
How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers   - peter123
http://firstround.com/article/How-Medium-is-building-a-new-kind-of-company-with-no-managers
======
fingerprinter
I always scratch my head when stuff like this comes up. Not that it isn't a
good idea or it doesn't have its place, but more that people think
"traditional management" is a thing itself.

For instance, if I could summarize my 15 years of people and exec management
it might be this: empathy and seek first to understand, then be understood
(can't remember where I read this one). If I had to tack on something after
this is it "take the hill", meaning a very clear shared vision so if there is
ever ambiguity, people know what the ultimate goal is so they can make the
right judgement call when needed (taken from the military, I believe).

My issue with things like this article is that they use different terms for
the same things. It seems there will always need to be someone setting
direction, someone following up that people are doing the right thing and some
key decision makers. What we call those people might be different and how you
"organize" could look different on paper, but those roles kinda, sorta need to
exist.

Now, the feel and philosophy of the whole company can be different, but I
would say that is more about the culture and _how_ people react to good and
bad news.

So things like Valve and Medium try to say they are not "traditional
companies". Well, no company ever is, really. It's like when every company
under the sun says they "only hire A people". They don't. They say they do and
they want to, but they don't. Otherwise no B or C people would ever make their
way through these companies and we all know they do. Heck, there are C, D and
F people leading venture funded companies in SF right now.

So, in closing to this rambling comment, terms don't matter. Systems of
management aren't important. Focus on the people, the mission and
understanding both and you'll be fine.

~~~
dnautics
I disagree. Systems of management _are_ important. There are going to be some
people who work well under a strongly hierarchical system, some people who
work well under a flat system, and people who could hack it under either.
Thing is, there is no reason to believe that the people you attract under any
given culture/structure is completely independent of ability to provide a
product or service.

For example, GE is a very hierarchical megacorporation, BUT it has found it
expedient to make its aircraft parts manufacturing flat, because parts don't
need to be turned out so quickly and individual workers can have multiple
specializations.

~~~
notahacker
The intriguing thing about the article for me is that it combines a pretty
sophisticated description of an alternative management structure with a
characterization of "traditional management" _techniques_ which is just daft.
There's nothing remotely novel or "flat" about a corporate culture where
managers and their reports are happy to discuss their personal lives and
socialize with each other; it's pretty standard in lots of very hierachical,
old-fashioned corporations whose managers have an above-subnormal level of
social skill.

And for that matter, asking employees to rank their "SCARF" priorities sounds
like some new form of torture a pointy-haired middle-manager might devise to
torment you with the unforeseen consequences of picking the "wrong" order ("in
view of your desire for greater autonomy and ambivalence about 'certainty',
you're now _part time_ ")

~~~
nomade0
Yes, yes, and yes. I work with Holacracy and I will confirm that the
techniques described from Stirman's experience before joining Medium (chatting
with employees, SCARF, etc.) are not to be put in the same bag as Holacracy.

It doesn't even make that much sense to compare them -- these techniques are
bolt-ons - more or less useful practices to make do with the challenges
inherent to a conventional structure. On the contrary, Holacracy is a new
meta-structure for how power is distributed, how decision-making is
distributed, with different channels available to effect changes - a new
"social operating system", really.

In my experience, having my manager use techniques like SCARF to "better
reward me" is nowhere near as powerful and empowering as having no manager to
solve my problems, because there is a system that allows me to address them
myself.

-Olivier Compagne

~~~
jacques_chester
> _a new "social operating system", really._

As a species, humanity is about 50,000 years old. Millions, if you include our
most obvious ancestral species.

The claim that neologism-of-choice is a "new" system is extremely unlikely to
be true. What is more likely is that the new system is a reinvention of a
system that has been seen hundreds of times under hundreds of names. Social
structures tend to be evolutionarily convergent, depending on prevailing
constraints. If a given structure is rare, that is because it relies or can
only exist in a peculiar environment (eg Valve + massive profitability).

