7 ms·

The Leaderless Organization (2012)

80 points by Kinrany 6y ago

roenxi 6y ago
Humans are not fundamentally autonomous. Even expert humans do not individually know enough to go into depth about how complex systems work (they typically know one layer of abstraction in great detail). Humans are terrible at assessing reality. They are bad at prioritising. They are lousy learners. Leaders are a short circuit around all that by just telling people what to do, no arguments. If your organisation is small enough that everyone can be brilliant and busy, great, good luck, might work. But even then technical people often appreciate some leadership to reduce the mental load and let them focus on how rather than what and why. I doubt there are leaderless organisations. There are organisations that purposefully hide their leadership and those that do not. And yes, big management layers are bad. The managers have the same problems as everyone else - humans are limited. If there are lots of managers they can't all be above average and then the basic human problems they were meant to solve come back.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  > Humans are terrible at assessing reality. They are bad at prioritising. They are lousy learners. I think this is missing the bigger picture. I wrote this a few days ago: “I think what we’re seeing has more to do with unaccountable invisible architectures (law/governance systems, IP and money) that obscure production processes, than that it’s anything to do with human nature or social media, or us being ‘hairless monkeys’.” Arthur Brock describes it better: “The story I want to be able to tell my (as of yet non-existent) grandchildren in 25 years. Once upon a time, our planet was dying. People had organized themselves into patterns with funny names like “limited liability corporations,” “federal governments,” “non-profit organizations,” and “institutions of higher education.” We were unwittingly eating the world and all of its resources to perpetuate the survival of and expand the growth of these social organisms." [...] “Since information sources and sharing protocols weren’t integrated, we couldn’t clearly see flow patterns on large scales. The fragmentation made it easy for people to only pay attention to what they wanted to hear, or remain ignorant and unseeing of things they didn’t search out. In fact, most information was received in the form of dramatic entertainment called “news” that was filtered and scripted by the organizations delivering it according to criteria which supported their own influence and growth. Since currency was only thought of as money, and wealth as accumulation, when people organized themselves into collective patterns, those social organisms were preoccupied with their own growth and acquisition of artificially scarce money. They were structured as cancers — using their resources only for their own perpetuation and growth — killing the planet that is their host. Do you remember hearing stories about “the Internet?” — the early network for computer communication that started to emerge in the late 1900s… It was a place of great experimentation and chaos. We hadn’t yet discovered how to make all protocols interact with each other, or have shared models of meaning and world-views to operate from. But information started flowing quickly around the world, accelerating change in surprising and exciting ways.“ [...] "In the early 2000s, there was a breakthrough. A small group of people translated the organizational patterns by which living systems operate into the computing and communications. Soon they invented the field of current-see design to consciously design the DNA of social organisms in accord with the sacred patterns which nourish life. People began to organize themselves into a variety of patterns that look more like ways you see us working together today. Fractal computing receptors and self-describing protocols enabled information to flow in new distributed patterns of coherence. We built an easy compository for sharing meaning and models for sense-making. Our collaboration tools started evolving much more rapidly with the ability to install new shared protocols in an instant. There was no longer centralized control of information in every group and organization. There was an explosion of new life and new patterns of collective intelligence In many ways this explosion of social organisms and communication protocols was even more chaotic than the Internet it began replacing. Really amazing patterns started emerging which quickly outperformed the corporations of the past because they were better at having people feel fulfilled, trusted, known, heard and involved… better at sharing resources that were previously hoarded… better at creating outrageous productivity and creative results. Once we learned how to organize ourselves in these ways, we were able to reverse the damage to the planet and our communities very quickly. Problems that had been accumulating for hundreds of years, we reversed in only a handful years because we could coordinate on a planetary scale in ways that nourished the bodies, spirits, and hearts of everyone involved. We learned the joy of dancing together for mutual benefit, built the tools for us to see the state of our collective dance, and grew to feel the vibrancy of those rhythms together.“ Source: https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-metacurrency-myth-8db61ed14fb8 https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-metacurrency-myt...
- dandanua 6y ago
  Humans tend to choose leaders because of their biological nature, not because it's more reasonable. They would like to follow a human (a creature similar to them), not a law — an abstract thing with no face. BTW, the idea of God in religions is basically a personification of laws that a community must obey. A useful trick to make things work. It's true that some people are smarter than others in certain tasks, so it's reasonable to give them more power in making decisions. But it's not reasonable to give them ALL the power. Because no human is smarter than a collective mind of others.
- krageon 6y ago
  According to your own assessment of reality, we should not take what you say seriously. Clearly you are either wrong about humans or not competent to make sweeping judgements about this complex system. This is not a criticism of you personally, but rather of the internal consistency of your argument.
- tyingq 6y ago
  "I doubt there are leaderless organisations." That's what I suspect as well. If you don't specify who the leaders are, some will emerge anyway. Perhaps there's some advantages there, but one obvious disadvantage is that the org structure is now undocumented.
teddyh 6y ago
See also The Tyranny of Structurelessness https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
- KnightHawk3 6y ago
  and it's response The Tyranny of Tyranny https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cathy-levine-the-tyranny-of-tyranny https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cathy-levine-the-tyr...
  - kubanczyk 6y ago
    It's probably the most chaotic and unconvincing text I've read this week. Decidedly not on the same level as the famous article it aimed to demolish.
  - hitekker 6y ago
    This article is less an honest response and more a knee-jerk reaction. Raw, seething resentment that goes nowhere.
TuringTest 6y ago
