14 ms·

Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes

Ah, the tyranny of structurelessness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessnes... Seriously - in the absence of formal power structures, informal ones will always form, and they are often less accountable and fair than formal ones.

msutherl 13y ago
Almost all of the jobs I've had have been with small "non-hierarchical" groups. In all of them, the founders have insisted that there was no hierarchy where clearly there was. When I've tried to explain this to them, they've been incapable of perceiving it. Even at my current corporate job, it's the same situation, but by now I've learned that you just need to take power. The one source of legitimate power you do have as an employee, especially in our industry, is the power to leave. These days I cultivate a kind "I don't give a shit" attitude that works pretty well.
- guynamedloren 13y ago
  Interested to hear about how you wield this power. Do you use it as a threat, or are you saying that you just simply leave?
  - msutherl 13y ago
    Well, what is power? In this case it's the ability of somebody to say what you can and cannot do. But there are complexities in a non-hierarchical organization which lacks management structure. Those in power may not think they have power, they may not have much information about what you are doing, they may not have a clear way to tell you what to do. Power is implicit and soft. The rules only exist insofar as you interpret them from the environment and you follow them by your own accord, fearing imagined consequences. Succeeding in this kind of organization requires not only jockeying for position, but more subtly, overcoming the self-imposed coercion. This is where irreverence comes in handy. Once you eradicate fear, you can afford to take the risks required to freely design your relationship with your colleagues such that you have sufficient power. Ultimately you want them to trust you and you want to be able to challenge them on any topic. You want respect, and people respect excellence, confidence, and risk-taking. If for whatever reason you're working with people who are incapable of collaborating, your irreverence will either be taken as a threat that may change their behavior in your favor, or otherwise you can leave and it won't seem out of the blue.
- kamaal 13y ago
  The problem with non-hierarchical groups is the behind-the-scenes leaders, whom the powers-that-are trust. And therefore automatically unofficially become leaders. It looks like officially he isn't the boss, but for almost all practical purpose he is. The worst thing that happens in such places is, those people using their power to help their buddies, gangs and yes men for their own benefit and political power. If you are not one of them you are screwed.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    The thing is that this exists just as well in hierarchical groups though. I've yet to encounter an organization where the hierarchical structure accurately represents the actual power structure. What's happening here is that in flat organizations it's the -only- power structure and thus becomes more pronounced to our brains which are hard-wired to pattern match for the social power structures. Another way of looking at this is to see the hierarchical power structure as an abstraction that evolved to address the discomfort (some) people have with a more fluid power structure like at Valve. The interesting part here is that different people have different tolerance for this though; so much so that it's one of Hofstede's main cultural dimensions called 'Power distance'. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory#Dimensions_of_national_cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimension...
    - hannibal5 13y ago
      Formal hierarchies allow better distribution of responsibility and separation of personal relationships from work relationships. They also enable less politically/socially savvy people to get into powerful positions with their merit. Informal power structures in hierarchal groups have less power and they happen only between peers. In informal hierarchies relationships become personal and political. In anarchy, everything is politics and personal.
      - DrJokepu 13y ago
        Is it actually a good idea to put less politically/socially savvy people into powerful positions?
- na85 13y ago
  Can you elaborate on your 'tude?
  - msutherl 13y ago
    I think it's a combination of signaling superiority with body language, being friendly, greeting people with care and confidence, developing personal relationships, being proactive in meetings and in general, and most importantly just asking for what you want. There was a time when I tried to conform or figure out what other people wanted, but these days I approach people with a clear idea of what I think should be done and say something like: "this is what I'm interested in", with the subtext that I'll just leave if I don't get to do that. It's a kind of "take it or leave it" attitude.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  No hierarchy doesn't mean no accountability, instead you just surprise visits for the failure you didn't know you were responsible for.
qznc 13y ago
Our german Pirate Party is struggling with this as well. They desire to be a democratic party, where the officials just do as voted. Technology [0] is used to make this feasible. Nevertheless it hardly works out in practice and leads to lot of discussions and a high churn rate. [0] https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ note the meaning of the name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  people who don't really understand democracy (in terms of the implicit power structure) trying to institute it never ends well.
  - drawkbox 13y ago
    “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
    - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
      You cannot nudge a rock uphill
      - wavefunction 13y ago
        What's the point of nudging a rock uphill, I guess I would ask. Down at the bottom or at the crest, it's still a rock.
tfgg 13y ago
Was Valve ever "structureless"? My impression from reading the handbook was that power structures were recognised but not enforced, i.e. if you wanted someone on your project, you had to persuade them. This is not great if you can't get people to work on your pet project, but that doesn't mean the system isn't working. Personally, having seen Jeri's AR project video, I wouldn't have joined it. It seemed like a rather weak and non-transferable technology that didn't solve fundamental problems with AR and that had limited gameplay possibilities.
- moomin 13y ago
  But... she wasn't short of people who wanted to do the job. She was having trouble with the hiring process rejecting her candidates.
  - tfgg 13y ago
    She was short of people inside the company who wanted to do the job. Of course you can always find people outside the company who want in (it's a job, after all). In the case of hiring people specifically for someone's project, presumably the hiring process has to act as a proxy for the 'is that project worth working on?' or inflexible resources (a machinist isn't going to work on Steam) get tied up in a project no-one else is interested in. Hiring the person as a temporary non-employee contractor would probably solve that, but I see how Valve's resource allocation system might make that difficult.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      You never know when the machinist might have some interesting insight, especially in an organization lacking a machinist.
      - officemonkey 13y ago
        Which is why Valve has an economist, but not a machinist.
drawkbox 13y ago
It depends on the scale and the focus as well. For instance the open source groups and projects that form at a macro level are more innovative than just one companies structure and would be impossible with that type of organization. The focus of making useful and fun projects goes back to small groups and individuals really though. There was no formal structure for making new programming languages but individuals (mostly) stepped up to do it to share them because they were free to and the community rewarded that, it also led to many to financial rewards. I think structurelessness is a little messy but individuals and groups (usually small) can shine with the right rewards and outlets. Best organization is small structures within bigger macro ones.
lsiebert 13y ago
You got to this before me, but thank you for posting it. I remember reading that paper in college. It was the first thing I thought of when I read this. While rooted in the experience of liberal and women's groups, it really has lessons for anybody working in any organization that tries to eschew formality, including startups. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm "the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones ... Thus structurelessness ... is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware."
DalekBaldwin 13y ago
Or more generally, the iron law of oligarchy.
bane 13y ago
What's really interesting is that even in highly organized and structured work environments (e.g. the military), similar ad hoc power structures emerge, usually along the same lines. The formal power structure then usually ends up seeming like it just gets in the way of the informal one that appears to be getting things done.
speeder 13y ago
I have a friend that commonly says the phrase that "nature abhors power vacuums" I think he is quoting someone else, but I dunno who (also the quote might be inacurate, since I translated it from portuguese). He usually uses this quote when discussing the politics of feminist, to point out that power equality will never be reached, someone always lead, those who step down, will only open positions for others to step up.
- mathattack 13y ago
  This is very true. If there is no structure, there is no company, just a bunch of contractors doing business with each other. People need to know what's been decided and what to do, and what others are doing. Whether it's via influence, or via force, people need power.
- ryanklee 13y ago
  The translation is correct and -- you may already know this, it's tough to tell from your comment -- is a play on the Latin phrase "horror vacui," which is usually parsed back into English as "nature abhors a vacuum." It relates to some early (BC) physical theories which proposed that voids are impossible. Also called plenism. Edit: Good overview at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)
walshemj 13y ago
Which is why Charity's often have Horrific HR "issues" with bullying.