Truly. There is nothing new under the sun. Including totally "new" social
systems that "work" because of short-term enthusiasm.

~~~
nomade0
Well, technically, I'll grant you that it's impossible to rule out. IMO it's
highly unlikely that someone came up with these rules:
[http://holacracy.org/constitution](http://holacracy.org/constitution), but
I'm not going to argue that, the novelty is not my main point.

I'm interested in whether it's working. From what I've seen, it is. Perfect?
Of course not. The be all and end all of running a business? No, you still
need to do work. But it's a much better framework to do so that anything else
I've seen. Many people seem to share this opinion, too, and it seems to help
them to their work better (and enjoy it more). That's pretty cool in my book,
I don't need to convince the world that it's right for everybody. If you find
the same benefits with another system, or a similar one from thousands years
ago, who cares, run with it.

------
dylangs1030
I hate this article. It's not bad in any factual way, so it's an opinion...but
the hero worship is just intense.

That, and it just reminds me of the hustle startups do all the time. _" We're
rebuilding the internet."_ Come on...

Regarding the actual management content of the article: it seems too good to
be true. From what I can understand of the article's explanation of "link
leads" and "evolving roles" \- it essentially reduces job description to a
generalist, jack of all trades perspective.

That's not realistic. Once you pass that beatific startup culture point, you
_need_ structure. Structure isn't a bad thing. It's faulty managers who give
it a bad rap, but from a group dynamics and sociological perspective,
implementing structure in a company makes sense at scale and for
maintaining/improving productivity.

Unfortunately, it's trendy to be anti-all-things-BigCo nowadays. "We need an
idea for how to run our company!"..."Well, what's Microsoft doing?...Aha!
We'll do NOT-THAT!"...

Personally, if it works it works, but I think I'd hate it, and I'm skeptical.

~~~
incision
_> That, and it just reminds me of the hustle startups do all the time. "We're
rebuilding the internet." Come on..._

Merely "rebuilding the internet" actually sounds humble relative to "changing
the world" as I've seen so often lately.

~~~
zhemao
I don't know. Every action you take "changes the world" even in an incredibly
insignificant way. That's a much lower bar than "rebuild the internet". You
say that and I'm like "O rly? So does your new internet use IPv6?"

------
coldcode
Having been there before, once they get to 70 or so people it all starts to
falls apart. Once the founders no longer personally know all the people then
structure comes in. By 200 people if you have no structure you are out of
business. Also once you have lots of legal issues or are required to follow
standard accounting practices or other picky stuff like that this nice
holocracy will crater.

~~~
dnautics
there are some pretty dramatic counterexamples to your claim.

Valve, of course is the most well-known, but Semco is a large brazilian
company that runs this way, as is Morning Star, a tomato processing company in
California.

~~~
notahacker
How dramatic are the counterexamples though?

A browse through Morning Star's website reveals job listings for defined
roles. They're looking for (i) people with "a strong business background" and
"an aspiration for senior leadership" to manage their finances, (ii) people
who "likely have a meaningful formal education in related disciplines" to
"coordinate", "train" and "identify proper operating procedures", and (iii)
"hands on professionals" who need the "ability to read, write, and comprehend
instructions" in addition to specific practical skills.

Sure, they might downplay rank and authority, but it doesn't sound like an
organization without structure or _de facto_ managerial roles.

~~~
dnautics
fair point. I think corporations live on a spectrum of authoritarianism, and
these are "far out in the distribution" but they aren't perfect, and I don't
think in reality a perfectly flat corporation can exist because all employees
have a natural range of skillsets. But by "dramatic" I meant dramatic relative
to the parent post's claim about organizational size relative to success of
the model.

------
dworin
_" He read all the ‘right’ books on management and took the advice to heart:
don’t get too chummy, shield your team from anything they don’t need to know,
ask them to identify roadblocks to progress, reward them all equally."_

These are definitely NOT the right books on management. Every single one of
those things is the exact opposite of what good managers do. That sounds like
the advice from the world's most fear-ridden, counter-productive HR
organization. Good managers care about their teams as people, communicate
openly, and overwhelmingly reward their best.

