anyone else, the structure isn't flat. It's just that management is choosing not to manage. There is a difference.

There are many different layers and dimensions to an organization. Finances and hiring are just a couple. There are also product, sales, marketing, support, IT, and many others. Some can be flat while others are not, and in that case, yes, management responsibilities are de facto, temporary, and built through consensus.

The power to hire or fire and the power to spend money are basically the two most central powers in any company.

The first decides who the company is. The second can decide whether there is a company.

Identity and existence are fairly fundamental things.

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

#258

Post by mdgrech23 »

veddox wrote: post #195
achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

That's why democracies have terms of office, and that's exactly what we do in our student organisation. You're right: there has to be a way to get somebody out of a misfitting leadership role without completely humiliating him. Regular elections are a great way of doing so, and giving many different people the chance to lead benefits both them and the organisation.

I don't doubt this but I'm going to point out this will also introduce politics and campaigning. People will probably tend to group up.

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

#259

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

nilkn wrote: post #252
achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

Unfortunately, this sort of ignores that many academic departments are often crippled by overwhelming internal politics, and they rarely scale beyond a few dozen people at most. Moreover, many academicians within a department often work on completely separate projects requiring little or no coordination of any kind. This is dramatically different from what is encountered in many commercial organizations and companies…

And large companies are not crippled by internal politics?

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

#260

Post by mdgrech23 »

ironchef wrote: post #199
achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

Our teams at Tanium do something similar. There’s no pay bump to lead the group... and we have a number of folks who’ve led the a team and then went back to IC. It’s worked quite well overall; however, is a difficult position (sometimes leading north of forty folks)

Not giving you extra money for it is probably the best role but how does one ever actually move up at this place in that case?
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