I recommend reading about the cybernetic concept of viable systems[1], and in particular the Viable Systems Model of organizations (VSM); [2] Cybernetics is the science of self-regulation as reaction to changes in the environment. The VSM theory poses that, for any complex system to become sustainable, it needs to adapt to changes in the environment that would tear it apart. Enduring organizations are structured as a loose fractal hierarchy, where a core "policy-making" subsystem decides what is the defining essence of the organization. Other types of subsystems would distribute the signals and process, them to get work done towards what constitute 'progress' and 'change' in the system. This core sends regulatory signals to the other subsystems to react and adapt against environment external signals, to keep the whole system alive and working efficiently. The strength and variety of the external and internal signals between subsystems could be measurable, defining a model to predict what complexity must possess the organization to deal with its environment and what signal strengths may break it. Thus the whole organization may change greatly and evolve as reaction to changes in the environment, but the core subsystem will decide what parts of the organization must remain constant to keep its essence intact. According to this model, a leaderless organization would not need to have a single person in a leadership role, but would still need to have this core to define its essential characteristics; otherwise it couldn't work as a coherent organization working towards well-defined goals, but a loose movement pulling in all directions at once. Edit: elucidate the main points. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_theory [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model
- unixhero 6y ago
  Stafford Beer!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
pietrovismara 6y ago
This reminds of the story of Google firing all its managers, only to then have problems like engineers craving for feedback, avoiding boring work or being unable to resolve friction by themselves. It seems clear to me that most people (even the most brilliant engineers apparently) still need something as a reference, they can't just be let on their own. But that reference doesn't need to be a single manager. We could start to think of the team as the manager. The team can perfectly give feedback, handle friction, distribute boring work and so on. We already have plenty of stupid daily standups, team meetings, weekly all-hnds meetings and so on, so it wouldn't really be hard to have a team daily standup where problems can be brought up to everyone and solved cooperatively.
- mtrycz2 6y ago
  People that are brilliant in their field not necessarily are brilliant in "soft skills", or at least have been prepared to manage those skills. The Morning Star example (which I read of just now) seems to have the leaderless thing as a cultural backdrop, and new employees receive training in it (by doing). OTOH, you can't just do away with managers in a structured organization and expect it to work, the culture is not there.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    > you can't just do away with managers in a structured organization and expect it to work, the culture is not there. Totally agree. That's probably another big mistake of the google experience.You can't just change completely the organizazion and expect everything to work fine the next day. Change should be done gradually, ideally I would gradually assign responsibilities to the team, while leaving a manager there to supervise and slowly fade out.
    - WJW 6y ago
      How would you address the problem of all "good" managers (defined here as those who can easily get another job elsewhere) just leaving immediately instead of remaining in a job that now has zero growth potential? It seems that very rapidly you would have only the worst managers left and (because by definition they would have trouble getting another job elsewhere) they would have every incentive to halt or slow the phasing out of managers in the company.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Wasn’t there a story about Steam’s culture, a few years ago? I seem to remember a quote about Gabe Newell, and how he actually was very much in charge, despite there being no managers. I have no real feedback on whether or not this structure is effective. I was a manager for a long time, and hated it. I would have much rather been an engineer; but that is probably more a reflection on me, than the practice of Management.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Leadership is often as much if not more about influence than authority. As a manager, while part of my job is managing "down" (people I have formal reporting-line authority over), it's equally if not more important to manage sideways (peers, stakeholders in other orgs) and upward (my own managers).
js8 6y ago
As a leftist with anarchist leanings, I have thought for a long time about the purpose of social hierarchies in humans. It is clear that humans have deference to authority as one of universal values, why is that? There is a sort of standard ("right-wing", "evolutionary") explanation that argues that social hierarchies are of biological nature, similar to hierarchies in some species, they are related to sexual selection and simply somebody has to be an "alpha". Ultimately, I rejected this explanation because I think the evidence for it is contested. Some humans are actively willing to submit, it's not just the threat of violence that causes them to do so, and the deference to authority is not always sexual in humans. It seems that not all hierarchies are simply a struggle for power, although arguably in large-scale human groups, it often becomes the case. Currently, my favorite explanation of authority as a natural human value comes from the idea that the authorities represent "institutional memory" of the particular human group. So for example, the first authority you meet, your parents, exists to give you knowledge and experience of their life, so you wouldn't learn from zero as a child. Similar goes for the social group as a whole, the authorities in the group (typically the elders) are the people who lean conservative, and make sure that lessons of the past are remembered by the group. Given this explanation for the role of social hierarchies and authority, I am not sure what replaces this "institutional memory" in "leaderless" organizations. If nothing replaces it, it must become inefficient eventually by repeating past mistakes. Or the leaderlessness might be short-lived and the authority which holds the institutional memory will appear. However, I agree that in modern large companies, the management is often turned over much more frequently than some employees. This, assuming the actual role of hierarchy in human groups is to gatekeep institutional memory, would explain why some conclude that management is useless. But it is not clear whether going further and entirely removing it is going to be better.
- cturner 6y ago
  Something I find interesting about the French Revolution is how slowly the commoners came to seriously consider alternatives to the default system of rule, despite sustained loss-of-credibility by the elites. This seems to fit with your /institutional memory/ model. > But it is not clear whether going further > and entirely removing it is going to be better. There is room to distinguish strategic leadership and middle-management. Strategic leadership sets coherent direction for an institution, and continues to be relevant. Middle management is a vestige of the industrial era, where manpower and scale were interchangeable concepts. The orchestras show that there is an alternative to middle-management. We don't really have a word for this, but we could call it Elders. A key difference between Elders and Middle Managers is the role of skills. Elders must be at least competent at domain-relevant skills to be relevant, and their respect grows with skill mastery. Whereas, in a MM culture, having skills excludes you from influence. You are either a career manager (entirely without domain skills), or you convert. In the process of conversion, you will have social pressure applied not to get your hands dirty.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