The approach works great for small, nimble organizations, but it doesn't
scale. For instance, I talked with a tech company a few weeks ago that's
rounding 50 employees and is now a few years old, and the employees are all
frustrated that they've never gotten performance reviews. Founders hate
performance reviews, because they're against the DNA of most entrepreneurs.
But a lot of the people who become developers, customer support reps, and
marketers really like when someone gives them a clear idea of what they're
doing well, what they need to work on, and a clear plan for how they can
develop.

One of the challenging parts of management is that it's really hard, it's
highly situational, and it's non-deterministic. Having really great processes
helps, but at the end of the day you really just need to hire people who are
good at managing and set the right priorities for them as an organization.
Inventing weird systems like this sounds great, but in most cases it doesn't
scale. For instance, a role-centric organization will work until you realize
that you need 60 people involved to get a press release out because someone
declared themselves the Word Master and needs to have a say in punctuation.

But outside the weird jargon, this isn't a new kind of company, it's just good
management principles. Have clear accountability; be candid; care about your
people; connect everyone to a broader vision. It sounds like common sense
sometimes, but when you go to implement it in the tactical reality of the day
to day, it's really hard.

------
bowlofpetunias
I hate all of these pretentious claims about new ways of working when they all
do exactly the same thing:

1) Set up a straw man in the form of "traditional management", whilst there
are hundreds of forms of management and managers, most of which don't "look at
reports as resources", or even look at people as "reports". As a manager, I
find this insulting.

2) These shiny new methods are the way many small companies have worked _for
fucking decades_. They just weren't so fucking pretentious about it.

It's the same shit as with shiny new technology, frameworks and methods in our
business: everyone thinks they've invented the wheel, and nobody bothers to
look around them (and especially behind them) to see if the same thing hasn't
been done countless times before.

Excuse the language, but this attitude is just pathetic. Nothing new is being
invented here.

~~~
sciurus
But if you're pretentious about it, you can sell certification and licensing.

[http://holacracy.org/](http://holacracy.org/)

------
skrebbel
I'm nitpicking on a small detail here, but

> _• Autonomy-oriented employees may need the ability to work from home, or
> simply slip on their head phones to tune everyone else out._

It's 2013. Are these really special perks to make a certain kind of person
happy? Maybe I'm weird, but to me a company that doesn't allow me to tune out
with headphones one or occasionally work elsewhere is like a company that
tells me what to wear or tracks office presence hours. Do these, in our field,
even exist anymore? (barring Yahoo)

For "Autonomy", I'd rather expect something like having a very large say over
what an employee is working on and how she does it.

~~~
swanson
> Do these, in our field, even exist anymore? (barring Yahoo)

Company dress codes and time tracking? They are pretty common outside of the
startup culture. "No shorts and a collared shirt, please track your billable
hours".

~~~
skrebbel
Really? (I'm assuming you mean to include "in the US"). I'm starting to
understand the appeal of Valley startups.

There is no software-heavy company that I know of in the Netherlands that does
this.

Sure, it's common that companies ask you to keep track of how many hours you
worked on which project, but clocking in and out of the office? I've never
seen it.

~~~
bmj
Much of it depends on the background of a company. If you are writing software
for a large financial institution, chances are the HR department will ask you
to wear business casual (or worse). In my experience in the east, middle-sized
companies can go either way--some mandate business casual, others don't care.
Again, in my experience, this is often related to whether clients are often
visiting the offices.

My current employer, with its tech leadership drawn from the Valley, has been
incredibly flexible about most things. But we were recently acquired by a more
established, traditional company based on the east coast. There are rumors
that I'll have to start wearing something other than shorts and t-shirts at
the office, but nothing has been handed down yet.

------
kareemm
Holacracy is an instance of organizational democracy, but it's not new - I
took a holacracy seminar 6 years ago. Kudos to Medium for using the framework
though - it's one of the few that lays out, soup to nuts, how to run a
democratic company.

There are many companies that operate using democracy as an organizing
principle - Semco is the great-granddaddy of them all (two books - Maverick[1]
and the 7 Day Weekend[2] - were written by Semco's founder, Ricardo Semler,
about how Semco operates).

Other well-known democratically-run companies include Zappos, WL Gore, DaVita
(a $12B company), and Dreamhost.

