8 ms·

Zappos says goodbye to bosses

98 points by webdisrupt 13y ago

colinbartlett 13y ago
I'm pleased to see more and more companies shedding more traditional management structures. I think they are the source of pain for a lot of people who flee corporate life to pursue their own ideas.
- aestra 13y ago
  Traditional management structures have their downsides, but I think they can be done well. I have also seen companies do non-traditional management structures that have just been a huge clusterfuck in implementation. It's all about implementation, I believe. I think it is important to keep metrics so we can see what works best for most organizations.
  - vvvVVVvvv 13y ago
    Data, not metrics. Data is facts, it's not opinionated. Metrics, on the other hands are built upon data but are often carrying an agenda with them, they're political (whether it's office or nation politics) tools.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      I see what you're saying, but data don't exist in some sort of pure state. All data are collected in a particular fashion. You can get most of the shenanigans you're implying for metrics with data collection as well.
  - twistedpair 13y ago
    Whatever the data/metric is, people will pander to it or game it until it is meaningless. Data itself is easier to perlustrate in the future to see different interpretations, but usually the C-suite will see what they want to see and be told what they want to hear.
sasvari 13y ago
previous submission and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016107
lps41 13y ago
I find it interesting that the number of Amazon-related articles in the Washington Post seems to have increased since Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Post. Note that Zappos is owned my Amazon.
- stingraycharles 13y ago
  I think that's more of a coincidence than a real conspiracy. Bezos has a lot more to lose than to gain if he were in fact pushing these types of articles.
  - gress 13y ago
    How would it be proven and what would he lose?
- gtCameron 13y ago
  So your theory is that Bezos spent $250 million of his own money to buy the Washington Post so that he could get more coverage of Amazon in one newspaper?
  - mbesto 13y ago
    It's actually a good strategy.
  - josefresco 13y ago
    More like; if you spent $250 million of your own cash to buy the WP you might as well use it to get more coverage of your other companies. Just because it's not the primary reason does not mean it's not happening.
- talmand 13y ago
  I would see it more as that maybe the employees of the Washington Post may be posting more Amazon related stories in an effort to do what they think will make the new boss happy without finding out if that's what would make him happy.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
edw519 13y ago
Tech billionaire checklist: - security detail - private jet - yacht - professional sports franchise - foundation - once respected media outlet as personal mouthpiece Once again, Jeff Bezos leads the way. (Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, parent company of Zappos, owns the Washington Post.)
- svantana 13y ago
  I was most surprised that they don't include disclosure of this relationship when mentioning Amazon in the article. I thought that was comme-il-faut of serious journalism.
  - smackfu 13y ago
    I see this at the end now: Note: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post
    - halviti 13y ago
      With no mention of the article being edited. Terrible.
- belluchan 13y ago
  They should have a disclaimer, but it's not exactly an ad for shoes at Zappos. As a customer I'd be worried by the instability such a big unproven change could bring to deliveries and customer support. It's a pretty fair and interesting article, but that's just my take.
  - aestra 13y ago
    I think its more akin to a PR piece about the company.
- nhangen 13y ago
  'once respected media outlet as personal mouthpiece' That should be given more focus IMO
stingraycharles 13y ago
For more information about this particular management style, see: http://holacracy.org/ http://holacracy.org/ It's linked from the article, but it deserves to be more prominently noted.
josefresco 13y ago
"Instead, there are people known as “lead links” who have the ability to assign employees to roles or remove them from them, but who are not in a position to actually tell people what to do. " You say tomato I say tomato. Seriously though, renaming a title does not equal removing it from your business structure. Why not call them managers and simply take away the elements of their job which cause issues? Seems to be this is more about drinking the kool-aid than it is about actual structural changes to how things are accomplished.
- kfk 13y ago
  Why not call them managers and simply take away the elements of their job which cause issues? But what are those elements? A good boss keeps a LOT of crap away from its employees, a bad one is the exact reverse. I want a manager, he does most of the crap political work for me while I grow professionally. Is it a problem managers exists or is it a problem some companies can't manage to hire good ones?
  - modoc 13y ago
    Yes exactly! The best boss I ever had explained his job like this (and yes probably some ego stroking in there): "You guys are like a rock band. You're the stars. You need to show up, practice, and play gigs on schedule. I'm like your band manager. It's my job to take care of all the random crap like booking tour buses, replacing blown amps, and protecting you from the annoying label guys so you can just focus and do your magic." It's a good analogy. A good manager protects their team and lets them focus on their work and gives them what they need to succeed.
    - PaulHoule 13y ago
      I'll just say every bad boss I've had has made a big deal of how much they isolate me from trouble, but yet their actions have the effect of amplifying trouble.