The article uses terms leader and manager interchangeably, but they’re clearly not the same thing. Teams can operate quite happily without a direct manager, though they still need it on some level to define what the goals are. But no team can operate without leaders. Leaders and managers are different things. You can have a team where the leader and the manager are different people. You can have a team with more than one leader, where they each lead in a particular competency, or on a particular project, or on a particular day because everybody else is in a bad mood. Properly functional teams tend to self select their own leaders, based on how they view their competency (both technically and socially). Every team that works well will have one or more people that the other team members trust to make decisions, provide feedback, guidance and advice. A leader doesn’t need to have a job title. The behaviour of the team members determine who the leader is, it’s not a role management can assign to somebody. If you’re lucky, the leader of a team and it’s manager will be the same person, because the leaders will usually have more clout than the managers. But that’s often not the case.
einpoklum 6y ago
> Abraham Lincoln. Winston Churchill. Nelson Mandela. We honor our leaders and always have. Only if we don't study our history, and have a very low bar. Ignoring, for a second, the question of leadership-vs-leaderlessness (which is important of course), let's remember that: 1. While Lincoln led the US to a civil war which abolished formal slavery, his own opinion on black people was quite horrid: > I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. and indeed, the US took very little action to rectify the historical injustice. 2. Churchill was a staunch imperialist in terms of his public career, and is hated by the peoples of the middle east for his involvement in the continued occupation and the continued support and sometimes setup of oppressive puppet governments in British areas of control. At home, he was a tool of the rich in terms of state spending on welfare and other issues. In fact, even when it comes to Nazi Germany, Churchill supported non-intervention in Spain, where a significant British intervention against the Fascists would have had significant effect on later events. 3. Mandela is perhaps the most worthy of respect, but it must be remembered that the ANC essentially gave up on ending material, economic white supremacy in South Africa to end formal, legal apartheid. Whites, to this day, control almost all of the land and wealth. And the worst thing about it is that it is now a black government which enforces local white and foreign-multinational property rights against the landless and the poor.
- Stierlitz 6y ago
  > .. While Lincoln led the US to a civil war which abolished formal slavery, his own opinion on black people was quite horrid .. I figure Lincoln had to say that, in order to bring along those wavering abolitionists.
- charlescearl 6y ago
  Good points. With respect to Mandela, it is also important to acknowledge all of the "anonymous" ANC members, students, SACP members, trade unionists, etc who worked independently and in coordination every day, and gave their last breath each of the years that Mandela and the senior leadership were imprisoned. All that to say that the success of the South African liberation struggle and the success of this summer's BLM protests point to the need for and efficacy of organizations that can effectively execute with minimal leadership as the situation demands.
eternalban 6y ago
Leadership is not management. Also, is there an example of a factually leaderless organization, past or present? (Anonymous is not a transparent organization and is not an informative example.)
- alphadevx 6y ago
  Nailed it. Most managers are executing a process or strategy defined by somebody else, they are not leaders. An org without a leader is rudderless. Can't think of a real, successful example either.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  Yes, and probably many. Here are two: First Example: 1. In many world states, condominiums / apartment buildings have common building affairs run by a residents' association. While these typically have executive functions assigned to only a small number of people, it's very often that membership in that committee changes frequently, with a a decent fraction of the residents getting to serve on it occasionally, and this executive is never (well, in my experience) perceived as "leading" the residents. These are stable organizations which last for decades doing concrete practical work - with a budget, engagement of contractors and occasional employees, interaction with municipal or state authorities etc. Second Example: The CNT, Confedercion Nacional del Trabajo. This is a confederation of Anarchist Labor Union, whose hey-day was during the 1920s and 1930s, but unfortunately got decimated by Francist Fascism. It survived underground and today is active, though not remotely as large as those days. Its structure is a bit involved, but the main ideas relevant to your question is that regional or national bodies cannot make decisions for the local bodies, nor the national for the regional, and their capacities are secretarial and administrative (which of course still carries a lot of power); and even that rotates - regional secretariats assume the role of national secretariats in some kind of round-robin fashion. This in itself does not mean that there's no leadership, but the structure, together with the anti-Authoritarian ethos of Anarchism is a political philosophy and labor-unionism as what's actually practiced contribute to an anti-centralist spirit which (hopefully still today) permeates the organization. It's a "do it yourself together" kind of an attitude rather than "wise people trusted by many have laid out the path for us". Caveat: I only visited with one of the regional confederations once in 2006 and read about them so I can't "guarantee leaderlessness". See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_de...
frederikvs 6y ago
Another great resource, for those who are interested in this sort of thing, is the book "Reinventing Organizations" by Frédéric Laloux. It's a bit of a guidebook on how to build this sort of organisation.
- JackMorgan 6y ago
  I agree this is a great resource. It uses case studies of functional companies operating in this model. I think it is very worth reading if you want to help grow an organization this way.
spodek 6y ago