If you're interested, take a look at WorldBlu[3] for more - they've been
building a community of these kinds of companies, have tons of resources on
their site, and even have a conference on organizational democracy.

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-
Works/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-
Works/dp/1591840260)

[2] -
[http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0446670553](http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0446670553)

[3] - [http://worldblu.com/](http://worldblu.com/)

------
INTPenis
I'm an anarchist at heart so I love these types of stories but I'm also very
pragmatic. I work for a very large multi-national concern and I know that
eventually you're going to get employees who are more concerned with things at
home than their job.

For these people the job is just a meal ticket, something to feed their kids
and put a roof over their heads. When the passion goes out of frame like that,
what's left is apathy.

No "operating system" in the world has a cure for that.

Personally I know I would thrive in a management-free environment, if anything
has been positive in my reviews it has been that I am self managing and do not
need any guidance to find things to do. But people around me do their best to
avoid hard work all day long. They have what we in Sweden call
"tillsvidareanställning" and that means it's practically impossible to fire
them.

Seems to me that Holacracy is great if you manage to find driven employees who
care about your business. I'm not saying they should dedicate their lives to
it but they should feel pride in what they do and a sense of responsibility
for their company.

So far I've only seen this in small startups, and even then it wasn't
prominent.

~~~
aryastark
I do not even believe Valve is immune to this, despite the hoopla.

I've worked on games on my own. I know that there are a 1000 different parts
of a game that you simply do _not_ want to touch. The tedious bugs and polish,
that every video game has to have. The endless hours of play testing.

Even working for myself, where I have total stake in the product, I have to
force things.

Startups are a special breed of crazy. Initially they emulate a dorm-like
environment, where you go and hang out with your friends and make "killer"
this-or-that. But in the end, it's just a sham. The founders are there to make
money. And in Silicon Valley terms, that means urgent breakneck growth. No
startup culture survives the onboarding of an HR department and the associated
growing pains.

------
mathattack
Much more detailed than I thought.

"To help with this, instead of a focus on employees, there’s a focus on roles.
Each circle has a ‘Lead Link’ who determines what roles the circle needs and
how they get assigned. In fact, one person can hold multiple roles if their
bandwidth and expertise allows. Stirman is both the People Operations lead and
Word Master (which comes with final say on punctuation and capitalization,
among other word-based dilemmas)."

Isn't this another way of saying he's manager of People Operations and Words?
Perhaps there is no more formal career ownership, but it still sounds like
he's a manager, no?

~~~
nomade0
Yes, it's exactly what it means. He's the "manager" of his roles, and within
the authority granted to this roles, he can make autocratic decisions that
others can't veto (not even the "Lead Link"). And it's true for every employee
in every role: they have full authority to exercise their role's authority.

Of course you need a way to modify the roles' definitions; there is a
governance process for that, at each team level, and any team member can
propose modifying the roles, not only the "Lead Link" (contrary to what this
quote mistakenly suggests). I hope this clarifies a bit.

------
jmduke
I went into this article thinking it'd be a puff piece, but the details about
holacracy are very well done and a lot of the insights are more or less
actionable even if you're at a more traditionally-organized company.

Something that doesn't get talked about too much is how popular holocratic
structures are in non-profits, either formally or informally.

~~~
nomade0
In my experience, there are less non-profits formally working with Holacracy
mostly because they can't afford hiring the consultants to help them adopt it.
And it's not easy to adopt on your own - it goes against a lot of oft-
entrenched habits. That said I know that many have tried, though I don't know
how it's going because I'm not even indirectly involved.

Interestingly, the distinction between for- and non-profit is less relevant
with Holacracy. The bottom line is effectively the (explicit, written-down)
purpose of the organization. More on that here:
[http://holacracy.org/blog/for-profit-non-profit-for-
purpose](http://holacracy.org/blog/for-profit-non-profit-for-purpose)

------
readme
These "managementless" companies will be "managementless" for about 5 minutes
before power structures start to emerge naturally within the group.

------
blader
I just want to know who the guy that can make the decision to fire you is at
places like Github, Valve, and Medium. Either that person doesn't exist or
that person is your manager.

