4 ms·

Using NLP to enable flatter organizations

23 points by neophocion 6y ago

neophocion 6y ago
tl;dr: Large companies suffer from excess management. As companies grow they add layers of middle management to grapple with the complexities of organizing lots of people. Too often this leads to endless alignment meetings and convoluted decision making. Instead of recommending yet another reorg, the hypothesis here is that companies suffer organizationally because they have a communication problem. Middle Out is a tool that allows employees to see what everyone else is up to and to decide on direction together.
- kinow 6y ago
  Thanks for such a well written TL;DR!
  - adyus 6y ago
    Unless the parent was being sarcastic on purpose, this is exactly what the company is proposing to do, automate TL;DRs.
luminati 6y ago
What’s the difference between this title and the previously posted one? https://middle-out.io/posts/genghis https://middle-out.io/posts/genghis Just a title change? Noticed the subtitle and graphics were similar. IMHO, the “genghis” title was much better.
marcinzm 6y ago
This product I feel misses that middle management exists to deal with people rather than information. People are messy and individual contributors often don't want to deal with them. Currently: I have a product idea, I sell it to my manager, my manager sells it to others managers, those managers sell it to their teams. My manager deals with politics in a well defined group of people they are familiar with. Proposed Future: I have a product idea, software chooses 10 people who are stakeholders and will vote In it, I now need to sell my idea to those 10 people. I deal with politics in an undefined group of people that constantly changes.
- doonesbury 6y ago
  Hang on. Managers had damn well be getting rid of politics right? Also managers deal with info and people not either or primarily one right?
  - Mumps 6y ago
    Depends what you mean by politics. Asset allocations, company vision, long project coordination, ... If _nobody_ is politicking between arms of an org, everyone will just ask for the moon and over-sell whatever their team in particular is focussing on. Resources will be drained, and likely the many projects would diverge into an unsustainable mess. Corporate politics isn't inherently bad, in that a ship needs steering.
    - doonesbury 6y ago
      See ... what I do not like or agree with is the essentially paranoid, mistrustful nature of your statement. No, not everybody will "will just ask for the moon and over-sell whatever their team in particular is focussing". A couple of points here that go way, way back to pre-1985: * one of the major problems at corporations is lack of openness. People BS all the time. Worse, and I've seen several of these in my job, people believe that if you do not manage-up and BS then you're a chump. Part of the management is to cut this BS out. The difference between you and me at this point in time is that it's an unchecked assumption for you, but not for me. * Cross functional coordination is essential to proper corporate governance. In particular, manager's damn well drill into internal service suppliers they'd better be customer driven and not make whatever they want - see also Conway's law. A lot BS at companies is half-assesd internal suppliers who underperform because they get management cover 'cause we have to use them ... and they cannot be essentially fired without extraordinary cause. Cross functional coordination is essential to getting and keeping people on the same sheet of music. I'd read "Human Element" (Dr. Schutz) and "Total Quality Management the Japanese Way" (K. Ishikawa [might be sp there but title is good]). In my experience manufacturing knows this is true, even they don't always practice it. But most service companies are clueless. Yes, if you don't have a management approach (TQM the Japanese way), you don't have a solid framework to human organizations and teams (Human Element), you don't have cross functional coordination, you don't have customer driven teams, and management tolerates the BS ... then you don't in fact have management and you do have politics whence I refer you to my original statement.
rglullis 6y ago
Not exactly on topic, but TFA talks about communication for companies of 500+ employees. I can not think of a company of this size and yet has only one product/service. Why do we need so many people? I've always wondered what would happen if every company/corporation had a hard cap on its size and could not have more than 150 (a.k.a Dunbar's number) of people. Forget subsidiaries, conglomerates, etc. No individual could sit on the board of more than one incorporated entity, and any entity could not exert control over any other. What would happen when a company started reaching this size? Would it start to focus on increasing productivity of the existing employees, or would they outsource absolutely everything that is not part of their core profit center and keep itself as lean as possible? How many layers of management would it have? What would happen with investment in R&D? Would this lead to companies being ultra-competitive for local markets or would competing companies form cartels and balkanize its customers in order to guarantee mutual survival? Would tech companies still be able to follow the strategy of "grow first, find out how to make money later." My guess is they wouldn't, but would that be a bad thing?
- webmaven 6y ago
  > I've always wondered what would happen if every company/corporation had a hard cap on its size and could not have more than 150 (a.k.a Dunbar's number) of people. I get why you picked that number, but (like most people) you've overlooked that most individuals have folks outside of their current place of work occupying a lot of those slots: family, friends, former co-workers, teachers and classmates, members of your community, professionals in various capacities (your doctor, your kids' teachers, etc.), And so on. So, if you want everyone in your org to know each other without intermediaries, you have to pick a number > Forget subsidiaries, conglomerates, etc. No individual could sit on the board of more than one incorporated entity, and any entity could not exert control over any other. It is not unheard-of for people to occupy board seats in order to serve as someone else's proxy. By limiting the number of boards a person can sit on, all you've really done is raise the expense of using such a proxy.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    I am not exactly expecting that everyone in the company to have as a strong personal connection as they would have with their family members and other parts of their society, just that 150 people would be enough to think of a "big company" in a ballpark where its employees/associates wouldn't be completely disconnected from one another and that it can have enough different specializations. I see your point though. Do you think that a company of 150 is still too big for each associate to care about the individuals? What would be a better number, then? Half of that? A third? > all you've really done is raise the expense of using such a proxy Part of it, yes. But I think it's not just that. By putting a cap on the size of the corporation, you also would be limiting the leverage that any one leader of a corporation would have over the others.
skybrian 6y ago
I’m wondering if the domain name and Mogul empire references are hints that this is a joke site of some sort.