First, the problem determines the solution. A team without leaders isn't better or worse. It's different. When one mode works better, use it. When the other, use the other. When something else, something else. Second, the article shifts back and forth between leadership and management. I just posted to my blog about the difference, with a picture of an apple and an orange. While they overlap, they aren't the same. By no means am I suggesting one is better, only that big enough jobs require both. Managers use skills like analysis, planning, record-keeping, and organization on readily measurable things, facts, figures, observable deliverables, and timelines. A successful manager creates compliance. Well-managed teams get the job done. Leaders use skills like listening, vision, support, charisma, and credibility on intangibles, emotions, beliefs, stories, images, and symbols. A successful leader inspires. Well-led teams love their work. Managers work in the system, improving it to meet the values and goals driving it, making it more efficient. Leaders work on systems, adjusting them, leading them to align with values and goals they miss. Managers use incentives—carrots and sticks—based on the outcome desired. Leaders help others do what they already want to but haven't figured out how based on attracting and enlisting people whose goals and values align with the team and role. Managers react to the values and goals set by leaders. Leaders are proactive, figuring out what values and goals to prioritize. A manager's skills transfer between companies and industries. A manager can succeed without caring about what the team does. Managers get people acting. An effective manager gives people the satisfaction of a job well done. A leader must do what he or she leads others to. A leader believes in the cause. He or she can rarely succeed at leading what he or she doesn't care about, but the passion a leader feels for a cause makes the work rewarding and inspiring. An effective leader makes that inspiration infectious. Well-managed, poorly-led teams and people may feel obliged to work hard at something they don't care about. They may work for material rewards but not value them. They measure their success by how much they do. Well-led, poorly-managed teams and people may feel inspired and passionate but not know what to do. They may feel frustrated with a present inferior to a future vision they aren't moving toward. They may lack a meaningful measure of success. Well-led, well-managed teams and people embrace the challenges and use the problems of today to motivate and propel them to a future they love by creating effective strategies and plans and acting effectively. They measure their success by how much they reach their potential. Here's my blog post https://joshuaspodek.com/management-versus-leadership https://joshuaspodek.com/management-versus-leadership, but it's basically the above.
einpoklum 6y ago
> Do we really need leaders? Well, the thing is that commercial companies - which are owned by a party other than their employees [1] - "need" agents of owners' control. Whether they "lead" or not is not the main point. The point is that they answer directly to the owners, and through this they have power and control. Without them, the workers would "do what they want" - which may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it won't be what the owners decide. So, in that sense, "we" "need" "leaders", yes. [1] - If workers also own company stock that doesn't changed the structural nature of the ownership relations.
ourmandave 6y ago
I'm getting really tired of these thinly veiled Boeing hit pieces!
elesbao 6y ago
Digital Tonto in Spanish means "Digital Fool" so the article is well placed
candiddevmike 6y ago
One thing missing when everyone talks about the effectiveness of hierarchical orgs is the personal agendas at each level of the hierarchy naturally cause tension, chaos, and waste. Everyone incorrectly assumes each branch acts in perfect harmony with the rest of the org, when it is anything but. You would need to remove the incentives of selfish actions and backstabbing to see any of the efficiencies with a formal hierarchy. Otherwise each branch becomes a metaphorical tumor.
sorval 6y ago
I've seen in leaderless orgs that getting new headcount for your part of the org is very hard, and everyone just does what they want. Theres multiple tools competing for each other. Getting promoted is hard. Ownership is difficult-- everyone wants to be an advisor and not an owner. "No managers" sounds good, but I havent seen it work well.
gumby 6y ago
I consider Valve an excellent example of how this does not scale, especially when successful. First, when there is no overt structure, it is replaced by politics. Second, you can see the result: the difficulty (one might even say inability) to produce new product internally; instead new games come from acquisition: the incoming team might manage a sequel but after that the team dissolves and can't recruit new members for a second sequel. I do think the dominant system would benefit from a rethink of the "leader/follower" mentality: everyone is needed (else why are they there) and they do different parts. Cleaning the office is important else the whole thing stops working; deciding go/no go on a new product is also important else the cleaners lose their job. I am not sure how to fix this. The fact that we conceive of hives of bees as having a "queen" (who is in fact the weakest member of the entire colony with precisely zero decision making ability) shows how deeply entrenched this model is.
Stierlitz 6y ago
This is a false premise. Human beings are a hierarchical animal and experience stress if uncertain of their position in the social order. Even in a professed leaderless organisation, the group will invariably form into an informal hierarchy, with those possessing more ‘social credit’ occupying positions of power. The rest spread out along the totem pole. • ‘social credit’ being any of: good looks, intelligence, money, high-status relatives, a car ..
mamon 6y ago
Every organization will have leaders - that's just the human nature, most of us feel more comfortable if all hard decisions are made for us. The choice is between officially appointed leaders (managers), and unofficial ones - I guess it makes it harder to run an organization if you're not even sure who the actual leaders are.
zwaps 6y ago
It's worth reiterating that leadership and management are (at least in academic circles concerned with such things) rather distinct concepts. Management concerns the organization of people, tasks, information, incentives and all such things. Bad management is a common plague upon many an engineer, and probably for good reason. Bad leadership is more commonly felt through its absence. Managers could and maybe should be leaders, but often are not. Leading, of course, can also be done by someone positioned elsewhere in the formal hierarchy. Nowadays, the formal hierarchy (aka the org chart) of a firm may not necessarily reflect the informal structure of a well-functioning team. This then leads to the question: What is a leader? Surprisingly, the whole concept is rather elusive. If we do not mean management, what precisely does a leader do? The answer depends a lot on whom you ask. For example, economists have traditionally very little use for a leader. Coordination, information and all things amenable to traditional econ models, are things that a manager does. "Leading by example" is one of the few concepts where a leader has any use in economics of organization. Other literatures, by contrast, have an overwhelming amount of roles and theories about leadership, to the degree that one might question if the entire concept is well-defined at all. If you are interested in a shameless plug, we have analyzed the entire corpus of Harvard Business Review - a publication that concerns itself with leadership - to find a semantic definition of leadership "from the horse's mouth", so to speak. Results were fairly surprising - we see changes in roles and contexts of a leader over time: increasing reach and importance of the concept, but also sharper definitions of contexts of its roles. All these things mean that leadership is elusive. It means many things in different context (presentation on youtube under v=z2uceIRQA6g - again sorry for the plug). In my current view, the most important role for a leader, next to determining the strategic direction, is sense-making (or more precisely, sense-giving). Whenever the expectation of the team differs from reality, a leader's job is to provide the frameworks and consensus for a united narrative, one that allows the team to react and move forward.

