In addition to what you are saying, "boss-less" organizational structures are not exactly new. This structure has been kicked around and implemented with vario

In addition to what you are saying, "boss-less" organizational structures are not exactly new. This structure has been kicked around and implemented with various levels of success since at least the 80's. It is a safe bet that most people's new ideas are some other person's old ideas. GE's Durham aircraft engine plant has a single manager for the 170+ employees that work in the plant, and the employees are responsible for almost all decisions, since 1993. In fact, the first plant manager believed she made no more than 12 unilateral decisions a year. The result was significant cost savings over other GE plants, with the entire plant working to reduce costs so they could win more contracts in the internal bidding. In other words, GE plants would bid within GE to manufacture new engines, so if the plant performed better, it was less at risk of being shutdown. Within 2 years defect rates fell by over 75%, and costs over 10% every year. Simple optimizations were made constantly; in one case an employee showed up to work with a bunch of fishing tackle boxes he bought, then spent the morning packing them full of all the small hardware necessary to assemble part of an engine. In another, the plant employees designed and erected specialized scaffolding, reducing time to assemble each engine by about 8 hours. Everyone is also required to change teams constantly so that there is cross-pollination of ideas, with the result being almost everyone in the plant can do every step in the process. There are other examples too, like Honeywell's honeycomb structure, which works very much like the GE plant, except in the field of power plant operations. At one point, Honeywell took over a plant in Thames, and the executives observed the employees. They would watch them do things in a hopelessly inefficient way, and ask them why they do it that way. The response was almost always because "that's the way 'they' make us do it". Honeywell executives declared war on 'they' in the plant, literally having actors come in dressed up in 'they' shirts, who they hunted down and kicked out of the plant. The point was to drive home that there is no 'they' anymore, the people that work there are responsible for everything that happens. Case in point, some time after that, a regular bottom of the rung employee fired a contractor on the spot for severe safety violations. The contractor went to the plant manager in protest, asserting that the employee couldn't do that. The manager's response was along the lines of, "it appears that they did." Of course, all these good things must have some downsides. In the case of Honeywell, there was a disastrous coverup that went undetected for some time caused by oversight failures related to nuclear waste reading. An employee took full ownership of the reading process, and wouldn't let anyone else near it, after they detected a bad reading, because they believed they may be fired for it. There were massive NRC fines, though the situation never really became dangerous. To be blunt, not only are these not new ideas, there are well known major issues that can arise from them, and there is a lot of information available about the potential issues and there mitigations. Another fun example from my own life, this time from NASA, with some key details changed without altering the narrative. One day, my mother, who works at NASA on the assembly of spacecraft, called me and started asking me engineering questions related to the heating and cooling cycle of different kinds of compounds, and the effect they could potential have on bonding. She had some concerns about a practice that had been going on at work. The assemblers were freezing a thermal epoxy compound before applying it because it was a bit easier to apply that way. She believed it could be an issue because of expansion and contraction, and asked them to stop. They didn't, so she went to their supervisor, who did not believe it was an issue. She also went to her boss, and her bosses boss, both of whom failed to respond. She also summarized her concerns to both in writing. From what she was describing to me, I told her it did not sound like she was overreacting, and that bonds could potentially fail in space, but that I couldn't really say what the risk actually was without more information. At this point, she had three options. She could do nothing, since she had already covered herself and reported it, she could go to the head of the program, or I suggested she could go tell the lead thermal engineer exactly what she told me. She told the lead engineer first thing the next day, and he flipped out. The compound was only certified for application at room temperature. Work stopped, and he went with her directly to the head of the program. Each tube of paste about the size of a tube of toothpaste costs about $10,000, and there were about 10 tubes in the freezer alone that would have to be discarded. In addition, the practice had been going on for months, all the work might have to be undone. In this case, the resolution was not negative. The engineer was able to certify the compound for application at the reduced temperature, after destructive testing, so there was no significant loss. That won't always be the outcome, it could have gone very differently, with either a failure in re-certification or in space. NASA has had other failures from similar issues, most prominent being Challenger. In this case, it's not a boss-less environment, but a complete management failure, approximating a boss-less environment (supervisor was waiting to retire, boss was not coming to work, but having secretary turn on computer, open office door, and place coffee on desk so it would appear he was there, etc). The overall point is, this stuff isn't new. Just because it works for Valve, doesn't mean it will work for everyone else. Valve does not have a huge need for internal controls because of the nature of the business, and ultimately of the product. Smart and motivated people want to work at Valve because they want to make games. No manager at Valve, and somebody gives a friend a bunch of free games. Worst case, they steal the password database and customer credit card numbers. If the same structure fails at Honeywell, there is a major safety violation and a bunch of people die. It could be downright dangerous to apply these ideas without fully exploring the potential consequences of doing so. Further, these types of management structures are well known, and there has been some significant research into the types of problems that can come up, and what can be done about. GE, for example, does extensive mandatory training at Durham on compromise, conflict resolution, and group decision making.