
The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun - alexfarran
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21584947-backlash-against-running-firms-progressive-schools-has-begun-montessori-management?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/montessori_management
======
shubb
I don't... like the author of this piece. He writes like he doesn't really
understand what he is discussing.

For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as
increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive
level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These
are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan
offices have very little to do with happy employees, and everything to do with
productivity.

I detect a subtext when he says 'hierarchical is better, managers should think
about strategy, Blackberry CEOs are a _professional_ manager and a
_technician_ (which is a loaded word, as it means a low skilled technical
worker).

I mean, is this a backlash against the increasingly irrelevance of management
in flat organizations? If we read an article by an IT worker, explaining that
Amazon Cloud might be making him irrelevant, but companies migrating to it are
making a huge mistake, then we would see his true motivations in writing that.
I wonder if computer enabled flat management is making people like Schumpeter
feel under threat.

The idea of risks and experimentation, is that companies like Google are not
creating products through a predictable process - they are farming black
swans.

You can manufacture software to spec predictably. If you can find developers
who will work to spec, remain motivated without personal control of their
work, and generally put up with being treated like a production line worker,
you can make software on a production line. Infosys do just this.

But you can't manufacture technological progress, the next big thing. Because
the creation, validation, and creative implementation of ideas is not
something that comes out of a factory. Sony try this. Look where that gets
them.

~~~
Jormundir
I reject the implications of the dichotomy of command based and montessori
based management structures, but I also think you're shrugging off some
important negativities that come from open offices and flat structures. (I
also really wish people would stop making statements like "they are farming
black swans" when talking about these big tech companies. If black swans were
farmable there would be no significance to the black swan).

Where I think the article has a good point: \- These open offices are
incredibly distracting, and it's not just sound, it's not a problem that can
be mitigated by putting headphones on alone. In the open office at my
workplace, I can see people moving; I can see who's going to meetings; I can
see who's talking across the room. I think of this distraction, to use a
popular new term, as a dark pattern to productivity.

I'd like to call B.S. on those who think great, creative new products come
from chattering with your peers rather than working really hard. Ideas are the
cheap and easy part, it's the execution that decides whether they come to
fruition or not.

To me the big point about innovation, that I think you touched on and the
article is wrong about, is these great ideas only happen when employees have
the freedom to work hard on a side project. This is more likely to happen in a
flat company, but can happen in a hierarchical one as well. Employees need to
know that they can work hard on a gamble side project, and if it turns out
well, will also have the freedom to integrate it with the company's
product(s). That's where innovation comes from, and an open style office only
slows down the work required to make an idea into a real product, and a
hierarchically structured company is more likely to not allow such freedom.

~~~
acgourley
"If black swans were farmable there would be no significance to the black
swan" \- this statement does not make sense to me. It seems reasonable to
think that they are both significant and can also be sought after more
effectively than through random chance. If you mean to imply that _if it were
possible, it would be happening already_ then I would just say the experiments
need to run another decade before we'll have good data.

~~~
jfb
Taleb's "black swan" is _by definition_ not a repeatable -- or even
predictable -- event. The metaphor loses all novel meaning if stripped of that
quality.

~~~
acgourley
For reference the definition is, "an unpredictable or unforeseen event,
typically one with extreme consequences." Let's take truly great works of art
as an analog to black swans. I agree you cannot create a formula for churning
out more great art, as one struck in a certain direction reduces the greatness
and significance of others in that direction. But if some wealthy patron
collected a bulk of the worlds great artists, giving them creative freedom,
tools and space... I cannot say for sure it would result in more "great art"
than would be produced otherwise. But I would not say it's _impossible by
definition_ , as you do.

------
coallen6
The author is describing an office culture that is completely unconnected to
actual Montessori schooling under Montessori methods.

Montessori actively encourages children to develop the capacity to disagree
reasonably within teams while preserving civility. The classroom environment
and curriculum encourages solitary inquiry into subjects of great personal
interest. Providing quiet spaces for individual students to carry out work is
a high priority in Montessori classrooms. And, in marked contrast to a
hierarchical, command-and-control style education, Montessori allows a student
to choose to spend hours of the school day away from the noise and bustle of
the classroom and their peers working on his/her project.

Aside from considering what Montessori "actually" is, the whole premise is
blown by one fact: traditional, hierarchical education systems put students in
the classroom, a completely open, depersonalized space that explicitly
encourages surveillance and strips away individual privacy. So, tell me again,
what does the model for open-space offices most closely resemble?

I've read some excellent critiques of open-plan, non-hierarchical office
culture and management styles; this was not one.

------
ChuckMcM
We're open plan at Blekko and it has its plusses and minuses. Rich (our CEO)
had the experience of taking an open plan group to a mix of offices and open
plan that went very badly as communication dried up. At Google quad cubes were
the norm, doubles were the minimum (even for VPs who in theory would need to
be talking at times about material things).