msutherl 13y ago

Almost all of the jobs I've had have been with small "non-hierarchical" groups. In all of them, the founders have insisted that there was no hierarchy where clearly there was. When I've tried to explain this to them, they've been incapable of perceiving it. Even at my current corporate job, it's the same situation, but by now I've learned that you just need to take power. The one source of legitimate power you do have as an employee, especially in our industry, is the power to leave. These days I cultivate a kind "I don't give a shit" attitude that works pretty well.

guynamedloren 13y ago
Interested to hear about how you wield this power. Do you use it as a threat, or are you saying that you just simply leave?
- msutherl 13y ago
  Well, what is power? In this case it's the ability of somebody to say what you can and cannot do. But there are complexities in a non-hierarchical organization which lacks management structure. Those in power may not think they have power, they may not have much information about what you are doing, they may not have a clear way to tell you what to do. Power is implicit and soft. The rules only exist insofar as you interpret them from the environment and you follow them by your own accord, fearing imagined consequences. Succeeding in this kind of organization requires not only jockeying for position, but more subtly, overcoming the self-imposed coercion. This is where irreverence comes in handy. Once you eradicate fear, you can afford to take the risks required to freely design your relationship with your colleagues such that you have sufficient power. Ultimately you want them to trust you and you want to be able to challenge them on any topic. You want respect, and people respect excellence, confidence, and risk-taking. If for whatever reason you're working with people who are incapable of collaborating, your irreverence will either be taken as a threat that may change their behavior in your favor, or otherwise you can leave and it won't seem out of the blue.
kamaal 13y ago
The problem with non-hierarchical groups is the behind-the-scenes leaders, whom the powers-that-are trust. And therefore automatically unofficially become leaders. It looks like officially he isn't the boss, but for almost all practical purpose he is. The worst thing that happens in such places is, those people using their power to help their buddies, gangs and yes men for their own benefit and political power. If you are not one of them you are screwed.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  The thing is that this exists just as well in hierarchical groups though. I've yet to encounter an organization where the hierarchical structure accurately represents the actual power structure. What's happening here is that in flat organizations it's the -only- power structure and thus becomes more pronounced to our brains which are hard-wired to pattern match for the social power structures. Another way of looking at this is to see the hierarchical power structure as an abstraction that evolved to address the discomfort (some) people have with a more fluid power structure like at Valve. The interesting part here is that different people have different tolerance for this though; so much so that it's one of Hofstede's main cultural dimensions called 'Power distance'. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory#Dimensions_of_national_cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimension...
  - hannibal5 13y ago
    Formal hierarchies allow better distribution of responsibility and separation of personal relationships from work relationships. They also enable less politically/socially savvy people to get into powerful positions with their merit. Informal power structures in hierarchal groups have less power and they happen only between peers. In informal hierarchies relationships become personal and political. In anarchy, everything is politics and personal.
    - DrJokepu 13y ago
      Is it actually a good idea to put less politically/socially savvy people into powerful positions?
na85 13y ago
Can you elaborate on your 'tude?
- msutherl 13y ago
  I think it's a combination of signaling superiority with body language, being friendly, greeting people with care and confidence, developing personal relationships, being proactive in meetings and in general, and most importantly just asking for what you want. There was a time when I tried to conform or figure out what other people wanted, but these days I approach people with a clear idea of what I think should be done and say something like: "this is what I'm interested in", with the subtext that I'll just leave if I don't get to do that. It's a kind of "take it or leave it" attitude.
sageikosa 13y ago
No hierarchy doesn't mean no accountability, instead you just surprise visits for the failure you didn't know you were responsible for.