~~~
enraged_camel
I heard that at Valve, it's by team consensus. I may be wrong though.

~~~
jacques_chester
Ah, so everyone's boss is the sociopath who's good at whispering campaigns.
Swell.

~~~
enraged_camel
I think the proceedings are open and transparent and the employee whose
employment is in question would be a part of them. They could start with a
group meeting where a discussion takes place about team members' misgivings
about the performance or contribution of said employee, with a chance for
him/her to respond. After a couple of rounds, if the concerns are not
addressed then a decision is made to let them go.

~~~
jacques_chester
Without wishing to seem unnecessarily combative, you are being naive. Nothing
about a meeting being open prevents the possibility that its outcome has been
fixed.

------
tucaz
All this "no hierarchy" and "no management" movement seems really nice. What I
want to see, Valve included, is how they keep it when there is no money.

So far Valve is doing pretty good and still sometimes there are some talk
about silos and how it does not work for everyone.

I don't know much about Medium finances but I would love to see stories about
these management strategies in companies that are actually trying to earn some
money and don't have pockets full of cash just waiting to be spent.

------
bsbechtel
I'm curious to hear how well it scales, and also what the downsides are once
they come out. A lack of praise for employees seems like a fairly minor issue.

It's been said Valve is somewhat like high school with their completely flat
hierarchy, although this is never mentioned in the many articles praising
their management structure (or lack thereof). I'm curious if this type of
management system causes similar problems.

That being said, everyone is different and some people (and cultures -
Germany, Switzerland) function in a hierarchy very well, while others don't. I
think the article alludes a little to this with the comment about individuals
who take initiative vs those who don't. IMHO, those individuals who take
initiative on their own are drawn to entrepreneurship and small companies,
whereas those who don't are drawn to large corporations where others can set
goals for them and as they achieve those goals, they move up. As Medium grows,
they're inevitably going to attract more of the latter type, and it will be
harder to provide meaningful roles for the former type.

~~~
nomade0
Based on what I read about Valve, it is not surprising that they have a lot of
politics going on. That's the issue with flat structures - when authorities
and accountabilities are unclear, you need make alliances (seen as "cliques"
from the exterior) to get your projects moving forward.

On the contrary, Holacracy has processes that push for clarity. It
distinguishes people and their roles, and provides forums (e.g., clear meeting
processes) to address misalignments and conflicts between roles, in service of
the company's purpose. It's well explained in this 3-min video
[http://youtu.be/9U_XDin5tjI](http://youtu.be/9U_XDin5tjI)

Disclosure; I work with HolacracyOne. Hope that clarifies the difference a bit

~~~
jeremyt
Not really well explained. Nothing about the process is explained in the
video.

The only thing the video does is spend three minutes saying "if you have a
problem, solve it among yourselves rather than going to the boss".

~~~
nomade0
No, the processes themselves are not explained in this video. This other one
explains "tactical meetings":
[http://youtu.be/8NrsVBATZCM](http://youtu.be/8NrsVBATZCM)

That said if you want the technicalities of the process, you'll find
everything in the constitution (not as entertaining, but more accurate):
[http://holacracy.org/constitution](http://holacracy.org/constitution)

------
ansdkfus13
So glad that someone's bold enough to challenge the traditional management
system and experiment with a new kind. Having worked at a mega-sized
corporation, I definitely felt like there was a serious need to revamp/rethink
the current command and control system. Most employees feel disconnected from
the decisions made by the management and the managers have hard time earning
the buy-ins from their employees. I actually entertained the thought about
building a thriving company without central management, with every employee
empowered to make their own decisions (also take the responsibilities for them
as well). I asked that question to the founder of Hoovers.com at a guest
lecture. His answer was, based on his experience, pretty strong no. Most
successful companies of our current time are represented by strong leaders,
take Apple with Steve Jobs. But Apple will not stay Apple after Steve Jobs. A
great company cannot last after the strong leader/founder leaves the company.
Can we create a sustainable success with great PEOPLE instead of a single
leader? I think Holacracy seems to be a promising solution and I would like to
see this system stands the test of time.

------
Aloisius
I believe you could write an article with more bs in it. It would be
difficult, but it would be possible.

