First my business is looking at a flat model. We have a very specific approach in mind.
>The "flat" organizational model seems like a good thing, until you realize that what it actually means is that there's a high managerial branching factor-- sometimes 25 or higher-- which spreads managers way too thin.
In most cases the goal is to get rid of management altogether, and distribute management functions to the teams themselves. You are assuming a direct command and control structure, a flat organization that works is something a little different. I will talk about this below.
>Most "flat" organizations aren't egalitarian-- just lazy when it comes to figuring out a structure.
100% correct there, but wrong when you say:
>Instead, they've traded official organizational hierarchy for unofficial, unstable arrangements that are actually more problematic. In a stable arrangement, your boss is your boss and you are not his competition. In an unstable and informal environment, these "de facto" bosses are also direct competition. That never works well.
Again, this entirely suggests an idea of command and control rather than something else.....
> People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable (and, sadly, somewhat rare in many organizations). At one time, I thought otherwise, and that it was the engineers only who actually mattered to the health of an organization, but I was wrong.
The problem is though that managers inherently filter communication and this leads to high costs as well. Again, if you want to make sure that specific things get done with appropriate accountability then you want to have this structure, but it isn't the only option.
You are probably wondering by now what the alternative is. The alternative is to have a company based on openness, collaboration, communication, collegiality, and entrepreneurship. This sort of culture is very hard to build and maintain. It means that the executives have to cultivate a well-earned reputation of listening to the folks on the job floor, mentoring them, and only taking action when necessary.
We aren't talking egalitarian here. Rather leadership is distributed and people can lead --- or follow --- based on their ability to convince other people that given approaches are good for the company.
1) There is a core committee of three of us, though one is pretty in-active and may not last so much longer. we have the power to ban people, but mostly we just help out folks, do development, and so forth. We are the primary developers in addition to managing the community.
2) Everyone else can contribute but is expected to collaborate on their contributions with the rest of the community. Then they can find a committer to commit. Committers are expected to mentor non-committers.
I think this can work as a business management structure. You can have executives who handle planning, organizational goals, etc. But they do this in collaboration with others in the company in whatever position want to be involved.
The big limiting factor though is this. If the executives can't get a well-earned reputation for openness, the whole thing falls apart and you have to go to a de facto or official command and control structure.
Like michaelochurch, I think this is interesting and hope it works out. That said, my immediate thought is "what does it take to become one of those core committee members?"
Read into that what you will ;-)
The other part I think worth a cautionary mention is that you appear to use the words management and leadership as though they are the same. They are not. It's a cliché, but it describes the difference well -
If there's a team of people clearing a path through the jungle with machetes, the manager's job is to make sure the machetes are sharp, the workers have enough water, and generally that they keep clearing a path.
The leader however, climbs a tree and looks around to make sure the jungle is being cleared in the right place.
Lastly, you speak of accountability. And yet you do not mention authority. The one cannot exist without the other. I've had accountability in every single management role I've had and never the authority to run the team or project as I saw fit. There's an imbalance there that has always spelt epic fail.
Well, in the community basically it is weighted towards early contributions (duh) but typically it is people who countribute well to the project in all levels. The core committee has never had more than six people in it, and currently is down to three. There have been some political issues that have come up with some nominees unfortunately so I won't say the process works perfectly.
However those who contribute well tend to get commit privileges and those who contribute to strategy beyond code have tended to become core members most of the time.
Also regarding management and leadership.... Management is typically a command and control structure for the leaders. If you have a flat model, leadership becomes something different because you lack that command and control structure, and so does management. Someone gets to make sure the machetes are sharp. Maybe someone else is in charge of water....
But yeah good thoughts.
BTW, I don't think flat orgs work everywhere. The companies that seem to be successful are those with a very narrow focus, like Github (building things around Git) and WL Gore, which builds things out of one, very specialized, form of plastic. Flat orgs scale up to any number of employees, but they don't scale up to large numbers of goals. I can't imagine how you'd have a flat org structure at Microsoft. Well I can, but it wouldn't be all that flat and it certainly wouldn't be a single org....
I like the clear distinctions you've set between a manager and leader (very well written).