80 points by Kinrany 6y ago

Humans are not fundamentally autonomous. Even expert humans do not individually know enough to go into depth about how complex systems work (they typically know one layer of abstraction in great detail). Humans are terrible at assessing reality. They are bad at prioritising. They are lousy learners. Leaders are a short circuit around all that by just telling people what to do, no arguments. If your organisation is small enough that everyone can be brilliant and busy, great, good luck, might work. But even then technical people often appreciate some leadership to reduce the mental load and let them focus on how rather than what and why. I doubt there are leaderless organisations. There are organisations that purposefully hide their leadership and those that do not. And yes, big management layers are bad. The managers have the same problems as everyone else - humans are limited. If there are lots of managers they can't all be above average and then the basic human problems they were meant to solve come back.

bergstromm466 6y ago
> Humans are terrible at assessing reality. They are bad at prioritising. They are lousy learners. I think this is missing the bigger picture. I wrote this a few days ago: “I think what we’re seeing has more to do with unaccountable invisible architectures (law/governance systems, IP and money) that obscure production processes, than that it’s anything to do with human nature or social media, or us being ‘hairless monkeys’.” Arthur Brock describes it better: “The story I want to be able to tell my (as of yet non-existent) grandchildren in 25 years. Once upon a time, our planet was dying. People had organized themselves into patterns with funny names like “limited liability corporations,” “federal governments,” “non-profit organizations,” and “institutions of higher education.” We were unwittingly eating the world and all of its resources to perpetuate the survival of and expand the growth of these social organisms." [...] “Since information sources and sharing protocols weren’t integrated, we couldn’t clearly see flow patterns on large scales. The fragmentation made it easy for people to only pay attention to what they wanted to hear, or remain ignorant and unseeing of things they didn’t search out. In fact, most information was received in the form of dramatic entertainment called “news” that was filtered and scripted by the organizations delivering it according to criteria which supported their own influence and growth. Since currency was only thought of as money, and wealth as accumulation, when people organized themselves into collective patterns, those social organisms were preoccupied with their own growth and acquisition of artificially scarce money. They were structured as cancers — using their resources only for their own perpetuation and growth — killing the planet that is their host. Do you remember hearing stories about “the Internet?” — the early network for computer communication that started to emerge in the late 1900s… It was a place of great experimentation and chaos. We hadn’t yet discovered how to make all protocols interact with each other, or have shared models of meaning and world-views to operate from. But information started flowing quickly around the world, accelerating change in surprising and exciting ways.“ [...] "In the early 2000s, there was a breakthrough. A small group of people translated the organizational patterns by which living systems operate into the computing and communications. Soon they invented the field of current-see design to consciously design the DNA of social organisms in accord with the sacred patterns which nourish life. People began to organize themselves into a variety of patterns that look more like ways you see us working together today. Fractal computing receptors and self-describing protocols enabled information to flow in new distributed patterns of coherence. We built an easy compository for sharing meaning and models for sense-making. Our collaboration tools started evolving much more rapidly with the ability to install new shared protocols in an instant. There was no longer centralized control of information in every group and organization. There was an explosion of new life and new patterns of collective intelligence In many ways this explosion of social organisms and communication protocols was even more chaotic than the Internet it began replacing. Really amazing patterns started emerging which quickly outperformed the corporations of the past because they were better at having people feel fulfilled, trusted, known, heard and involved… better at sharing resources that were previously hoarded… better at creating outrageous productivity and creative results. Once we learned how to organize ourselves in these ways, we were able to reverse the damage to the planet and our communities very quickly. Problems that had been accumulating for hundreds of years, we reversed in only a handful years because we could coordinate on a planetary scale in ways that nourished the bodies, spirits, and hearts of everyone involved. We learned the joy of dancing together for mutual benefit, built the tools for us to see the state of our collective dance, and grew to feel the vibrancy of those rhythms together.“ Source: https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-metacurrency-myth-8db61ed14fb8 https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-metacurrency-myt...
dandanua 6y ago
Humans tend to choose leaders because of their biological nature, not because it's more reasonable. They would like to follow a human (a creature similar to them), not a law — an abstract thing with no face. BTW, the idea of God in religions is basically a personification of laws that a community must obey. A useful trick to make things work. It's true that some people are smarter than others in certain tasks, so it's reasonable to give them more power in making decisions. But it's not reasonable to give them ALL the power. Because no human is smarter than a collective mind of others.
krageon 6y ago
According to your own assessment of reality, we should not take what you say seriously. Clearly you are either wrong about humans or not competent to make sweeping judgements about this complex system. This is not a criticism of you personally, but rather of the internal consistency of your argument.
tyingq 6y ago
"I doubt there are leaderless organisations." That's what I suspect as well. If you don't specify who the leaders are, some will emerge anyway. Perhaps there's some advantages there, but one obvious disadvantage is that the org structure is now undocumented.

teddyh 6y ago

See also The Tyranny of Structurelessness https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

KnightHawk3 6y ago
and it's response The Tyranny of Tyranny https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cathy-levine-the-tyranny-of-tyranny https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cathy-levine-the-tyr...
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  It's probably the most chaotic and unconvincing text I've read this week. Decidedly not on the same level as the famous article it aimed to demolish.
- hitekker 6y ago
  This article is less an honest response and more a knee-jerk reaction. Raw, seething resentment that goes nowhere.

