7 ms·

An essay written in 1971, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" really nails the failure forces that are active against structureless orgs, and well as how you can

An essay written in 1971, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" really nails the failure forces that are active against structureless orgs, and well as how you can combat those forces. It's one of those essays that is just plain important to read for life, because you will see the forces it describes everywhere around you, for the rest of your time on earth. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

bassman9000 8y ago
Occasionally, the developed informal structure of the group coincides with an available need that the group can fill in such a way as to give the appearance that an Unstructured group "works." That is, the group has fortuitously developed precisely the kind of structure best suited for engaging in a particular project. Thanks for this. One of the issues I found with the Agile implementation in my current company is that there's no longer an architectural/technical leadership within the team: the manager acts as scrum master, but it doesn't guide on how things should be done. As a result, as the quoted paragraph mentions, there's progress when the team is well suited for a given set of tasks. But most of the time progress is slow, because the team doesn't want to tackle the boring ones, or challenging tasks that would require the extra mile of effort. That extends to the leadership of the company. It seems structureless, or "democratic" organizations can only work if the will/resolve/capacity of the lowest common denominator is good enough, and there's a large pool of commonly-minded individuals.
- nradov 8y ago
  In a properly structured Scrum team, the Scrum Master is a peer of the other team members and not a resource manager. The Product Manager sets the priorities and can insist that the team tackle boring or challenging user stories if that's what delivers the most customer value. Once you go beyond a single Scrum team most organizations do need dedicated architects who provide guidance and maintain conceptual integrity across multiple teams. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/system-and-solution-architect-engineering/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/system-and-solution-arc...
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  >That extends to the leadership of the company. It seems structureless, or "democratic" organizations can only work if the will/resolve/capacity of the lowest common denominator is good enough, and there's a large pool of commonly-minded individuals. It’s a chicken or the egg problem kind of problem. For all its talk about its love “freedom,” America is a deeply authoritarian and putative society. The institutions that define much of our default “social scripts” (e.g. school, and later, work) are run like little dictatorships and their hierarchy and despotic bent come to define and permeate broader culture. Surrendering your “fundamental rights” (like freedom of speech and assembly), the moment you cross the threshold of your workplace leads to cognitive dissonance and a diminished belief in the truth of their “inalienable” status, both at work and in society at large. The democratic participation of working class people in labor unions used to act as a check against this orientation, but as businesses interests have succeeded at undermining and destroying unions, businesses have filled the resulting power vacuum with even more authoritarianism, both in the workplace and in the outside politics they fund and support. To change things, you’d have to do something like what Valve is attempting, but from the bottom up and at a more baseline level of culture and social arrangement.
  - jack9 8y ago
    > as businesses interests have succeeded at undermining and destroying unions Unions largely have done that to themselves, as they organized into the same structures they purport to combat and act accordingly, with a capitalistic bend.
    - knuththetruth 8y ago
      While this arguably might be true of some sectors (like the auto industry), the same cannot be said for unions like those of service workers, teachers, and those organized by the IWW. And this narrative of course absolves business interests of things like how they used the red scare to attack union leadership, buying themselves judicial and favorable NLRB rulings, not to mention how curbed they are in their power relative to unions in Europe by the Taft-Hartley act: https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/taft-hartley-unions-right-to-work https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/taft-hartley-unions-right-to-...
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  That was my experience as well. Maybe it's my (very marginal) Asperger's biting me, but when I joined a supposedly self-organizing team as their only outsider, it was like walking into a buzz-saw. It was an awful experience that I never want to repeat.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  One of the issues I found with the Agile implementation in my current company is that there's no longer an architectural/technical leadership within the team Agile Coach here. Yes, this is toxic to quality and technical excellence. The typical hybrid Scrum/corporate org chart I find puts product ownership (the “business”) in control and leaves each team’s tech lead (responsible for getting the team to the sprint goal) as the last line of defense of quality and technical excellence. What ends up happening, tech leads with no technical air cover give up craftsmanship in exchange for making the product owner happy and therefore keeping their job. A number of companies are going to wake up in a few years with an agile hangover of legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace. Should make a lot of consultants a lot of money.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Definitely. When the Agile movement started out, it was very much about empowering teams to do good work. But the form that won, Scrum, was the one least disruptive to existing corporate hierarchies. (At least until somebody invented SAFe, a comically unagile Agile process.) I have very rarely seen "we're doing Agile" shops where technical concerns weren't entirely overruled by business concerns, when the goal of many early Agile proponents was to bring them back in balance. (And here I use "business concerns" advisedly, in that they're often much more about the political concerns of managers, not the actual needs of customers or the business.) Your point about "legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace" is spot on. If an org does a big rewrite without fixing the problems that got them the mess, they just get another mess. Switching from manager-dominated waterfall to manager-dominated mini-waterfall with some Agile labels slapped on doesn't fix the broken feedback loops and distorted values that created the legacy garbage. It would be as if George Washington had declared himself king after the Revolutionary War, or when a left-wing dictator overthrows a right-wing dictator. Deeper change is necessary.
