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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?

#71

Post by js8 »

currymj wrote: post #67
js8 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about democracy? It is a clear rule (one person one vote) and yet it is not hierarchical.

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 mean, you will agree with the majority.

(And by the way, there is a common folklore that representative democracy can protect minorities better. There are several reasons why this is untrue, and in fact, direct democracy protects minorities better than representation.)

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

#72

Post by fapjacks »

hybrids wrote: post #58
fapjacks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with something of an abstraction of what they're saying, when I read things like this, it's hard for me to see anything but a person that wants to hijack the tyranny for themselves.

The Jo Freeman article was written in retrospect to her own experiences with the feminist movement in the 1960s - she has another article - "Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood" - that I think illustrates very well that in spite of her belief of the movement, she had been hurt by its methodology (which was by no means exclusive to the feminist movement, as we see here) and not to mention was in no position to be ab…

I think perhaps I could have been more perspicuous in my post, as both replies to my original post seem to focus on specifics when I'm talking about the more general case. In that regard, I'm not talking specifically about flat hierarchies, feminism or these individuals (though certainly it is true in some cases).

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

#73

Post by roland35 »

kradroy wrote: post #41
claudiulodro wrote: post #12

Assuming whatever you're trying to do is a good idea, my method is to just write a "heads-up"-type message and just go for it. For example, "I'm going to do foo. If anyone has any concerns or anything, please let me know". This covers your ass, provides a discussion/feedback area, and lets you actually get things done without a lengthy bike-shedding process. One important lesson I have learned in my career is that fo…

We used to have an engineer who used this maneuver. He abused it because it was effective. We do have an issue on our team with engineers being indifferent to new ideas, and our manager loves consensus. Regardless, this engineer thought his ideas were always "good ideas." They weren't. He was eventually chewed out by our manager because he was becoming a passive-aggressive tyrant. He left the company soon after that.…

The challenge, as with many things in life, is to strike a good balance. In this case between being bold and being a good team player at the same time.

What I have tried to do in the past is:

1) Take an idea out to a "proof of concept" stage, whether that is a white paper or an actual functioning demo but no further. People often need to see something, not just hear it.

2) Have a cosponsor or two to work with you. At first you may think that you are not getting full credit for your idea but I believe it shows more leadership than just striking out on your own. Plus you don't want your team to despise you like that aforementioned engineer.

3) Be humble, solicit feedback, and really listen to it!

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

#74

Post by MisterOctober »

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…

I work for a "flat" company. I've certainly observed some of the troubling characteristics of this organizational approach described above and elsewhere in comments.

There are some positive characteristics [in our implementation at least] as well, a few of which are :

1) Decisions with broad effect [i.e., beyond the decider's personal work domain] are handled with the "advice process," wherein all affected parties are consulted and their advice weighed before the decision is taken. This can be cumbersome, but on the other hand, it is a check against "cowboy" and "act first, consider later" types.

2) Each person is assigned an "area of responsibility / AOR" -- a work or problem domain[s] in which they are acknowledged to hold more expertise than those not assigned that 'AOR.' This prevents [in practice] people [say] in the shipping department making decisions about software development.

3] The org is not _totally_ flat. The CEO and COO are acknowledged to have veto power and the 'AOR' of big decisions that have a potentially existential bearing on the company.

Having always worked at rigidly hierarchical companies before this, I'll say I've more or less gotten used to it and can see the benefits.

One thing I especially like about it is that there is no chance of an "Office Space" situation where a boss, or bosses, continually interrupt work to pester about things that are wastes of time -- each worker is more or less left to determine their own task prioritization and has the power to discontinue tasks that are pointless. We use the kanban system for task / bug / feature tracking.

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

#75

Post by twoquestions »

It seems there's an ideology here (in the Gary Bernhardt sense: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology), that flat organizations are impossible. Not just bad or inefficient, but literally cannot possibly happen, that it will always and forever immediately decay into a shadow oligarchy (which to be fair can happen).

Is it really that hard to take these people at their word, along with other companies without a stated strict and rigid hierarchy? Little wonder such organizations are hard to build, especially in a culture that holds the very notion in contempt.

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

#76

Post by siidooloo »

dosy wrote: post #37
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…

It's not just the women's movement, any postmodern "leaderphobic" group of anti-heroes will operate under this adhocratic masking of power. It's still power, but it's the power-pill that palatable to their sensibilities, suitably masked. Marxist revolutions "of the peasants" pioneered this mass delusion of flattening. But isn't this just gaslighting people? I mean "flat" is just disempowering existing power structure…

I think you’re making this more complex then it needs to be.

There will always be sociopaths.

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

#77

Post by Drdrdrq »

dhruvrrp wrote: post #18

Rough consensus is a really naive solution to making decisions. Being in a flat structure doesn't change the fact that different people have different requirements. Just because you have more people "agreeing" to one particular idea doesn't make it the right idea.

Did you read the article? The whole point is not to seek agreement, but a few proponents (authors) and no fundamental flaws.

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

#78

Post by westurner »

Group decision-making > Formal systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_decision-making#Formal_s...

> Consensus decision-making, Voting-based methods, Delphi method, Dotmocracy

Consensus decision-making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making

There's a field that some people are all calling "Collaboration Engineering". I learned about this from a university course in Collaboration.

6 Patterns of Collaboration [GRCOEB] — Generate, Reduce, Clarify, Organize, Evaluate, Build Consensus

7 Layers of Collaboration [GPrAPTeToS] — Goals, Products, Activities, Patterns of Collaboration, Techniques, Tools, Scripts

The group decision making processes described in the article may already be defined with the thinkLets design pattern language.

A person could argue against humming for various unspecified reasons.

I'll just CC this here from my notes, which everyone can read here [1]:

“Collaboration Engineering: Foundations and Opportunities” de Vreede (2009) http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol10/iss3/7/

“A Seven-Layer Model of Collaboration: Separation of Concerns for Designers of Collaboration Systems” Briggs (2009) http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2009/26/

Six Patterns of Collaboration “Defining Key Concepts for Collaboration Engineering” Briggs (2006) http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2006/17/

“ThinkLets: Achieving Predictable, Repeatable Patterns of Group Interaction with Group Support Systems (GSS)” http://www.academia.edu/259943/ThinkLets_Achieving_Predictab...

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thinklets

[1] https://wrdrd.github.io/docs/consulting/team-building#collab...

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

#79

Post by achenatx »

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, extra grad assistants (or whatever).

Many more people get a chance to try out a leadership role to grow, but it is expected to be temporary so people can go back to being technical with no repercussions. Individual contributors get better perspective on management. People that are good at it and have an affinity for it stay in the role longer.

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

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

#80

Post by sametmax »

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, in case of conflict or emergency. Often the CEO.

It's not "flat org", it's just good ol' human society.

Rules are less clear, social skills are more required and if you get there in the early days you get a big advantages over the newcomers.

But if you get a nice tribe, things rock.

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