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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?

#261

Post by jacques_chester »

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…

What you're describing is proxy voting. It works well in certain circumstances: primarily in shareholding, where there are well-understood ways to divvy up authority. But most proxies are given with general power. This makes them comparable but not identical to a representative system.

The problem with proxies for politics is twofold. First, there is the business of carving out subjects. If I hand John the power to vote on transport and Jill the power to vote on buses, who votes on the integrated schedule for subway-bus terminals? What happens if they both vote? How do I maintain anonymity under these conditions without getting double counted, possibly even cancelling myself out through my proxies? This problem doesn't arise in regular proxies because I can see how my proxy voted and anyone can see who was acting as my proxy. That's not compatible with ballot secrecy.

The second problem is the usual problems of direct democracy, chief among which are demagoguery and mobs. Representative democracy is sluggish compared to direct democracy. That is a feature, not a bug. Imagine if twitter mobs could amend legislation.

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

#262

Post by mdgrech23 »

nrb wrote: post #249
discreteevent wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point when in that situation. But it's worth remembering that in development people are rarely in that situation. For various reasons, however people (including me) often bring that kind of emergency thinking into development and it just shows things down. Rushing into the debugger instead of slowing down for a minute and thinking about it for a minute. Doing a little bit of design and thinking about wh…

In this case, I understood the rapids to mean things like production incidents necessitating a coordinated incident response system with well-defined roles and responsibilities.

That's true. We have a dedicated triage team. In the land of Microservices it probably makes the most sense as it's probably harder than ever to pin down the group to fix something in a large org.

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

#263

Post by wolco »

taneq wrote: post #254
aeternus wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is fair because it allows the person a chance to test it out as well. Both would need to agree. When they go back they go back with respect.

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

#265

Post by JamesBarney »

sunflowerdeath wrote: post #264

I think in "flat" organizations, there must still be a responsible person, but he should convince people to do what is needed to achieve the goal, not force them.

The problem is bikeshedding. You can burn through a lot of hours arguing about decisions that do not affect the end goal.

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

#266

Post by JamesBarney »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #259
nilkn wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's harder for large organizations to make decisions than smaller organizations. But a hierarchy helps not hinders that process.

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

#267

Post by neumann »

jatsign wrote: post #106

"A chair who asks, “Is everyone OK with choice A?” is going to get objections. But a chair who asks, “Can anyone not live with choice A?” is more likely to only hear from folks who think that choice A is impossible to engineer given some constraints." It's funny - I've adopted a similar approach towards getting my kids to agree on something with each other. Instead of asking, "Should we do A or B or C?", and having o…

And for kids under two, you give two options and place the one you prefer second and emphasize it. Most of the kids agree. And then disagree. and then agree. and then disagree. and then you distract them with a snack and they happily go with whichever!

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

#268

Post by colordrops »

jacques_chester wrote: post #257
colordrops wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, just as wood, concrete, drywall, and paint are pretty fundamental things to building a house. Using the same materials, two houses could come out very different.

There is a spectrum of management style, from complete micromanagement of every schedule, ticket, and team structure. At the other end of the spectrum, you let the product owners set those parameters then reward or punish according to outcomes. Basically just define the fitness function and the product owners will do the rest. People highly underestimate the motivation of ownership and freedom. By the way this only works in orgs with highly capable employees that are self driven. There are not a lot of orgs like this, hence why so many think flat doesn't work. I've had the rare opportunity to work at an org that successfully functioned in this way.

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

#269

Post by kainosnoema »

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…

It depends on the organization. We've had leaders move back to IC roles (and are going through one of these transitions now, actually), but I think it requires the organization to be explicitly supportive of such moves. We call it finding your "zone of genius". We'd much rather keep a good person then lose them because they're best suited for another role.

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

#270

Post by jacques_chester »

colordrops wrote: post #268
jacques_chester wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, just as wood, concrete, drywall, and paint are pretty fundamental things to building a house. Using the same materials, two houses could come out very different. There is a spectrum of management style, from complete micromanagement of every schedule, ticket, and team structure. At the other end of the spectrum, you let the product owners set those parameters then reward or punish according to outcomes. Basical…

Your original interlocutor argued that

> Unless everyone can spend money drawn from the corporate account, and everyone can fire anyone else, the structure isn't flat.

which I don't think you ever really addressed. That there is more than these powers doesn't change that these powers are basically what defines meaningful hierarchy. They are necessary, but not sufficient; other functions are contributory, but neither necessary nor sufficient in themselves.

You can't have a company without money and people. That's literally what a company is.

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