6 ms·

"Flat" companies are made of the same meat-material of the hierachycal ones. There'll be someone who will take initiative to lead, some that will be in the floc

"Flat" companies are made of the same meat-material of the hierachycal ones. There'll be someone who will take initiative to lead, some that will be in the flock, some that will be happy for a while and then succumb when crushed by the weight of having to decide.... and very soon _the hierachy_ is in place again.

pessimizer 4y ago
This sounds suspiciously like the law of averages. The reason that people lead within a hierarchy is not because they have the "initiative to lead", it's because they've been assigned to lead. Even if they lose any "initiative to lead" or lack any competence in leading, they will continue to lead as long as the person who pays the bills says so. This could be because that leader has a great track record, because the check-signer or someone they trusted sensed a special spark in that leader, because the leader is someone's nephew, or because the check-signer and the leader like the same music. That's what hierarchy is - it's being named the leader. To tightly couple that with "leadership qualities" is a sort of capitalist religion. If there's no hierarchy, maybe one person will lead on this, maybe another person will lead on that, maybe one person will be the nominal leader all the time, but actually materially limit their leadership to orchestrating the activities of a bunch of other leaders. It's not organization that's bad, it's arbitrary entitlement that's bad. The sentiment you express here is "there will always be a King." No, there won't always be a king.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  A hierarchy among other things provides clarity on who is the leader of what, what their powers are and what they will be held accountable for. Most bad management is people finding ways to bypass those checks and balances. Scapegoating others, playing dirty politics to exert more power than they can on paper, etc. Removing even a semblance of structure and accountability just makes those things even worse. Documenting the power structure and the social rules people must follow actually makes life easier for workers and not harder. You can even push back or negotiate those rules which is much harder if they are simply implied.
- PKop 4y ago
  What you describe is still the emergence of hierarchy. There's no rule that it can't be a voluntary arrangement of followers electing a leader, willingly following. When said leader doesn't deliver they remove their support, and elevate another... i.e. name him. Leadership qualities absolutely will come in to play in that scenario. Yes, bureaucratic structures can calcify a dysfunctional hierarchy; on the other hand the boss writing the checks exemplifies a hierarchy. The challenge is to construct a system that best maps to the natural variance in leadership abilities and successfully elevate best qualified leaders to positions of authority. The degree of mismatch is the degree of failure of the organization or system. >The reason that people lead within a hierarchy is not because they have the "initiative to lead" Sometimes this is the case though. How can you make a blanket statement it isn't true, given the assignment to lead & choice of bill-payer is certainly to a large degree informed by assessment of leadership ability?
- _e 4y ago
  You make some great points. The arbitrary entitlement is an important and vital step in the growth of an organization. Not every basketball fan should play or work for a NBA team. There has to be some sort of gatekeeping otherwise a bad hire or misplaced promotion could become a cancer that kills from within.
michaelfeathers 4y ago
It's important to realize as well that humans didn't invent hierarchy. It's a structure that occurs naturally when the costs of direct connection are too high in a system with many parts. This is why networks are federated and why vascular systems in biology are tree-like. The same dynamics are at play in human social systems, but they are not particular to them.
- camgunz 4y ago
  There's a difference between responsibility and authority though. The top of the lungs doesn't tell it's subsequent blood vessels what to do, it's just that more blood goes through them so they have to be constructed a certain way. It's not like God made them "higher", they just have a different job.
  - michaelfeathers 4y ago
    > it's just that more blood goes through them so they have to be constructed a certain way I agree but the same could be said about decision-making.
    - camgunz 4y ago
      I disagree. In hierarchies, people at the top aren't making every decision (though some try). Decision-making has to be spread out.
      - michaelfeathers 4y ago
        They are aggregation points for responsibility. Without those aggregation points, responsibility can be too diffuse for effective policy setting, etc.
        camgunz 4y ago
