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It seems like this is becoming more and more of a trend, and is just starting to push into the realm of legitimacy, rather than "kooky company does something cr
by ryanbrunner 13y ago
It seems like this is becoming more and more of a trend, and is just starting to push into the realm of legitimacy, rather than "kooky company does something crazy".
There's plenty of examples in tech of companies without traditional management structures (and mostly no management at all) - GitHub, Valve, Treehouse, etc. Now a food processor of all places pulls this off.
I do think this is an approach that doesn't necessarily work well for large companies - building the sense of camaraderie necessary for this is impossible at 10,000 or even 1,000 employees IMO, but on the other hand - who says we need to have giant companies? Wouldn't things work a lot better with a whole lot of 150 person companies?
- moconnor 13y agoThis article is from the December 2011 issue, it's 2 years old now. However, the self-management principle at Morning Star still seems to be in effect: http://morningstarco.com/index.cgi?Page=Self-Management http://morningstarco.com/index.cgi?Page=Self-Management
- hythloday 13y agoWL Gore & Associates has over 10 000 employees and operates on a similar structure (and has done for decades): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates#Culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates#Cultu...
- mathattack 13y agoI recall an interview with John Chambers of Cisco many years ago where he mentioned having 20 or 30 direct reports, to avoid too much meddling in people's affairs. This can work if you don't need to make drastic changes (we have had a massive disruption in our industry and need to let half the workforce go - which half?) and if there doesn't need to be any cross-functional tiebreakers. What's strange is in a more recent (2009) article [1] he claims to be more command and control, but shifting towards a more bottom-up organic method. [1] http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/mckinsey_conversations_with_global_leaders_john_chambers_of_cisco http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet...
- Swannie 13y agoToday JC's direct report more or less == Cisco Board. He really only has three: COO and Co-President Gary Moore, Co-President Sales & Development Rob Lloyd, and CFO Frank Calderoni. Pretty much all other C-level and EVPs report to Gary and Rob. John talked about cutting, primarily, middle management during the recent 4000 job cuts announcement. You can guess how well that has worked. There is still plenty of scope to broaden the span of control in Cisco.
- molsongolden 13y agoA similar but more fringe structure that is regaining popularity is the worker collective/cooperative. Mondragon pulls it off to some degree with 10,000+ employees but their structure definitely involves more hierarchy than the smaller coops. 10,000 employees doesn't have to mean 10,000 employees all doing the same work in the same division, you can still have camaraderie within divisions or work groups and organize the entire company democratically. The worker collective gives ownership and influence to every worker and lessens the "us vs. them" dynamic by empowering workers and basically eliminating managers.
- nodata 13y agoI thought Valve didn't pull it off once it got to a certain size? http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve-management-jeri-ellsworth http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/09/valve-managem...
- ryanbrunner 13y agoYeah, stuff like that is what I was getting at about it not working for larger companies.
- mattlutze 13y agoIt seems Ellsworth's firing was hyped a lot around the tech news, and she definitely leveraged that to get her new AR goggle project off the ground. I'd like to see this story corroborated by other former Valve employees. Her interview there feels a lot like self-victimization.
- wsc981 13y agoThe Brazilian Semco company has a similar structure, IIRC: http://www.schneede.se/assets/files/Ricardo_Semler.pdf http://www.schneede.se/assets/files/Ricardo_Semler.pdf