I'd like to push this further and claim that a manager in a company has two roles: one that fulfills the business needs of the company (keeping the machetes sharp), and the other to have vision and lead the people (climbing the tree). A good manager has to also be a good leader. The converse isn't always true, and I've seen many "good" managers (from a business sense) get resented by the people by the people they're supposed to manage.
The problem with a structure like that--or rather, a lack of structure like that--is the risk of it degrading into politics. It's just like in society--a more democratic system increases the amount of political friction in the system, but a more authoritarian structure increases risk (but potentially reward as well) by betting more heavily on the judgment of the authority figures.
Certainly there are politics. That's always a problem in any organization. The question is how you manage that and a lot of it has to do with cultivating the company in certain directions.
The larger issue though I think has to do with goals. It is one thing to be a 9000 employee business making things out of one kind of plastic (WL Gore) without management per se. It would be a very different thing to be a general IT development firm with 200 employees, fingers in 20 different markets and no management. People aren't coming together to do one thing. The field for problems is much increased.
The second point I would make is that of support.
The goal of a bossless organization is to have an organic organization where employees are well supported. The alternative is to have a command and control organization where employees are well ordered. Employee support is crucial.
Not to say there aren't problems. The primary ones that I have seen over and over in looking into this is:
1) How do you know if you need to hire? (We have an answer for this btw)
2) Keeping goals focused and the organization focused on the goals.
3) Ensuring quality and timely communication.
The third can be greatly assisted with technology, the other two need to be handled by real leadership.
Every organization has politics. The question is how you cultivate good vs bad politics.
This is really interesting. I hope it works out well for you.
I think the challenge that most human organizations fail to overcome is how to prevent necessary conceptual and operational hierarchies from becoming a(n often counterproductive) social hierarchy. It's social hierarchy (and the abuses thereof) that make most companies such bad places to work.
One thing we have going for us is we will probably be hiring older programmers who have been self-employed. Our area is not really suitable for young hot-shot developers and so we can pick up a bit of a non-traditional advantage here.
>The "flat" organizational model seems like a good thing, until you realize that what it actually means is that there's a high managerial branching factor-- sometimes 25 or higher-- which spreads managers way too thin.
In most cases the goal is to get rid of management altogether, and distribute management functions to the teams themselves. You are assuming a direct command and control structure, a flat organization that works is something a little different. I will talk about this below.
>Most "flat" organizations aren't egalitarian-- just lazy when it comes to figuring out a structure.
100% correct there, but wrong when you say:
>Instead, they've traded official organizational hierarchy for unofficial, unstable arrangements that are actually more problematic. In a stable arrangement, your boss is your boss and you are not his competition. In an unstable and informal environment, these "de facto" bosses are also direct competition. That never works well.
Again, this entirely suggests an idea of command and control rather than something else.....
> People management is still necessary, and good people management is extremely valuable (and, sadly, somewhat rare in many organizations). At one time, I thought otherwise, and that it was the engineers only who actually mattered to the health of an organization, but I was wrong.
The problem is though that managers inherently filter communication and this leads to high costs as well. Again, if you want to make sure that specific things get done with appropriate accountability then you want to have this structure, but it isn't the only option.
You are probably wondering by now what the alternative is. The alternative is to have a company based on openness, collaboration, communication, collegiality, and entrepreneurship. This sort of culture is very hard to build and maintain. It means that the executives have to cultivate a well-earned reputation of listening to the folks on the job floor, mentoring them, and only taking action when necessary.
We aren't talking egalitarian here. Rather leadership is distributed and people can lead --- or follow --- based on their ability to convince other people that given approaches are good for the company.
The way we run the LedgerSMB (http://www.ledgersmb.org) development community is as follows:
1) There is a core committee of three of us, though one is pretty in-active and may not last so much longer. we have the power to ban people, but mostly we just help out folks, do development, and so forth. We are the primary developers in addition to managing the community.
2) Everyone else can contribute but is expected to collaborate on their contributions with the rest of the community. Then they can find a committer to commit. Committers are expected to mentor non-committers.
I think this can work as a business management structure. You can have executives who handle planning, organizational goals, etc. But they do this in collaboration with others in the company in whatever position want to be involved.
The big limiting factor though is this. If the executives can't get a well-earned reputation for openness, the whole thing falls apart and you have to go to a de facto or official command and control structure.