        I think we're being too abstract, and talking past each other a little maybe. Let's try a hypothetical. You're VP of engineering. You do stuff like: - Hire and manage middle managers - Manage budgets - Work with other VPs to determine the direction of the company I'm an IC on an engineering team. I do stuff like: - choose algorithms - choose code structure - make complexity/performance (and other) tradeoffs It's entirely possible you don't know a programming language, in fact it's likely. It's entirely possible I have no idea how to manage a corporate budget, in fact it's also likely. It's also pretty likely we never encounter each other, unless our company is pretty small. Are your decisions more consequential? Maybe. I definitely think your list is higher stakes than mine. But do my stuff hundreds of times a day, and my decisions build up in the aggregate. You can imagine tech debt piling up, or overengineering slowing down product features (threatening the company, maybe a client relationship). Are there differences in accountability? Well, neither of us acts entirely unilaterally. You have to run your budgets by your manager (or be responsible for it at some point), I have my team and code review. While the stakes for your work are higher, there are probably stronger guard rails. For example, while it sort of seems like you could fire all of your managers, you probably can't in actuality. Over time your incompetence or malice could force them out, but similarly my incompetence or malice could threaten our product. --- To bring this back into your framework of "aggregation points for responsibility", are you responsible for my work? I think the only way you would be is if corporate culture or policy made you responsible for my work; I don't think ethically you're responsible for my actions. (I want to carve a space out for knowledge, like if you know I'm doing something bad and you fail to act, then of course you're responsible, but this is because you're a human being, not because you're a VP of my department). Actually I'd go further and say that this idea creates a lot of problems. For example, if I goof password storage and expose our users' personal information, what were you supposed to do to prevent this? You're not a software engineer, much less a software security specialist. Were you supposed to set up a chain of accountability and review? That's what code review is for. Furthermore, this doesn't work the other way. If you mismanage the budget, I'm certainly not responsible. This isn't because you're "higher" up in the org chart than I am, it's because it's not my job to make sure you do your job well, that's your manager's job. I wouldn't have the expertise to judge, and the same goes for you. --- My overarching argument here is that the idea of the hierarchy is very baked into our conception of work, at least in the US. We struggle to think of the workplace without it. But it's actually pretty weird, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially in professional spaces.
newaccount2021 4y ago
right, the loudest bully on the mailing list or slack channel becomes the "boss" now you have two hierarchies - the "legitimate" hierarchy of management, and the hierarchy of popular/virtuous "influencers" from the rank and file
teddyh 4y ago
Yes; see The Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
clairity 4y ago
this is where playing a team sport like basketball (where all the players are "equal" to start) can give you useful intuition about natural hierarchies. on a team (makeshift or otherwise) players naturally sort themselves out by roles and capabilities dynamically, without explicitly deciding or planning everything out before hand. you quickly figure out who can shoot, drive, pass, defend, etc. on offense, one person typically has the best ball-handling (dribbling and passing) skills, so that's the person who "leads", but often someone else is better at scoring, so that person "leads" the scoring effort. someone else anchors the defense and will literally command people to shift around on the fly. while hierarchical, it's fluid and dynamic, so more like the idealized "flat" hierarchy that's become such a fashionable term.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The difficulty comes when there are decisions to be made, and it's not obvious things like "give the ball to the person who can score". At some point there will be 50/50 decisions, and someone has to make the call; that person we call the "leader".
  - kqr 4y ago
    No. If there's a 50/50 decision, none of the options are good and you need to work out a third. Or at least discuss and adjust the available options a bit more until you get a clear majority to support one of the options. The worst thing you can do in a 50/50 situation is to just make a call and steamroll the other side. You're very likely making a bad decision and enemies at the same time.
  - clairity 4y ago
    passing the ball to the scorer is in fact a harder decision that you claim because it butts right up against the personal ego (to score yourself and garner the esteem that comes with that). there's even a term for that: ball hog. also, the best shooter isn't always obvious nor a static quality. "best" is dynamic, based on the ever-shifting conditions on the court, and the winning strategy is to find that person dynamically in the middle of action, when opportunities are slim and fleeting. as @kqr alluded, 50/50 decisions are a sign of the lack of leadership, rather than a tool to reveal it.
gumby 4y ago
A company with no formal roles substitutes for it with politics. Just look at Valve.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