TuringTest 6y ago

I recommend reading about the cybernetic concept of viable systems[1], and in particular the Viable Systems Model of organizations (VSM); [2] Cybernetics is the science of self-regulation as reaction to changes in the environment. The VSM theory poses that, for any complex system to become sustainable, it needs to adapt to changes in the environment that would tear it apart. Enduring organizations are structured as a loose fractal hierarchy, where a core "policy-making" subsystem decides what is the defining essence of the organization. Other types of subsystems would distribute the signals and process, them to get work done towards what constitute 'progress' and 'change' in the system. This core sends regulatory signals to the other subsystems to react and adapt against environment external signals, to keep the whole system alive and working efficiently. The strength and variety of the external and internal signals between subsystems could be measurable, defining a model to predict what complexity must possess the organization to deal with its environment and what signal strengths may break it. Thus the whole organization may change greatly and evolve as reaction to changes in the environment, but the core subsystem will decide what parts of the organization must remain constant to keep its essence intact. According to this model, a leaderless organization would not need to have a single person in a leadership role, but would still need to have this core to define its essential characteristics; otherwise it couldn't work as a coherent organization working towards well-defined goals, but a loose movement pulling in all directions at once. Edit: elucidate the main points. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_theory [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model

unixhero 6y ago
Stafford Beer!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

pietrovismara 6y ago

This reminds of the story of Google firing all its managers, only to then have problems like engineers craving for feedback, avoiding boring work or being unable to resolve friction by themselves. It seems clear to me that most people (even the most brilliant engineers apparently) still need something as a reference, they can't just be let on their own. But that reference doesn't need to be a single manager. We could start to think of the team as the manager. The team can perfectly give feedback, handle friction, distribute boring work and so on. We already have plenty of stupid daily standups, team meetings, weekly all-hnds meetings and so on, so it wouldn't really be hard to have a team daily standup where problems can be brought up to everyone and solved cooperatively.

mtrycz2 6y ago
People that are brilliant in their field not necessarily are brilliant in "soft skills", or at least have been prepared to manage those skills. The Morning Star example (which I read of just now) seems to have the leaderless thing as a cultural backdrop, and new employees receive training in it (by doing). OTOH, you can't just do away with managers in a structured organization and expect it to work, the culture is not there.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > you can't just do away with managers in a structured organization and expect it to work, the culture is not there. Totally agree. That's probably another big mistake of the google experience.You can't just change completely the organizazion and expect everything to work fine the next day. Change should be done gradually, ideally I would gradually assign responsibilities to the team, while leaving a manager there to supervise and slowly fade out.
  - WJW 6y ago
    How would you address the problem of all "good" managers (defined here as those who can easily get another job elsewhere) just leaving immediately instead of remaining in a job that now has zero growth potential? It seems that very rapidly you would have only the worst managers left and (because by definition they would have trouble getting another job elsewhere) they would have every incentive to halt or slow the phasing out of managers in the company.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Wasn’t there a story about Steam’s culture, a few years ago? I seem to remember a quote about Gabe Newell, and how he actually was very much in charge, despite there being no managers. I have no real feedback on whether or not this structure is effective. I was a manager for a long time, and hated it. I would have much rather been an engineer; but that is probably more a reflection on me, than the practice of Management.

howlgarnish 6y ago
Leadership is often as much if not more about influence than authority. As a manager, while part of my job is managing "down" (people I have formal reporting-line authority over), it's equally if not more important to manage sideways (peers, stakeholders in other orgs) and upward (my own managers).

js8 6y ago

As a leftist with anarchist leanings, I have thought for a long time about the purpose of social hierarchies in humans. It is clear that humans have deference to authority as one of universal values, why is that? There is a sort of standard ("right-wing", "evolutionary") explanation that argues that social hierarchies are of biological nature, similar to hierarchies in some species, they are related to sexual selection and simply somebody has to be an "alpha". Ultimately, I rejected this explanation because I think the evidence for it is contested. Some humans are actively willing to submit, it's not just the threat of violence that causes them to do so, and the deference to authority is not always sexual in humans. It seems that not all hierarchies are simply a struggle for power, although arguably in large-scale human groups, it often becomes the case. Currently, my favorite explanation of authority as a natural human value comes from the idea that the authorities represent "institutional memory" of the particular human group. So for example, the first authority you meet, your parents, exists to give you knowledge and experience of their life, so you wouldn't learn from zero as a child. Similar goes for the social group as a whole, the authorities in the group (typically the elders) are the people who lean conservative, and make sure that lessons of the past are remembered by the group. Given this explanation for the role of social hierarchies and authority, I am not sure what replaces this "institutional memory" in "leaderless" organizations. If nothing replaces it, it must become inefficient eventually by repeating past mistakes. Or the leaderlessness might be short-lived and the authority which holds the institutional memory will appear. However, I agree that in modern large companies, the management is often turned over much more frequently than some employees. This, assuming the actual role of hierarchy in human groups is to gatekeep institutional memory, would explain why some conclude that management is useless. But it is not clear whether going further and entirely removing it is going to be better.

cturner 6y ago
Something I find interesting about the French Revolution is how slowly the commoners came to seriously consider alternatives to the default system of rule, despite sustained loss-of-credibility by the elites. This seems to fit with your /institutional memory/ model. > But it is not clear whether going further > and entirely removing it is going to be better. There is room to distinguish strategic leadership and middle-management. Strategic leadership sets coherent direction for an institution, and continues to be relevant. Middle management is a vestige of the industrial era, where manpower and scale were interchangeable concepts. The orchestras show that there is an alternative to middle-management. We don't really have a word for this, but we could call it Elders. A key difference between Elders and Middle Managers is the role of skills. Elders must be at least competent at domain-relevant skills to be relevant, and their respect grows with skill mastery. Whereas, in a MM culture, having skills excludes you from influence. You are either a career manager (entirely without domain skills), or you convert. In the process of conversion, you will have social pressure applied not to get your hands dirty.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