      - BryantD 13y ago
talmand 13y ago
So, poor performers can be identified if "they don't have enough roles" or "they're not a good fit for the company culture". What happens to them? I guess there are executives at a higher level that have the authority to fire these poor performers? These "lead links" sound like managers with less authority to me. If they are hoping for natural leaders to step forward then that seems how you become a manager in that company, you ask for it. Which, in some cases, is probably a better system than what many companies have in place that places people in roles they shouldn't be in. The roles are still there, some of the requirements and responsibilities are shifted a bit, but they just removed the titles.
- nhangen 13y ago
  Makes me wonder if part of the intent is to reduce salaries. No managers = no manager salaries. Kind of like getting a promotion without the salary increase, or increased duties without increased pay.
- nomade0 13y ago
  Yes, ROLES are still there, definitely. See "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 and a post by a Zappos employee about Holacracy: http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zappos/ http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...
methodin 13y ago
I just can't see this working. People are different. Some need to be led more than they can lead, some have a strong voice and others are quiet. Does anyone have any evidence to the contrary? By work I mean, inevitably it will settle into a more informal hierarchy but still there in practice (just not in title).
- gms7777 13y ago
  I agree that it will settle into an informal hierarchy, but I think that is exactly what they are looking for. They mention that they are looking for natural leaders to step up and such. I think the beauty of this plan, if it works, is that people will gravitate towards the roles that they are naturally good at and the heirarchy that emerges could be far better formed than anything that could have been built by hiring managers top down. Not to mention it will be fluid and can adapt with the company as it grows and changes and new projects come along. That said, I think this can go either way. Not having defined roles and relationships might cause more friction that it relieves. And to quote Douglas Adams, "It is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it". This might just cause a lot of uncertainty with those willing to yell the loudest trampling those around them. I'll be watching curiously.
wil421 13y ago
>show me any group of five human beings or five apes or five dogs, and I want to see the one where a status difference does not emerge. It’s who we are as creatures. This. The need for management arose once we stopped being nomads and started to organize ourselves into collective groups. Look at Native Americans, even they had Chieftains.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  > Look at Native Americans, even they had Chieftains. What does that mean?
  - wil421 13y ago
    I was trying to look for a traditional group of people that were pre Industrial revolution. That had organized groups of people with leaders or "managers". People started to study management in the 1800s so I wanted something before that time. Working right now so I was in a rush and Indians were the first to come to mind.
- mjewkes 13y ago
  http://www.waketech.edu/sites/default/files/libraryfiles/ereserves/ant220/kalahari.pdf http://www.waketech.edu/sites/default/files/libraryfiles/ere... "Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can't accept this... So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle."
  - wil421 13y ago
    Managers get chosen to be managers they dont all of the sudden come in after they do something important and say I am a manger or team lead or what have you.
- gruseom 13y ago
  Status difference can take many forms other than management hierarchy. Indeed, one big problem with management hierarchy is that it messes with the "native" status system of the creative disciplines, which is based on technical merit and peer respect. That contradiction is well known to most of us who have spent time on a software team at a non-software BigCo. So the point is not to get rid of status difference (which would mean replacing human nature and thus be foolish) but to find organizational forms that are better aligned with how creative work gets done.
VLM 13y ago
I miss the associate -vs- employee meaningless fad. I guess its inevitable that some other group gets a meaningless renaming fad.
Uchikoma 13y ago
I'm pro new org structures and ways to work together. I'm interested in Valve and Zappos and others. But the nagging feeling is what this Valve employee (who was fired) described: The company is led by the bullies just like in highschool.
- nomade0 13y ago
  Yep, it's definitely the risk when you get rid of an explicit structure – it gets replaced by a new, implicit one. In contrast, Holacracy doesn't just get rid of hierarchy, it REPLACES it with another structure – and in many ways, it's MORE structure (unlike what the press says). See more in these two blog posts that were published in reaction to the press buzz and the misinformation: - Five Misconception About Holacracy: https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 - Zappos at Holacrach (by Zappos' Head of Labs Tech): http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zappos/ http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...
  - Uchikoma 13y ago
    Thx, highly appreciated.
ionforce 13y ago
Does anyone have a plain English explanation or infographic for Holacracy? Sounds like a lot of smoke and mirrors and happy thoughts. What is the secret sauce in Holacracy that makes it different from hierarchies?
- nomade0 13y ago