The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is that it is
harder to get away. We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as
a way of shutting out the office noise. Its not as solid as an office but its
better than nothing, and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones
on its very similar to working with your door closed.

That said I don't think it is the ultimate answer, there is still stuff to be
done. Maybe rolling desks around so you can move them into an office when you
need to concentrate? Or perhaps some partitions for groups but not cubicals
explicitly.

Definitely a work in progress.

~~~
keithpeter
_" We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting
out the office noise."_

Can't you just rent a 1950s vintage office building somewhere cheap and give
your people the option? C.F. Claude Shannon (who stayed in a city centre
building when his employer moved to the suburbs)[1].

I agree with others that the OA is confusing several issues (office layout and
corporate goofiness).

[1] [http://around.com/where-are-they-now-bell-labs/](http://around.com/where-
are-they-now-bell-labs/)

~~~
malandrew
Options are key. I love headphones. I've spent more money on headphones than
most[0], but a lot of the time when I'm working on some types of problems, I
don't want to listen to anything and I don't want distractions or anything
sitting on my head. Not everyone works well with headphones, so it is
reasonable that there should be places you can get away to. Lacking a space
like that, you oftentimes seek out a third place like a coffeeshop that may
not be quiet but at least doesn't have chatter of immediate relevance to you.

I really wonder if we've lost something by not having more spaces in our life
like libraries where the cultural norm is to be silent and to enforce silence
in the space so it may remain a sanctuary from noise.

[0] ironically, I've also made more as the models I bought appreciated in
value significantly, so yay!

~~~
rubyrescue
can you elaborate on the types of headphones that appreciate in value?

~~~
malandrew
Discontinued headphones that had great sonic characteristics, coupled with a
lot of growth in the high-end headphone market.

The two that I owned were:

\-- Joe Grado HP-1000 HP-1 (bought@ $700 , sold@ $1700)

\-- AKG K-1000 (bought@ $750, sold@ $1250)

Both were _amazing_ headphones. I especially loved the experience with the
K-1000, but I never used them enough to justify them because I amped them with
a pair of monoblock power amps which were normally connected to floorstanding
speakers. The effort to change the cables coupled with the risk of burning out
components if you wired something up loosely and one power amp was driven with
no load lead me to rarely switch the floorstanders for the K-1000s.

Now I use a Denon D7000, which surprisingly works great unamped, but I'll be
getting an amp in a few months probably.

------
packetslave
Some choice quotes from this:

"It is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play
on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats"

"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers
(who thought about strategy) and chains of command"

It always amuses me to read these lofty articles from academics and
journalists about how multi-billion-dollar companies are doing it wrong.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>It always amuses me to read these lofty articles from academics and
journalists about how multi-billion-dollar companies are doing it wrong.

What are you trying to say here? Are you suggesting that if someone has a
multi-billion dollars company, they are clearly "doing it right?"

~~~
trekky1700
Well, they're doing something right...

~~~
andrewflnr
Yes, but it's possible to get to a billion dollars getting some things right
and others wrong. There's almost always something to improve.

------
DanielBMarkham
I think what we're doing here is confusing a particular model with all things
new. Yes, no doubt Montessori had a big impact back in the day -- it's still
being felt now. But I doubt that this explains all of the changes we're
seeing. More likely is that things that seem to work are copied.

Models are always faulty in some way, but using them appropriately can be a
good thing. The problem many of these corporate styles addresses is that _it
's very easy to overconstrain your solution space without realizing it_. This
turns out to be extremely important in creative tasks. Not so much everywhere,
but in places where teams are supposed to be both creating and radically
optimizing their work streams? Makes a huge difference.

We're also seeing the emergence of a personal corporate brand, where companies
are supposed to have personalities, like people. Employees are encouraged to
get Twitter accounts. Everything that faces the public is supposed to look
like "Hey! We're having a blast here, and we can't wait to help you out." The
majority of the corporate submarine pieces we see on HN have this subtext.

These are major changes. Perhaps you can lay it all at the door of the
Montessori style, but I kinda doubt it. Instead, I think the author is just
making a blanket assertion, creating a bit of a straw man in order to set it
on fire. As long as it encourages critical thinking about these things, that's
not a bad thing.

------
bowlofpetunias
> _Both companies have pragmatically mixed progressive ideas with more
> traditional ones such as encouraging internal competition and measuring
> performance._

Apparently the author and his editors failed to notice that he has already
disassembled his straw man before he starts attacking it...

------
ZanyProgrammer
It seems like the author is mixing the idea of an open floor workspace with a
casual atmosphere at work.