The article uses terms leader and manager interchangeably, but they’re clearly not the same thing. Teams can operate quite happily without a direct manager, though they still need it on some level to define what the goals are. But no team can operate without leaders. Leaders and managers are different things. You can have a team where the leader and the manager are different people. You can have a team with more than one leader, where they each lead in a particular competency, or on a particular project, or on a particular day because everybody else is in a bad mood. Properly functional teams tend to self select their own leaders, based on how they view their competency (both technically and socially). Every team that works well will have one or more people that the other team members trust to make decisions, provide feedback, guidance and advice. A leader doesn’t need to have a job title. The behaviour of the team members determine who the leader is, it’s not a role management can assign to somebody. If you’re lucky, the leader of a team and it’s manager will be the same person, because the leaders will usually have more clout than the managers. But that’s often not the case.

einpoklum 6y ago

> Abraham Lincoln. Winston Churchill. Nelson Mandela. We honor our leaders and always have. Only if we don't study our history, and have a very low bar. Ignoring, for a second, the question of leadership-vs-leaderlessness (which is important of course), let's remember that: 1. While Lincoln led the US to a civil war which abolished formal slavery, his own opinion on black people was quite horrid: > I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. and indeed, the US took very little action to rectify the historical injustice. 2. Churchill was a staunch imperialist in terms of his public career, and is hated by the peoples of the middle east for his involvement in the continued occupation and the continued support and sometimes setup of oppressive puppet governments in British areas of control. At home, he was a tool of the rich in terms of state spending on welfare and other issues. In fact, even when it comes to Nazi Germany, Churchill supported non-intervention in Spain, where a significant British intervention against the Fascists would have had significant effect on later events. 3. Mandela is perhaps the most worthy of respect, but it must be remembered that the ANC essentially gave up on ending material, economic white supremacy in South Africa to end formal, legal apartheid. Whites, to this day, control almost all of the land and wealth. And the worst thing about it is that it is now a black government which enforces local white and foreign-multinational property rights against the landless and the poor.

Stierlitz 6y ago
> .. While Lincoln led the US to a civil war which abolished formal slavery, his own opinion on black people was quite horrid .. I figure Lincoln had to say that, in order to bring along those wavering abolitionists.
charlescearl 6y ago
Good points. With respect to Mandela, it is also important to acknowledge all of the "anonymous" ANC members, students, SACP members, trade unionists, etc who worked independently and in coordination every day, and gave their last breath each of the years that Mandela and the senior leadership were imprisoned. All that to say that the success of the South African liberation struggle and the success of this summer's BLM protests point to the need for and efficacy of organizations that can effectively execute with minimal leadership as the situation demands.

eternalban 6y ago

Leadership is not management. Also, is there an example of a factually leaderless organization, past or present? (Anonymous is not a transparent organization and is not an informative example.)

alphadevx 6y ago
Nailed it. Most managers are executing a process or strategy defined by somebody else, they are not leaders. An org without a leader is rudderless. Can't think of a real, successful example either.
einpoklum 6y ago
Yes, and probably many. Here are two: First Example: 1. In many world states, condominiums / apartment buildings have common building affairs run by a residents' association. While these typically have executive functions assigned to only a small number of people, it's very often that membership in that committee changes frequently, with a a decent fraction of the residents getting to serve on it occasionally, and this executive is never (well, in my experience) perceived as "leading" the residents. These are stable organizations which last for decades doing concrete practical work - with a budget, engagement of contractors and occasional employees, interaction with municipal or state authorities etc. Second Example: The CNT, Confedercion Nacional del Trabajo. This is a confederation of Anarchist Labor Union, whose hey-day was during the 1920s and 1930s, but unfortunately got decimated by Francist Fascism. It survived underground and today is active, though not remotely as large as those days. Its structure is a bit involved, but the main ideas relevant to your question is that regional or national bodies cannot make decisions for the local bodies, nor the national for the regional, and their capacities are secretarial and administrative (which of course still carries a lot of power); and even that rotates - regional secretariats assume the role of national secretariats in some kind of round-robin fashion. This in itself does not mean that there's no leadership, but the structure, together with the anti-Authoritarian ethos of Anarchism is a political philosophy and labor-unionism as what's actually practiced contribute to an anti-centralist spirit which (hopefully still today) permeates the organization. It's a "do it yourself together" kind of an attitude rather than "wise people trusted by many have laid out the path for us". Caveat: I only visited with one of the regional confederations once in 2006 and read about them so I can't "guarantee leaderlessness". See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_de...

frederikvs 6y ago

Another great resource, for those who are interested in this sort of thing, is the book "Reinventing Organizations" by Frédéric Laloux. It's a bit of a guidebook on how to build this sort of organisation.

JackMorgan 6y ago
I agree this is a great resource. It uses case studies of functional companies operating in this model. I think it is very worth reading if you want to help grow an organization this way.