This paints a strawman of the most dysfunctional traditional structure
imaginable where no one knows who has what authority, no one knows what
various managers do, individuals have no power, no one listens to the people
"at the bottom" and managers are impersonal jerks whose job it is to keep
their team in an isolation room.

Maybe Holacracy is the greatest system known to man. It looks like a surefire
way to create ultra-political environments, endless meetings on topics
unrelated to getting real work done (like restructuring the org and electing
people) and eventually a centralized power base around a small political
class.

But surely the narrative that Ev Williams didn't like managing, so he decided
to get rid of all manager and dump the entire traditional structure because
his last company was poorly managed isn't the best way to sell it.

------
srik
I recall an insightful comment here on Valve's flat management style -

When there is no official hierarchy, an unofficial one emerges.

------
mratzloff
Too often I see this piece of advice be overlooked or ignored, to the
detriment of the entire department or organization:

“You want to make sure you hire only people you wouldn’t mind getting stuck in
an airport with,” he says. “So many people fall into this trap of hiring
highly skilled people who are bad culture fits. And I’d argue that’s the worst
kind of hire – even worse than a poorly skilled person. If they’re as skilled
as you think they are, they’ll gain power, influence and get more deeply
enrooted in your technology, process and product. Then, when the honeymoon of
your justifications is over and reality sets in, you’re seriously stuck with
this person.”

------
nomade0
If you want to hear more about Holacracy, there is a webinar this afternoon at
1:30 PST: [http://holacracy.org/events/intro-to-holacracy-free-
webinar-...](http://holacracy.org/events/intro-to-holacracy-free-webinar-19)
\- Disclaimer: I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind the model. I'd
love to address several comments I see on this thread (and will later), but
I'd recommend the webinar for anyone genuinely interested in a comprehensive
understanding. It's hard to discuss a 'part' in any depth without
understanding the whole.

~~~
weichi
What are the largest companies by revenue, profits, and employees that are
using this model?

~~~
nomade0
I'd say the largest at this time would be Agencies of Change, 200+ employees
(though it was a few years ago, I don't know now). We're currently working
with one significantly bigger client, but we let them announce it first.

------
overgryphon
This sounds almost exactly like how traditional management is done at my job.
Each "circle" has a lead "point" who distributes roles, but each person is
able to make decisions about their particular part.

------
JohnHaugeland
In what sense is this new? No-management companies have been around for
hundreds of years, and we talk about how Steam has been doing this for ten
years on a fairly regular basis.

------
ChikkaChiChi
How is a flat company more efficient than a company that doesn't hire shit
managers?

Every article on the matter seems to be written by personalities that have an
opinion that management hierarchies can NEVER innovate.

I've found the exact opposite to be true. Great leadership pushes everyone to
be better. 2 strong personalities can lead to disaster if nobody is allowed to
reign them in.

~~~
VladRussian2
>How is a flat company more efficient than a company that doesn't hire shit
managers?

an any meaningful scale these 2 things are impossible.

~~~
yuhong
I think michaelochurch has advocated open allocation.

------
floor_
Like Valve software you mean. Hope it doesn't turn out to be like a high
school.

[http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/08/ex-valve-employee-slams-
comp...](http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/08/ex-valve-employee-slams-companys-
high-school-clique-management-structure/)

~~~
bencollier49
Yes. The interesting thing here is that without formal managers, you get
informal managers, and the process for the selection of informal managers is
likely to work in a similar way to the one in which people get popular at
school.

------
lightyrs
Based on my experiences with their product, I think some top-down direction is
precisely what they could use. Just because so many managers and/or management
paradigms are inept does not mean that we should throw the baby out with the
bath water.

------
godisdad
Steam has been known to have a manager-less structure:

[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-
here-w...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-
its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/)

~~~
outworlder
That would be Valve, the company, not Steam, the product.

Also, mentioned countless times in this thread alone.

------
duaneb
Maybe if Medium spent their time distinguishing their product instead of their
corporation I would know who they are. But I don't, and I'm not sure why they
think I should, considering they are a blogging platform.

------
lysol
If you read between the lines it really isn't about a management style or
structure, it's about treating human beings like fucking human beings.