  I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind Holacracy. We definitely have a lot of work to do to explain Holacracy outside of our trainings & consulting services - we're a young company and haven't focused on that as much so far, but it's definitely something on our radar (especially after this press storm). To answer your question, the secret sauce of Holacracy is the Holacracy Constitution – it replaces the CEO in deciding how decisions get made and how we organize. See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=31MljhiyxZ8 Also, you might be interested in two blog posts published in the past couple days in reaction to the often-inaccurrate press: - "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 - "Holacracy at Zappos" by a Zappos' employee: http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zappos/ http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...
endeavor 13y ago
This no-managers movement strikes me as disingenuous. The manager is still there -- there's just fewer of them. Big conflicts just get escalated all the way to the CEO/founder/owner. There was a recent HBR article about Google's management structure. They tried eliminating managers in 2002, but too many people just came directly to Larry when they had a problem (1). Holacracy doesn't scale. 1) http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-mana...
farginay 13y ago
Is there some result in the theory of random graphs that says that you can't have a graph of a certain size without developing hubs? It seems to happen in most systems.
- brg 13y ago
  There are a number of results about a giant connected component emerging as a Erdos-Renyi random graph increases in size. A hub however will simply arise as the result of variance.
  - farginay 13y ago
    You say "a hub" but I wonder whether it would be many? How close would such an effect be to hubs we see in scale free networks? In those, preferential attachment seems to induce hubs. Airline hubs are a good example - there's more value in connecting to a well-connected hub.
mindcrime 13y ago
I recently read an absolutely fascinating book called The Origin of Wealth.[1] Nominally the topic is economics, but it's far broader than that, talking about how all components of the economic system of wealth creation (including "firms") are part of a Complex Adaptive System, and are often CAS's themselves. The author makes the argument that a firm is a CAS using evolution to explore a "fitness landscape" in terms of it's "Business Plan" (his term that encompasses strategy at various levels within the firm). IF you buy this theory, it has some very interesting implications in terms of how firms should be managed, and the author provides some interesting thoughts. One point that stood out to me, is that all firms face a constant, internal tension between the need to do "operational stuff" that actually works very well with a traditional hierarchical management approach, and the need to do "exploratory work" which does NOT map well to hierarchy. Failing to understand and manage this tension may be why many firms feel so dysfunctional. The other point that stood out to me, is the idea that instead of a strict hierarchy - or complete undirected chaos - the best way to combine efforts towards both goals is by having individuals with a high degree of autonomy and empowerment coupled with a strong shared vision and common goals. In this model, the primary purpose of leadership is to imbue the members of the organization with that "strong shared vision and common goals". Or to put it more simply, you tell people what needs to be accomplished, not how to accomplish it, and trust them to use their judgment. On a related note, the book Adaptive Enterprise[2] makes a strong case for the idea of high decentralized teams, connected to each other through what the author calls a "Commitment Management Protocol".[3] I would say that both of these books have some useful ideas that could be applied to construct a better management structure than what most present-day firms use. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Wealth-Remaking-Economics/dp/1422121038 http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Wealth-Remaking-Economics/d... [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Creating-Sense-And-Respond-Organizations/dp/0875848745 http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Creating-Sense-And... [3]: http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-for-action-commitment-management-protocol/ http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-...
juddlyon 13y ago
Nice gimick, straight from the Tim Ferriss school of language.
makecheck 13y ago
If there are people in the organization who are still tasked with organizing people then they are bosses (or at least, they will eventually act like bosses again). It is possible to remove the management role, at least at a project level, by using technology. For instance, the first time I saw Trac our team effectively did this. To be practical however, a technology solution really does require the right group of people. You can’t have people who are uncomfortable logging into web sites, or too lazy to write good descriptions for things, and so forth. You need people who are (frankly) professionals, who look at something like a giant task list and do a fair job of distributing things sensibly amongst themselves. A solution like Trac really starts to shine when people learn the little niceties, like additional formatting in wiki entries or the magic sequences that set up links between things. Again though: you need a team that is willing to work with such a tool in the “right way”. If they do then you don’t really need a manager at all.
helenislovely 13y ago
We're doing the same thing at Gamevy. We're small at the moment which makes it (fairly) easy. As for how it goes as we grow - you can check out our blog on the "experiment"! http://giantleap.me/ http://giantleap.me/