qznc 13y ago

Our german Pirate Party is struggling with this as well. They desire to be a democratic party, where the officials just do as voted. Technology [0] is used to make this feasible. Nevertheless it hardly works out in practice and leads to lot of discussions and a high churn rate. [0] https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ note the meaning of the name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy

nazgulnarsil 13y ago
people who don't really understand democracy (in terms of the implicit power structure) trying to institute it never ends well.
- drawkbox 13y ago
  “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    You cannot nudge a rock uphill
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      What's the point of nudging a rock uphill, I guess I would ask. Down at the bottom or at the crest, it's still a rock.

tfgg 13y ago

Was Valve ever "structureless"? My impression from reading the handbook was that power structures were recognised but not enforced, i.e. if you wanted someone on your project, you had to persuade them. This is not great if you can't get people to work on your pet project, but that doesn't mean the system isn't working. Personally, having seen Jeri's AR project video, I wouldn't have joined it. It seemed like a rather weak and non-transferable technology that didn't solve fundamental problems with AR and that had limited gameplay possibilities.

moomin 13y ago
But... she wasn't short of people who wanted to do the job. She was having trouble with the hiring process rejecting her candidates.
- tfgg 13y ago
  She was short of people inside the company who wanted to do the job. Of course you can always find people outside the company who want in (it's a job, after all). In the case of hiring people specifically for someone's project, presumably the hiring process has to act as a proxy for the 'is that project worth working on?' or inflexible resources (a machinist isn't going to work on Steam) get tied up in a project no-one else is interested in. Hiring the person as a temporary non-employee contractor would probably solve that, but I see how Valve's resource allocation system might make that difficult.
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    You never know when the machinist might have some interesting insight, especially in an organization lacking a machinist.
    - officemonkey 13y ago
      Which is why Valve has an economist, but not a machinist.

drawkbox 13y ago

It depends on the scale and the focus as well. For instance the open source groups and projects that form at a macro level are more innovative than just one companies structure and would be impossible with that type of organization. The focus of making useful and fun projects goes back to small groups and individuals really though. There was no formal structure for making new programming languages but individuals (mostly) stepped up to do it to share them because they were free to and the community rewarded that, it also led to many to financial rewards. I think structurelessness is a little messy but individuals and groups (usually small) can shine with the right rewards and outlets. Best organization is small structures within bigger macro ones.

lsiebert 13y ago

You got to this before me, but thank you for posting it. I remember reading that paper in college. It was the first thing I thought of when I read this. While rooted in the experience of liberal and women's groups, it really has lessons for anybody working in any organization that tries to eschew formality, including startups. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm "the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones ... Thus structurelessness ... is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware."

DalekBaldwin 13y ago

Or more generally, the iron law of oligarchy.

bane 13y ago

What's really interesting is that even in highly organized and structured work environments (e.g. the military), similar ad hoc power structures emerge, usually along the same lines. The formal power structure then usually ends up seeming like it just gets in the way of the informal one that appears to be getting things done.

speeder 13y ago

I have a friend that commonly says the phrase that "nature abhors power vacuums" I think he is quoting someone else, but I dunno who (also the quote might be inacurate, since I translated it from portuguese). He usually uses this quote when discussing the politics of feminist, to point out that power equality will never be reached, someone always lead, those who step down, will only open positions for others to step up.

mathattack 13y ago
This is very true. If there is no structure, there is no company, just a bunch of contractors doing business with each other. People need to know what's been decided and what to do, and what others are doing. Whether it's via influence, or via force, people need power.
ryanklee 13y ago
The translation is correct and -- you may already know this, it's tough to tell from your comment -- is a play on the Latin phrase "horror vacui," which is usually parsed back into English as "nature abhors a vacuum." It relates to some early (BC) physical theories which proposed that voids are impossible. Also called plenism. Edit: Good overview at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)

walshemj 13y ago

Which is why Charity's often have Horrific HR "issues" with bullying.