ellius 8y ago
Excellent read, thanks for posting.
andyidsinga 8y ago
This is a really interesting read. Specifically, the section titled "The Nature of Elitism"; and the definition of "elite", elite groups, friendship and communication channels. It's interesting to think about as it relates to one's own experiences with group dynamics in the workplace and maybe even more so - volunteer activities where explicit structures may not be defined.
ismail 8y ago
Great post. “Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion” I have always looked on and decided I would create a “flat structure” in my co. To avoid “politics”. I have since changed My view. An insight is that there will always be a hierarchy, or more appropriately recursive levels of control and moniotoring needed. The question is do you acknowledge that or not, do you design for that or do you let it spring up adhoc? If you take a look at any biological system that must exist, sustain itself, there is always a control and monitoring system. This model exists for example in the body i.e our regulatory system. Stafford beer has developed a model for this, the viable system model. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model
- sn41 8y ago
  > If you take a look at any biological system that must exist, sustain itself, there is always a control and monitoring system. This may be a sweeping statement. We do know of collections of cells, for example, the cells in the heart muscles beat together without a central monitor. Swarms like flocks of birds, schools of fish etc. do not seem to have a hierarchical order. Steven Strogatz has a book called "Sync" related to spontaneous synchronisation. He also has given a Ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync/transcript...
  - ismail 8y ago
    Thanks for the link will take a look. Not familiar with the beating heart example but I do recall the example of the flock of birds. So will analyse that. If I recall correctly the birds are a network, where each one would monitor the ones closest to them and react based on that? Which is monitoring and control. Just at a very micro level. Also note the more appropriate term used above was “recursive” rather than hierarchy. The behaviour of a flock of birds is referred to as a complex adaptive system, with emergent properties. It can be modelled quite accurately as a vsm. Put simply one needs control, monitoring, feedback and information flow to exist. This is needed at every level (hence recursive). Therefore rather than contradict my comment, your post is just a further expansion. A complex adaptive system, can itself be modelled as a vsm.
ismail 8y ago
Does flat = structureless?
nikofeyn 8y ago
i haven’t read your linked article yet, but your comment reminded me of adam curtis’ documentary, all watched over by machines of ever loving grace. it covers the idea that the internet’s decentralization was supposed to liberate us but has instead had the opposite effect. i may be misremembering, but i think he even covers a communal society that was supposed to be without any control or governance that ended up being a messpool of social politics and power struggles. thanks for the article link.
noobermin 8y ago
It's lovely that everyone commenting here read the title, has skimmed, found things they like and move on. The prescription Joreen gives at the end is still a very democratic system, much more democratic than the hierarchies that exist in corporate businesses. She specifically does not want to repeat the hierarchies that are pretty problematic, along with the structurelessness she discusses at length. As ismail points out, people always conflate "flatness" with "structurelessness" or essentially some version of the wild west or a slumber party. This conflation is unfortunately too common and misses the point and reasons for more horizontal organization.
- dcposch 8y ago
  Furthermore... the author describes how lack of structure is not even a partial solution, in that it simply fails to solve the problem it's reacting to. An org with no formal organization can still have the same unhealthy power dynamics as a traditional hierarchical org. > Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. > 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 smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. Wow, what a money line. It's like a Rosetta Stone for a whole family of naive political ideas. From ancap and the more extreme forms of libertarian thinking on the right, thru "flat organization" in the startup world, to explicitly leaderless leftist groups like Occupy Wall Street. What they have in common is the fantasy that large human organizations can work without defined leadership.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > Wow, what a money line. It's like a Rosetta Stone for a whole family of naive political ideas. I would rather say that it is extremely naive to believe that the systems we have inherited are optimal in any way.
    - dcposch 8y ago
dtzur 8y ago
Thank you for sharing this
nspassov 8y ago
Quite interesting essay, thank you!
kel92ndjd 8y ago
Isn’t it possible that one voice just didn’t click with it? What’s the point of concerning ourselves with one companies operating patterns if by and large the people there are doing just fine by it? Are heavily structured companies any less guilty of the behavior Valve is called out for? Uber, Google, Apple, MS, eBay, Comcast, etc... all have been subject to numerous lawsuits for violations of labor laws. I think the outrage over Valve here is really due to the “structure less” being used to justify scrutiny Despite well defined separation of powers at places I’ve been, it’s still constant turf wars between folks looking to take on more or push more off.