pessimizer 4y ago

This sounds suspiciously like the law of averages. The reason that people lead within a hierarchy is not because they have the "initiative to lead", it's because they've been assigned to lead. Even if they lose any "initiative to lead" or lack any competence in leading, they will continue to lead as long as the person who pays the bills says so. This could be because that leader has a great track record, because the check-signer or someone they trusted sensed a special spark in that leader, because the leader is someone's nephew, or because the check-signer and the leader like the same music. That's what hierarchy is - it's being named the leader. To tightly couple that with "leadership qualities" is a sort of capitalist religion. If there's no hierarchy, maybe one person will lead on this, maybe another person will lead on that, maybe one person will be the nominal leader all the time, but actually materially limit their leadership to orchestrating the activities of a bunch of other leaders. It's not organization that's bad, it's arbitrary entitlement that's bad. The sentiment you express here is "there will always be a King." No, there won't always be a king.

marcinzm 4y ago
A hierarchy among other things provides clarity on who is the leader of what, what their powers are and what they will be held accountable for. Most bad management is people finding ways to bypass those checks and balances. Scapegoating others, playing dirty politics to exert more power than they can on paper, etc. Removing even a semblance of structure and accountability just makes those things even worse. Documenting the power structure and the social rules people must follow actually makes life easier for workers and not harder. You can even push back or negotiate those rules which is much harder if they are simply implied.
PKop 4y ago
What you describe is still the emergence of hierarchy. There's no rule that it can't be a voluntary arrangement of followers electing a leader, willingly following. When said leader doesn't deliver they remove their support, and elevate another... i.e. name him. Leadership qualities absolutely will come in to play in that scenario. Yes, bureaucratic structures can calcify a dysfunctional hierarchy; on the other hand the boss writing the checks exemplifies a hierarchy. The challenge is to construct a system that best maps to the natural variance in leadership abilities and successfully elevate best qualified leaders to positions of authority. The degree of mismatch is the degree of failure of the organization or system. >The reason that people lead within a hierarchy is not because they have the "initiative to lead" Sometimes this is the case though. How can you make a blanket statement it isn't true, given the assignment to lead & choice of bill-payer is certainly to a large degree informed by assessment of leadership ability?
_e 4y ago
You make some great points. The arbitrary entitlement is an important and vital step in the growth of an organization. Not every basketball fan should play or work for a NBA team. There has to be some sort of gatekeeping otherwise a bad hire or misplaced promotion could become a cancer that kills from within.

michaelfeathers 4y ago

It's important to realize as well that humans didn't invent hierarchy. It's a structure that occurs naturally when the costs of direct connection are too high in a system with many parts. This is why networks are federated and why vascular systems in biology are tree-like. The same dynamics are at play in human social systems, but they are not particular to them.