spodek 6y ago

First, the problem determines the solution. A team without leaders isn't better or worse. It's different. When one mode works better, use it. When the other, use the other. When something else, something else. Second, the article shifts back and forth between leadership and management. I just posted to my blog about the difference, with a picture of an apple and an orange. While they overlap, they aren't the same. By no means am I suggesting one is better, only that big enough jobs require both. Managers use skills like analysis, planning, record-keeping, and organization on readily measurable things, facts, figures, observable deliverables, and timelines. A successful manager creates compliance. Well-managed teams get the job done. Leaders use skills like listening, vision, support, charisma, and credibility on intangibles, emotions, beliefs, stories, images, and symbols. A successful leader inspires. Well-led teams love their work. Managers work in the system, improving it to meet the values and goals driving it, making it more efficient. Leaders work on systems, adjusting them, leading them to align with values and goals they miss. Managers use incentives—carrots and sticks—based on the outcome desired. Leaders help others do what they already want to but haven't figured out how based on attracting and enlisting people whose goals and values align with the team and role. Managers react to the values and goals set by leaders. Leaders are proactive, figuring out what values and goals to prioritize. A manager's skills transfer between companies and industries. A manager can succeed without caring about what the team does. Managers get people acting. An effective manager gives people the satisfaction of a job well done. A leader must do what he or she leads others to. A leader believes in the cause. He or she can rarely succeed at leading what he or she doesn't care about, but the passion a leader feels for a cause makes the work rewarding and inspiring. An effective leader makes that inspiration infectious. Well-managed, poorly-led teams and people may feel obliged to work hard at something they don't care about. They may work for material rewards but not value them. They measure their success by how much they do. Well-led, poorly-managed teams and people may feel inspired and passionate but not know what to do. They may feel frustrated with a present inferior to a future vision they aren't moving toward. They may lack a meaningful measure of success. Well-led, well-managed teams and people embrace the challenges and use the problems of today to motivate and propel them to a future they love by creating effective strategies and plans and acting effectively. They measure their success by how much they reach their potential. Here's my blog post https://joshuaspodek.com/management-versus-leadership https://joshuaspodek.com/management-versus-leadership, but it's basically the above.

einpoklum 6y ago

> Do we really need leaders? Well, the thing is that commercial companies - which are owned by a party other than their employees [1] - "need" agents of owners' control. Whether they "lead" or not is not the main point. The point is that they answer directly to the owners, and through this they have power and control. Without them, the workers would "do what they want" - which may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it won't be what the owners decide. So, in that sense, "we" "need" "leaders", yes. [1] - If workers also own company stock that doesn't changed the structural nature of the ownership relations.

ourmandave 6y ago

I'm getting really tired of these thinly veiled Boeing hit pieces!

elesbao 6y ago

Digital Tonto in Spanish means "Digital Fool" so the article is well placed

candiddevmike 6y ago

One thing missing when everyone talks about the effectiveness of hierarchical orgs is the personal agendas at each level of the hierarchy naturally cause tension, chaos, and waste. Everyone incorrectly assumes each branch acts in perfect harmony with the rest of the org, when it is anything but. You would need to remove the incentives of selfish actions and backstabbing to see any of the efficiencies with a formal hierarchy. Otherwise each branch becomes a metaphorical tumor.

sorval 6y ago

I've seen in leaderless orgs that getting new headcount for your part of the org is very hard, and everyone just does what they want. Theres multiple tools competing for each other. Getting promoted is hard. Ownership is difficult-- everyone wants to be an advisor and not an owner. "No managers" sounds good, but I havent seen it work well.

gumby 6y ago

I consider Valve an excellent example of how this does not scale, especially when successful. First, when there is no overt structure, it is replaced by politics. Second, you can see the result: the difficulty (one might even say inability) to produce new product internally; instead new games come from acquisition: the incoming team might manage a sequel but after that the team dissolves and can't recruit new members for a second sequel. I do think the dominant system would benefit from a rethink of the "leader/follower" mentality: everyone is needed (else why are they there) and they do different parts. Cleaning the office is important else the whole thing stops working; deciding go/no go on a new product is also important else the cleaners lose their job. I am not sure how to fix this. The fact that we conceive of hives of bees as having a "queen" (who is in fact the weakest member of the entire colony with precisely zero decision making ability) shows how deeply entrenched this model is.

Stierlitz 6y ago

This is a false premise. Human beings are a hierarchical animal and experience stress if uncertain of their position in the social order. Even in a professed leaderless organisation, the group will invariably form into an informal hierarchy, with those possessing more ‘social credit’ occupying positions of power. The rest spread out along the totem pole. • ‘social credit’ being any of: good looks, intelligence, money, high-status relatives, a car ..

mamon 6y ago

Every organization will have leaders - that's just the human nature, most of us feel more comfortable if all hard decisions are made for us. The choice is between officially appointed leaders (managers), and unofficial ones - I guess it makes it harder to run an organization if you're not even sure who the actual leaders are.

zwaps 6y ago

It's worth reiterating that leadership and management are (at least in academic circles concerned with such things) rather distinct concepts. Management concerns the organization of people, tasks, information, incentives and all such things. Bad management is a common plague upon many an engineer, and probably for good reason. Bad leadership is more commonly felt through its absence. Managers could and maybe should be leaders, but often are not. Leading, of course, can also be done by someone positioned elsewhere in the formal hierarchy. Nowadays, the formal hierarchy (aka the org chart) of a firm may not necessarily reflect the informal structure of a well-functioning team. This then leads to the question: What is a leader? Surprisingly, the whole concept is rather elusive. If we do not mean management, what precisely does a leader do? The answer depends a lot on whom you ask. For example, economists have traditionally very little use for a leader. Coordination, information and all things amenable to traditional econ models, are things that a manager does. "Leading by example" is one of the few concepts where a leader has any use in economics of organization. Other literatures, by contrast, have an overwhelming amount of roles and theories about leadership, to the degree that one might question if the entire concept is well-defined at all. If you are interested in a shameless plug, we have analyzed the entire corpus of Harvard Business Review - a publication that concerns itself with leadership - to find a semantic definition of leadership "from the horse's mouth", so to speak. Results were fairly surprising - we see changes in roles and contexts of a leader over time: increasing reach and importance of the concept, but also sharper definitions of contexts of its roles. All these things mean that leadership is elusive. It means many things in different context (presentation on youtube under v=z2uceIRQA6g - again sorry for the plug). In my current view, the most important role for a leader, next to determining the strategic direction, is sense-making (or more precisely, sense-giving). Whenever the expectation of the team differs from reality, a leader's job is to provide the frameworks and consensus for a united narrative, one that allows the team to react and move forward.