bassman9000 8y ago

Occasionally, the developed informal structure of the group coincides with an available need that the group can fill in such a way as to give the appearance that an Unstructured group "works." That is, the group has fortuitously developed precisely the kind of structure best suited for engaging in a particular project. Thanks for this. One of the issues I found with the Agile implementation in my current company is that there's no longer an architectural/technical leadership within the team: the manager acts as scrum master, but it doesn't guide on how things should be done. As a result, as the quoted paragraph mentions, there's progress when the team is well suited for a given set of tasks. But most of the time progress is slow, because the team doesn't want to tackle the boring ones, or challenging tasks that would require the extra mile of effort. That extends to the leadership of the company. It seems structureless, or "democratic" organizations can only work if the will/resolve/capacity of the lowest common denominator is good enough, and there's a large pool of commonly-minded individuals.

nradov 8y ago
In a properly structured Scrum team, the Scrum Master is a peer of the other team members and not a resource manager. The Product Manager sets the priorities and can insist that the team tackle boring or challenging user stories if that's what delivers the most customer value. Once you go beyond a single Scrum team most organizations do need dedicated architects who provide guidance and maintain conceptual integrity across multiple teams. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/system-and-solution-architect-engineering/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/system-and-solution-arc...
knuththetruth 8y ago
>That extends to the leadership of the company. It seems structureless, or "democratic" organizations can only work if the will/resolve/capacity of the lowest common denominator is good enough, and there's a large pool of commonly-minded individuals. It’s a chicken or the egg problem kind of problem. For all its talk about its love “freedom,” America is a deeply authoritarian and putative society. The institutions that define much of our default “social scripts” (e.g. school, and later, work) are run like little dictatorships and their hierarchy and despotic bent come to define and permeate broader culture. Surrendering your “fundamental rights” (like freedom of speech and assembly), the moment you cross the threshold of your workplace leads to cognitive dissonance and a diminished belief in the truth of their “inalienable” status, both at work and in society at large. The democratic participation of working class people in labor unions used to act as a check against this orientation, but as businesses interests have succeeded at undermining and destroying unions, businesses have filled the resulting power vacuum with even more authoritarianism, both in the workplace and in the outside politics they fund and support. To change things, you’d have to do something like what Valve is attempting, but from the bottom up and at a more baseline level of culture and social arrangement.
- jack9 8y ago
  > as businesses interests have succeeded at undermining and destroying unions Unions largely have done that to themselves, as they organized into the same structures they purport to combat and act accordingly, with a capitalistic bend.
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    While this arguably might be true of some sectors (like the auto industry), the same cannot be said for unions like those of service workers, teachers, and those organized by the IWW. And this narrative of course absolves business interests of things like how they used the red scare to attack union leadership, buying themselves judicial and favorable NLRB rulings, not to mention how curbed they are in their power relative to unions in Europe by the Taft-Hartley act: https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/taft-hartley-unions-right-to-work https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/taft-hartley-unions-right-to-...
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
That was my experience as well. Maybe it's my (very marginal) Asperger's biting me, but when I joined a supposedly self-organizing team as their only outsider, it was like walking into a buzz-saw. It was an awful experience that I never want to repeat.
ryanmarsh 8y ago
One of the issues I found with the Agile implementation in my current company is that there's no longer an architectural/technical leadership within the team Agile Coach here. Yes, this is toxic to quality and technical excellence. The typical hybrid Scrum/corporate org chart I find puts product ownership (the “business”) in control and leaves each team’s tech lead (responsible for getting the team to the sprint goal) as the last line of defense of quality and technical excellence. What ends up happening, tech leads with no technical air cover give up craftsmanship in exchange for making the product owner happy and therefore keeping their job. A number of companies are going to wake up in a few years with an agile hangover of legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace. Should make a lot of consultants a lot of money.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Definitely. When the Agile movement started out, it was very much about empowering teams to do good work. But the form that won, Scrum, was the one least disruptive to existing corporate hierarchies. (At least until somebody invented SAFe, a comically unagile Agile process.) I have very rarely seen "we're doing Agile" shops where technical concerns weren't entirely overruled by business concerns, when the goal of many early Agile proponents was to bring them back in balance. (And here I use "business concerns" advisedly, in that they're often much more about the political concerns of managers, not the actual needs of customers or the business.) Your point about "legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace" is spot on. If an org does a big rewrite without fixing the problems that got them the mess, they just get another mess. Switching from manager-dominated waterfall to manager-dominated mini-waterfall with some Agile labels slapped on doesn't fix the broken feedback loops and distorted values that created the legacy garbage. It would be as if George Washington had declared himself king after the Revolutionary War, or when a left-wing dictator overthrows a right-wing dictator. Deeper change is necessary.