I'll be the first to rail against a lot of contemporary Silicon Valley/tech
culture, but running your business like 1950s IBM has nothing to do with
producing a quality software/hardware product. If you don't have a public
facing job, then does it matter if you wear a t-shirt and jeans to work, and
have video games in the break room, etc?

"Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers
(who thought about strategy) and chains of command. Now many model themselves
on learning-through-play “Montessori” schools."\--What do you bet that the
author of this piece has never served in the military?

~~~
ams6110
_If you don 't have a public facing job, then does it matter if you wear a
t-shirt and jeans to work_

I think it can. I've had a couple of jobs where I needed to wear a suit to
work (or at minimum, dress shirt, tie, and slacks) even though my job was not
customer-facing. It had its annoyances but in some ways I think I took
everything a little bit more seriously when I was at the office. Probably for
the same reasons that uniforms are found to decrease behavior problems in
schools that require them. There's sort of a mental switch that is thrown when
you put on your suit, you switch into "work mode" and then when you take it
off at the end of the day you switch to "not at work mode" and it actually can
help with work/life balancing.

~~~
bad_user
What works for you doesn't necessarily work for everybody. For example I am
completely unable to work from home, so even though most of my career I worked
remotely, I prefer to rent an office, even when I have the freedom to stay
home.

But not all people have such preferences. I know people that are quite happy
and productive while working from home. And personally I come to work in
slippers and tee-shirt during the summer, with no effect on my seriousness
with which I treat work.

------
bo1024
I think this is an interesting idea to discuss, but the article is confusing
to the point of being misleading.

Specifically, the first half of the article is about "Montessory-style"
business leadership. The second half cites a survey or two that criticize
excessive collaboration within teams and open-plan office layouts.

It seems intended to mislead the reader into conflating these two criticisms
of very specific issues with criticisms of the entire so-called "Montessory-
style" business approach. But I don't think the article contains any actual
evidence of the backlash claimed in the title.

------
erikpukinskis
> "Morten Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley studied 182 teams
> who were trying to win a contract on behalf of a professional-services firm.
> He found that the more time they spent consulting others, the less likely
> they were to win a deal. This shows, he says, that collaboration has costs
> as well as benefits."

This quote is everything that's wrong with science journalism. I'm sure there
are some narrowly defined conclusions to be drawn from the study, but
"collaboration had costs as well as benefits" is a truism, not a finding.

And I'm highly skeptical that Hansen said any such thing (that the results
somehow say something new about the scale of costs relative I benefits of
collaboration). Though if he did he and his reviewers bear some
responsibility.

------
andrewflnr
I agree about the open-plan thing, but for the rest, doesn't it just depend on
the kind of work being done? The author mentions a study about how
collaboration hurt deal-making, but that's a totally different endeavor than
programming.

This always happens on these "it depends" questions. People see one thing that
works and try it everywhere. Then people see that it doesn't work everywhere,
and just assume it's bad. This author fell neatly into the trap.

------
nether
My (non-tech) workplace has individual offices for the engineers. Every
engineer, even fresh grads, gets an office with a door (though windows are
reserved for the senior guys). It sounds like a privilege at first, but with
our lack of email it's pretty isolating. We can always get up and walk to each
other to talk one-on-one, but sometimes I miss the collegial feel of 3-4
people hashing things out while at their desks.

~~~
smtddr
_> Every engineer, even fresh grads, gets an office with a door (though
windows are reserved for the senior guys)._

What?! An office of the size for 1 person, without a window? That sounds
awful. Is it like a big closet with bright-lighting?[1] How many people on HN
would like to work in the room pictured in the below link?:

[http://jonnyh.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kar-server-room-
pa...](http://jonnyh.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kar-server-room-pano.jpg)

~~~
greenyoda
Not everyone has the same preferences. I'd definitely prefer a one-person
office without a window to any open office space.

The room in your photo would look a lot better to me just by replacing the
overhead fluorescent lighting with some incandescent lamps and putting some
art on the walls.

------
realrocker
Well it seems to me that backlash against Montessori management is
Montessorian in nature since no where in the article does the author imply an
extreme negative pull. You know, the phrase, "Anti-Montessori management on
the upsurge". Where is it? You can't be midway off midway.

Ah, just ignore me if I don't make sense .Kumbayah!(that's right just one Y)

------
trekky1700
The authors views remind me of The Onion's editorial cartoons.

~~~
walshemj
Well with a name like "Schumpeter" you can tell he's pining for the ultra
structured German style where the end game is to get an office with a brass
plate with Her Doktor on it.

~~~
greenyoda
Actually, the pen-name is probably a reference to Joseph Schumpeter[1], who
was an influential _Austrian_ economist.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter)

~~~
walshemj
The prosecution rests Milud