camgunz 4y ago
There's a difference between responsibility and authority though. The top of the lungs doesn't tell it's subsequent blood vessels what to do, it's just that more blood goes through them so they have to be constructed a certain way. It's not like God made them "higher", they just have a different job.
- michaelfeathers 4y ago
  > it's just that more blood goes through them so they have to be constructed a certain way I agree but the same could be said about decision-making.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    I disagree. In hierarchies, people at the top aren't making every decision (though some try). Decision-making has to be spread out.
    - michaelfeathers 4y ago
      They are aggregation points for responsibility. Without those aggregation points, responsibility can be too diffuse for effective policy setting, etc.
      - camgunz 4y ago
        I think we're being too abstract, and talking past each other a little maybe. Let's try a hypothetical. You're VP of engineering. You do stuff like: - Hire and manage middle managers - Manage budgets - Work with other VPs to determine the direction of the company I'm an IC on an engineering team. I do stuff like: - choose algorithms - choose code structure - make complexity/performance (and other) tradeoffs It's entirely possible you don't know a programming language, in fact it's likely. It's entirely possible I have no idea how to manage a corporate budget, in fact it's also likely. It's also pretty likely we never encounter each other, unless our company is pretty small. Are your decisions more consequential? Maybe. I definitely think your list is higher stakes than mine. But do my stuff hundreds of times a day, and my decisions build up in the aggregate. You can imagine tech debt piling up, or overengineering slowing down product features (threatening the company, maybe a client relationship). Are there differences in accountability? Well, neither of us acts entirely unilaterally. You have to run your budgets by your manager (or be responsible for it at some point), I have my team and code review. While the stakes for your work are higher, there are probably stronger guard rails. For example, while it sort of seems like you could fire all of your managers, you probably can't in actuality. Over time your incompetence or malice could force them out, but similarly my incompetence or malice could threaten our product. --- To bring this back into your framework of "aggregation points for responsibility", are you responsible for my work? I think the only way you would be is if corporate culture or policy made you responsible for my work; I don't think ethically you're responsible for my actions. (I want to carve a space out for knowledge, like if you know I'm doing something bad and you fail to act, then of course you're responsible, but this is because you're a human being, not because you're a VP of my department). Actually I'd go further and say that this idea creates a lot of problems. For example, if I goof password storage and expose our users' personal information, what were you supposed to do to prevent this? You're not a software engineer, much less a software security specialist. Were you supposed to set up a chain of accountability and review? That's what code review is for. Furthermore, this doesn't work the other way. If you mismanage the budget, I'm certainly not responsible. This isn't because you're "higher" up in the org chart than I am, it's because it's not my job to make sure you do your job well, that's your manager's job. I wouldn't have the expertise to judge, and the same goes for you. --- My overarching argument here is that the idea of the hierarchy is very baked into our conception of work, at least in the US. We struggle to think of the workplace without it. But it's actually pretty weird, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially in professional spaces.

newaccount2021 4y ago

right, the loudest bully on the mailing list or slack channel becomes the "boss" now you have two hierarchies - the "legitimate" hierarchy of management, and the hierarchy of popular/virtuous "influencers" from the rank and file

teddyh 4y ago

Yes; see The Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

clairity 4y ago

this is where playing a team sport like basketball (where all the players are "equal" to start) can give you useful intuition about natural hierarchies. on a team (makeshift or otherwise) players naturally sort themselves out by roles and capabilities dynamically, without explicitly deciding or planning everything out before hand. you quickly figure out who can shoot, drive, pass, defend, etc. on offense, one person typically has the best ball-handling (dribbling and passing) skills, so that's the person who "leads", but often someone else is better at scoring, so that person "leads" the scoring effort. someone else anchors the defense and will literally command people to shift around on the fly. while hierarchical, it's fluid and dynamic, so more like the idealized "flat" hierarchy that's become such a fashionable term.

bombcar 4y ago
The difficulty comes when there are decisions to be made, and it's not obvious things like "give the ball to the person who can score". At some point there will be 50/50 decisions, and someone has to make the call; that person we call the "leader".
- kqr 4y ago
  No. If there's a 50/50 decision, none of the options are good and you need to work out a third. Or at least discuss and adjust the available options a bit more until you get a clear majority to support one of the options. The worst thing you can do in a 50/50 situation is to just make a call and steamroll the other side. You're very likely making a bad decision and enemies at the same time.
- clairity 4y ago
  passing the ball to the scorer is in fact a harder decision that you claim because it butts right up against the personal ego (to score yourself and garner the esteem that comes with that). there's even a term for that: ball hog. also, the best shooter isn't always obvious nor a static quality. "best" is dynamic, based on the ever-shifting conditions on the court, and the winning strategy is to find that person dynamically in the middle of action, when opportunities are slim and fleeting. as @kqr alluded, 50/50 decisions are a sign of the lack of leadership, rather than a tool to reveal it.

gumby 4y ago

A company with no formal roles substitutes for it with politics. Just look at Valve.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]