98 points by webdisrupt 13y ago

I'm pleased to see more and more companies shedding more traditional management structures. I think they are the source of pain for a lot of people who flee corporate life to pursue their own ideas.

aestra 13y ago
Traditional management structures have their downsides, but I think they can be done well. I have also seen companies do non-traditional management structures that have just been a huge clusterfuck in implementation. It's all about implementation, I believe. I think it is important to keep metrics so we can see what works best for most organizations.
- vvvVVVvvv 13y ago
  Data, not metrics. Data is facts, it's not opinionated. Metrics, on the other hands are built upon data but are often carrying an agenda with them, they're political (whether it's office or nation politics) tools.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    I see what you're saying, but data don't exist in some sort of pure state. All data are collected in a particular fashion. You can get most of the shenanigans you're implying for metrics with data collection as well.
- twistedpair 13y ago
  Whatever the data/metric is, people will pander to it or game it until it is meaningless. Data itself is easier to perlustrate in the future to see different interpretations, but usually the C-suite will see what they want to see and be told what they want to hear.

sasvari 13y ago

previous submission and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016107

lps41 13y ago

I find it interesting that the number of Amazon-related articles in the Washington Post seems to have increased since Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Post. Note that Zappos is owned my Amazon.

stingraycharles 13y ago
I think that's more of a coincidence than a real conspiracy. Bezos has a lot more to lose than to gain if he were in fact pushing these types of articles.
- gress 13y ago
  How would it be proven and what would he lose?
gtCameron 13y ago
So your theory is that Bezos spent $250 million of his own money to buy the Washington Post so that he could get more coverage of Amazon in one newspaper?
- mbesto 13y ago
  It's actually a good strategy.
- josefresco 13y ago
  More like; if you spent $250 million of your own cash to buy the WP you might as well use it to get more coverage of your other companies. Just because it's not the primary reason does not mean it's not happening.
talmand 13y ago
I would see it more as that maybe the employees of the Washington Post may be posting more Amazon related stories in an effort to do what they think will make the new boss happy without finding out if that's what would make him happy.
vdaniuk 13y ago

edw519 13y ago

Tech billionaire checklist: - security detail - private jet - yacht - professional sports franchise - foundation - once respected media outlet as personal mouthpiece Once again, Jeff Bezos leads the way. (Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, parent company of Zappos, owns the Washington Post.)

svantana 13y ago
I was most surprised that they don't include disclosure of this relationship when mentioning Amazon in the article. I thought that was comme-il-faut of serious journalism.
- smackfu 13y ago
  I see this at the end now: Note: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post
  - halviti 13y ago
    With no mention of the article being edited. Terrible.
belluchan 13y ago
They should have a disclaimer, but it's not exactly an ad for shoes at Zappos. As a customer I'd be worried by the instability such a big unproven change could bring to deliveries and customer support. It's a pretty fair and interesting article, but that's just my take.
- aestra 13y ago
  I think its more akin to a PR piece about the company.
nhangen 13y ago
'once respected media outlet as personal mouthpiece' That should be given more focus IMO

stingraycharles 13y ago

For more information about this particular management style, see: http://holacracy.org/ http://holacracy.org/ It's linked from the article, but it deserves to be more prominently noted.

josefresco 13y ago

"Instead, there are people known as “lead links” who have the ability to assign employees to roles or remove them from them, but who are not in a position to actually tell people what to do. " You say tomato I say tomato. Seriously though, renaming a title does not equal removing it from your business structure. Why not call them managers and simply take away the elements of their job which cause issues? Seems to be this is more about drinking the kool-aid than it is about actual structural changes to how things are accomplished.

kfk 13y ago
Why not call them managers and simply take away the elements of their job which cause issues? But what are those elements? A good boss keeps a LOT of crap away from its employees, a bad one is the exact reverse. I want a manager, he does most of the crap political work for me while I grow professionally. Is it a problem managers exists or is it a problem some companies can't manage to hire good ones?
- modoc 13y ago
  Yes exactly! The best boss I ever had explained his job like this (and yes probably some ego stroking in there): "You guys are like a rock band. You're the stars. You need to show up, practice, and play gigs on schedule. I'm like your band manager. It's my job to take care of all the random crap like booking tour buses, replacing blown amps, and protecting you from the annoying label guys so you can just focus and do your magic." It's a good analogy. A good manager protects their team and lets them focus on their work and gives them what they need to succeed.
  - PaulHoule 13y ago
    I'll just say every bad boss I've had has made a big deal of how much they isolate me from trouble, but yet their actions have the effect of amplifying trouble.
    - BryantD 13y ago