23 points by neophocion 6y ago

tl;dr: Large companies suffer from excess management. As companies grow they add layers of middle management to grapple with the complexities of organizing lots of people. Too often this leads to endless alignment meetings and convoluted decision making. Instead of recommending yet another reorg, the hypothesis here is that companies suffer organizationally because they have a communication problem. Middle Out is a tool that allows employees to see what everyone else is up to and to decide on direction together.

kinow 6y ago
Thanks for such a well written TL;DR!
- adyus 6y ago
  Unless the parent was being sarcastic on purpose, this is exactly what the company is proposing to do, automate TL;DRs.

luminati 6y ago

What’s the difference between this title and the previously posted one? https://middle-out.io/posts/genghis https://middle-out.io/posts/genghis Just a title change? Noticed the subtitle and graphics were similar. IMHO, the “genghis” title was much better.

marcinzm 6y ago

This product I feel misses that middle management exists to deal with people rather than information. People are messy and individual contributors often don't want to deal with them. Currently: I have a product idea, I sell it to my manager, my manager sells it to others managers, those managers sell it to their teams. My manager deals with politics in a well defined group of people they are familiar with. Proposed Future: I have a product idea, software chooses 10 people who are stakeholders and will vote In it, I now need to sell my idea to those 10 people. I deal with politics in an undefined group of people that constantly changes.

doonesbury 6y ago
Hang on. Managers had damn well be getting rid of politics right? Also managers deal with info and people not either or primarily one right?
- Mumps 6y ago
  Depends what you mean by politics. Asset allocations, company vision, long project coordination, ... If _nobody_ is politicking between arms of an org, everyone will just ask for the moon and over-sell whatever their team in particular is focussing on. Resources will be drained, and likely the many projects would diverge into an unsustainable mess. Corporate politics isn't inherently bad, in that a ship needs steering.
  - doonesbury 6y ago
    See ... what I do not like or agree with is the essentially paranoid, mistrustful nature of your statement. No, not everybody will "will just ask for the moon and over-sell whatever their team in particular is focussing". A couple of points here that go way, way back to pre-1985: * one of the major problems at corporations is lack of openness. People BS all the time. Worse, and I've seen several of these in my job, people believe that if you do not manage-up and BS then you're a chump. Part of the management is to cut this BS out. The difference between you and me at this point in time is that it's an unchecked assumption for you, but not for me. * Cross functional coordination is essential to proper corporate governance. In particular, manager's damn well drill into internal service suppliers they'd better be customer driven and not make whatever they want - see also Conway's law. A lot BS at companies is half-assesd internal suppliers who underperform because they get management cover 'cause we have to use them ... and they cannot be essentially fired without extraordinary cause. Cross functional coordination is essential to getting and keeping people on the same sheet of music. I'd read "Human Element" (Dr. Schutz) and "Total Quality Management the Japanese Way" (K. Ishikawa [might be sp there but title is good]). In my experience manufacturing knows this is true, even they don't always practice it. But most service companies are clueless. Yes, if you don't have a management approach (TQM the Japanese way), you don't have a solid framework to human organizations and teams (Human Element), you don't have cross functional coordination, you don't have customer driven teams, and management tolerates the BS ... then you don't in fact have management and you do have politics whence I refer you to my original statement.

rglullis 6y ago

Not exactly on topic, but TFA talks about communication for companies of 500+ employees. I can not think of a company of this size and yet has only one product/service. Why do we need so many people? I've always wondered what would happen if every company/corporation had a hard cap on its size and could not have more than 150 (a.k.a Dunbar's number) of people. Forget subsidiaries, conglomerates, etc. No individual could sit on the board of more than one incorporated entity, and any entity could not exert control over any other. What would happen when a company started reaching this size? Would it start to focus on increasing productivity of the existing employees, or would they outsource absolutely everything that is not part of their core profit center and keep itself as lean as possible? How many layers of management would it have? What would happen with investment in R&D? Would this lead to companies being ultra-competitive for local markets or would competing companies form cartels and balkanize its customers in order to guarantee mutual survival? Would tech companies still be able to follow the strategy of "grow first, find out how to make money later." My guess is they wouldn't, but would that be a bad thing?

webmaven 6y ago
> I've always wondered what would happen if every company/corporation had a hard cap on its size and could not have more than 150 (a.k.a Dunbar's number) of people. I get why you picked that number, but (like most people) you've overlooked that most individuals have folks outside of their current place of work occupying a lot of those slots: family, friends, former co-workers, teachers and classmates, members of your community, professionals in various capacities (your doctor, your kids' teachers, etc.), And so on. So, if you want everyone in your org to know each other without intermediaries, you have to pick a number > Forget subsidiaries, conglomerates, etc. No individual could sit on the board of more than one incorporated entity, and any entity could not exert control over any other. It is not unheard-of for people to occupy board seats in order to serve as someone else's proxy. By limiting the number of boards a person can sit on, all you've really done is raise the expense of using such a proxy.
- rglullis 6y ago
  I am not exactly expecting that everyone in the company to have as a strong personal connection as they would have with their family members and other parts of their society, just that 150 people would be enough to think of a "big company" in a ballpark where its employees/associates wouldn't be completely disconnected from one another and that it can have enough different specializations. I see your point though. Do you think that a company of 150 is still too big for each associate to care about the individuals? What would be a better number, then? Half of that? A third? > all you've really done is raise the expense of using such a proxy Part of it, yes. But I think it's not just that. By putting a cap on the size of the corporation, you also would be limiting the leverage that any one leader of a corporation would have over the others.

skybrian 6y ago

I’m wondering if the domain name and Mogul empire references are hints that this is a joke site of some sort.