ellius 8y ago

Excellent read, thanks for posting.

andyidsinga 8y ago

This is a really interesting read. Specifically, the section titled "The Nature of Elitism"; and the definition of "elite", elite groups, friendship and communication channels. It's interesting to think about as it relates to one's own experiences with group dynamics in the workplace and maybe even more so - volunteer activities where explicit structures may not be defined.

ismail 8y ago

Great post. “Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion” I have always looked on and decided I would create a “flat structure” in my co. To avoid “politics”. I have since changed My view. An insight is that there will always be a hierarchy, or more appropriately recursive levels of control and moniotoring needed. The question is do you acknowledge that or not, do you design for that or do you let it spring up adhoc? If you take a look at any biological system that must exist, sustain itself, there is always a control and monitoring system. This model exists for example in the body i.e our regulatory system. Stafford beer has developed a model for this, the viable system model. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model

sn41 8y ago
> If you take a look at any biological system that must exist, sustain itself, there is always a control and monitoring system. This may be a sweeping statement. We do know of collections of cells, for example, the cells in the heart muscles beat together without a central monitor. Swarms like flocks of birds, schools of fish etc. do not seem to have a hierarchical order. Steven Strogatz has a book called "Sync" related to spontaneous synchronisation. He also has given a Ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync/transcript...
- ismail 8y ago
  Thanks for the link will take a look. Not familiar with the beating heart example but I do recall the example of the flock of birds. So will analyse that. If I recall correctly the birds are a network, where each one would monitor the ones closest to them and react based on that? Which is monitoring and control. Just at a very micro level. Also note the more appropriate term used above was “recursive” rather than hierarchy. The behaviour of a flock of birds is referred to as a complex adaptive system, with emergent properties. It can be modelled quite accurately as a vsm. Put simply one needs control, monitoring, feedback and information flow to exist. This is needed at every level (hence recursive). Therefore rather than contradict my comment, your post is just a further expansion. A complex adaptive system, can itself be modelled as a vsm.

ismail 8y ago

Does flat = structureless?

nikofeyn 8y ago

i haven’t read your linked article yet, but your comment reminded me of adam curtis’ documentary, all watched over by machines of ever loving grace. it covers the idea that the internet’s decentralization was supposed to liberate us but has instead had the opposite effect. i may be misremembering, but i think he even covers a communal society that was supposed to be without any control or governance that ended up being a messpool of social politics and power struggles. thanks for the article link.

noobermin 8y ago

It's lovely that everyone commenting here read the title, has skimmed, found things they like and move on. The prescription Joreen gives at the end is still a very democratic system, much more democratic than the hierarchies that exist in corporate businesses. She specifically does not want to repeat the hierarchies that are pretty problematic, along with the structurelessness she discusses at length. As ismail points out, people always conflate "flatness" with "structurelessness" or essentially some version of the wild west or a slumber party. This conflation is unfortunately too common and misses the point and reasons for more horizontal organization.

dcposch 8y ago
Furthermore... the author describes how lack of structure is not even a partial solution, in that it simply fails to solve the problem it's reacting to. An org with no formal organization can still have the same unhealthy power dynamics as a traditional hierarchical org. > Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. > 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 smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. Wow, what a money line. It's like a Rosetta Stone for a whole family of naive political ideas. From ancap and the more extreme forms of libertarian thinking on the right, thru "flat organization" in the startup world, to explicitly leaderless leftist groups like Occupy Wall Street. What they have in common is the fantasy that large human organizations can work without defined leadership.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > Wow, what a money line. It's like a Rosetta Stone for a whole family of naive political ideas. I would rather say that it is extremely naive to believe that the systems we have inherited are optimal in any way.
  - dcposch 8y ago

dtzur 8y ago

Thank you for sharing this

nspassov 8y ago

Quite interesting essay, thank you!

kel92ndjd 8y ago

Isn’t it possible that one voice just didn’t click with it? What’s the point of concerning ourselves with one companies operating patterns if by and large the people there are doing just fine by it? Are heavily structured companies any less guilty of the behavior Valve is called out for? Uber, Google, Apple, MS, eBay, Comcast, etc... all have been subject to numerous lawsuits for violations of labor laws. I think the outrage over Valve here is really due to the “structure less” being used to justify scrutiny Despite well defined separation of powers at places I’ve been, it’s still constant turf wars between folks looking to take on more or push more off.