talmand 13y ago

So, poor performers can be identified if "they don't have enough roles" or "they're not a good fit for the company culture". What happens to them? I guess there are executives at a higher level that have the authority to fire these poor performers? These "lead links" sound like managers with less authority to me. If they are hoping for natural leaders to step forward then that seems how you become a manager in that company, you ask for it. Which, in some cases, is probably a better system than what many companies have in place that places people in roles they shouldn't be in. The roles are still there, some of the requirements and responsibilities are shifted a bit, but they just removed the titles.

nhangen 13y ago
Makes me wonder if part of the intent is to reduce salaries. No managers = no manager salaries. Kind of like getting a promotion without the salary increase, or increased duties without increased pay.
nomade0 13y ago
Yes, ROLES are still there, definitely. See "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 and a post by a Zappos employee about Holacracy: http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zappos/ http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...

methodin 13y ago

I just can't see this working. People are different. Some need to be led more than they can lead, some have a strong voice and others are quiet. Does anyone have any evidence to the contrary? By work I mean, inevitably it will settle into a more informal hierarchy but still there in practice (just not in title).

gms7777 13y ago
I agree that it will settle into an informal hierarchy, but I think that is exactly what they are looking for. They mention that they are looking for natural leaders to step up and such. I think the beauty of this plan, if it works, is that people will gravitate towards the roles that they are naturally good at and the heirarchy that emerges could be far better formed than anything that could have been built by hiring managers top down. Not to mention it will be fluid and can adapt with the company as it grows and changes and new projects come along. That said, I think this can go either way. Not having defined roles and relationships might cause more friction that it relieves. And to quote Douglas Adams, "It is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it". This might just cause a lot of uncertainty with those willing to yell the loudest trampling those around them. I'll be watching curiously.

wil421 13y ago

>show me any group of five human beings or five apes or five dogs, and I want to see the one where a status difference does not emerge. It’s who we are as creatures. This. The need for management arose once we stopped being nomads and started to organize ourselves into collective groups. Look at Native Americans, even they had Chieftains.

humanrebar 13y ago
> Look at Native Americans, even they had Chieftains. What does that mean?
- wil421 13y ago
  I was trying to look for a traditional group of people that were pre Industrial revolution. That had organized groups of people with leaders or "managers". People started to study management in the 1800s so I wanted something before that time. Working right now so I was in a rush and Indians were the first to come to mind.
mjewkes 13y ago
http://www.waketech.edu/sites/default/files/libraryfiles/ereserves/ant220/kalahari.pdf http://www.waketech.edu/sites/default/files/libraryfiles/ere... "Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can't accept this... So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle."
- wil421 13y ago
  Managers get chosen to be managers they dont all of the sudden come in after they do something important and say I am a manger or team lead or what have you.
gruseom 13y ago
Status difference can take many forms other than management hierarchy. Indeed, one big problem with management hierarchy is that it messes with the "native" status system of the creative disciplines, which is based on technical merit and peer respect. That contradiction is well known to most of us who have spent time on a software team at a non-software BigCo. So the point is not to get rid of status difference (which would mean replacing human nature and thus be foolish) but to find organizational forms that are better aligned with how creative work gets done.

VLM 13y ago

I miss the associate -vs- employee meaningless fad. I guess its inevitable that some other group gets a meaningless renaming fad.

Uchikoma 13y ago

I'm pro new org structures and ways to work together. I'm interested in Valve and Zappos and others. But the nagging feeling is what this Valve employee (who was fired) described: The company is led by the bullies just like in highschool.

nomade0 13y ago
Yep, it's definitely the risk when you get rid of an explicit structure – it gets replaced by a new, implicit one. In contrast, Holacracy doesn't just get rid of hierarchy, it REPLACES it with another structure – and in many ways, it's MORE structure (unlike what the press says). See more in these two blog posts that were published in reaction to the press buzz and the misinformation: - Five Misconception About Holacracy: https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 - Zappos at Holacrach (by Zappos' Head of Labs Tech): http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zappos/ http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...
- Uchikoma 13y ago
  Thx, highly appreciated.

ionforce 13y ago

Does anyone have a plain English explanation or infographic for Holacracy? Sounds like a lot of smoke and mirrors and happy thoughts. What is the secret sauce in Holacracy that makes it different from hierarchies?

