2 ms·
The Economic Problem
- jl2718 6y agoThis is a common state of most big companies; they just got there faster. What is the right way to organize a startup organization? What experiments have worked? Bounties? Voting? Holocracy? Matrix org? I have some experience with the Army, and they have a pretty decent template for operational planning at any scale. It’s not resource efficient, but the process in most big companies is a top-down political disaster by comparison. In most startups, it’s inevitable that somebody gets turned into a manager making arbitrary decisions, and everybody else just silently checks out. The Army system is designed to be independent of the people running it, which it has to be, because everybody rotates between operations independently every few months. Anyway, there has to be something better out there.
- karmakaze 6y ago> inevitable that somebody gets turned into a manager making arbitrary decisions, and everybody else just silently checks out :100:
- imtringued 6y agoThe idea of looking at the profit of individual departments makes zero sense. Vertical integration is all about avoiding to pay for profit margins of the the things you are integrating. Every single middle man wants x% margins. If anything, you want to drive margins on internal spending to zero and that means lots of "unprofitable" departments.
- Nasrudith 6y agoCynically internal markets sound a lot like "divide and conquer of competing subdivisions to redirect ambitions away from you" tactic used by dictators, most infamously Adolf Hitler. The closest valid use I can see is comparing the open market to your internal costs - if outside sellers can provide better services for a lower bottom line go with them instead of trying to go vertical. (Obviously there are industry specific caveats like if it is worth keeping some worse margin internal suppliers for the sake of reliability even if it is more expensive.)