nomade0 13y ago
I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind Holacracy. We definitely have a lot of work to do to explain Holacracy outside of our trainings & consulting services - we're a young company and haven't focused on that as much so far, but it's definitely something on our radar (especially after this press storm). To answer your question, the secret sauce of Holacracy is the Holacracy Constitution – it replaces the CEO in deciding how decisions get made and how we organize. See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=31MljhiyxZ8 Also, you might be interested in two blog posts published in the past couple days in reaction to the often-inaccurrate press: - "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 - "Holacracy at Zappos" by a Zappos' employee: http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zappos/ http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...

endeavor 13y ago

This no-managers movement strikes me as disingenuous. The manager is still there -- there's just fewer of them. Big conflicts just get escalated all the way to the CEO/founder/owner. There was a recent HBR article about Google's management structure. They tried eliminating managers in 2002, but too many people just came directly to Larry when they had a problem (1). Holacracy doesn't scale. 1) http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-mana...

farginay 13y ago

Is there some result in the theory of random graphs that says that you can't have a graph of a certain size without developing hubs? It seems to happen in most systems.

brg 13y ago
There are a number of results about a giant connected component emerging as a Erdos-Renyi random graph increases in size. A hub however will simply arise as the result of variance.
- farginay 13y ago
  You say "a hub" but I wonder whether it would be many? How close would such an effect be to hubs we see in scale free networks? In those, preferential attachment seems to induce hubs. Airline hubs are a good example - there's more value in connecting to a well-connected hub.

mindcrime 13y ago

I recently read an absolutely fascinating book called The Origin of Wealth.[1] Nominally the topic is economics, but it's far broader than that, talking about how all components of the economic system of wealth creation (including "firms") are part of a Complex Adaptive System, and are often CAS's themselves. The author makes the argument that a firm is a CAS using evolution to explore a "fitness landscape" in terms of it's "Business Plan" (his term that encompasses strategy at various levels within the firm). IF you buy this theory, it has some very interesting implications in terms of how firms should be managed, and the author provides some interesting thoughts. One point that stood out to me, is that all firms face a constant, internal tension between the need to do "operational stuff" that actually works very well with a traditional hierarchical management approach, and the need to do "exploratory work" which does NOT map well to hierarchy. Failing to understand and manage this tension may be why many firms feel so dysfunctional. The other point that stood out to me, is the idea that instead of a strict hierarchy - or complete undirected chaos - the best way to combine efforts towards both goals is by having individuals with a high degree of autonomy and empowerment coupled with a strong shared vision and common goals. In this model, the primary purpose of leadership is to imbue the members of the organization with that "strong shared vision and common goals". Or to put it more simply, you tell people what needs to be accomplished, not how to accomplish it, and trust them to use their judgment. On a related note, the book Adaptive Enterprise[2] makes a strong case for the idea of high decentralized teams, connected to each other through what the author calls a "Commitment Management Protocol".[3] I would say that both of these books have some useful ideas that could be applied to construct a better management structure than what most present-day firms use. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Wealth-Remaking-Economics/dp/1422121038 http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Wealth-Remaking-Economics/d... [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Creating-Sense-And-Respond-Organizations/dp/0875848745 http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Creating-Sense-And... [3]: http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-for-action-commitment-management-protocol/ http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-...

juddlyon 13y ago

Nice gimick, straight from the Tim Ferriss school of language.

makecheck 13y ago

If there are people in the organization who are still tasked with organizing people then they are bosses (or at least, they will eventually act like bosses again). It is possible to remove the management role, at least at a project level, by using technology. For instance, the first time I saw Trac our team effectively did this. To be practical however, a technology solution really does require the right group of people. You can’t have people who are uncomfortable logging into web sites, or too lazy to write good descriptions for things, and so forth. You need people who are (frankly) professionals, who look at something like a giant task list and do a fair job of distributing things sensibly amongst themselves. A solution like Trac really starts to shine when people learn the little niceties, like additional formatting in wiki entries or the magic sequences that set up links between things. Again though: you need a team that is willing to work with such a tool in the “right way”. If they do then you don’t really need a manager at all.

helenislovely 13y ago

We're doing the same thing at Gamevy. We're small at the moment which makes it (fairly) easy. As for how it goes as we grow - you can check out our blog on the "experiment"! http://giantleap.me/ http://giantleap.me/