
No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization? - eugenegamma
https://doist.com/blog/decision-making-flat-organization/
======
achenatx
The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward
mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like
the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing
research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one
really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some
perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching, extra grad assistants (or whatever).

Many more people get a chance to try out a leadership role to grow, but it is
expected to be temporary so people can go back to being technical with no
repercussions. Individual contributors get better perspective on management.
People that are good at it and have an affinity for it stay in the role
longer.

Self organizing teams still have a leader, but the team selects the leader.

~~~
veddox
That's why democracies have terms of office, and that's exactly what we do in
our student organisation.

You're right: there has to be a way to get somebody out of a misfitting
leadership role without completely humiliating him. Regular elections are a
great way of doing so, and giving many different people the chance to lead
benefits both them and the organisation.

~~~
aeternus
One method I've found to work well, especially with engineers:

Make it clear to the team that the new leader is stepping up temporarily to
fill a significant business need. That the engineer is doing the team a favor
by doing this and that the plan is for it to be temporary because that
engineer is a great IC.

It then becomes very easy for the new leader to go back to being an IC. They
can even be thanked for stepping up to help the company during a critical
time. They can also easily do it again in the future.

If the person is a great lead and gains the team's respect, then simply make
it permanent.

~~~
taneq
That last bit makes the rest look like a rather transparent attempt to mask a
trial period.

~~~
austhrow743
That's exactly what it is. But people all knowing a thing individually and a
thing being announced to the group are two different scenarios.

------
ivanhoe
There's one thing I've learned from white water rafting: On slow parts
democracy works fine - everyone discussing about the best path - but when
things start happening fast you need a single captain to make the calls,
otherwise you end up hitting every single rock in the river while trying to
agree if it's better to go left or right around it.

~~~
roenxi
Look at the time, it is hair-splitting o'clock! >_>

Having a single captain can still be a democratic system; what is being
replaced isn't the democratic element (where power rests with the people) -
that is still in place. What is being changed is swapping a deliberative
assembly (or committee or something) for a single executive for making
decisions.

So what is being identified is technically something like 'deliberative
assemblies are better at dividing up resources and responsibilities but single
executives are better at implementing policies and achieving outcomes'.

Interestingly, this is a lesson that is implicitly very well understood by
major democracies without being explicitly bought up very often.

~~~
ende
This is fairly topical point. Yet in terms of maximizing stability, it seems
like those democracies that do -not- vest too much executive power in a single
person tend to fair better. Many presidential systems which adhere to strict
notions of unitary executive theory are finding themselves at the mercy of
unaccountable and uncontrollable leaders, while parliamentary and semi-
presidential systems which better distribute executive authority and retain
close accountability to democratic feedback mechanisms fair better.

------
SolaceQuantum
I would like to refer to the following - The Tyranny of Structurelessness,
originally meant to address the concerns regarding 'flat' organizations.

 _" This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as
deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social
science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as
a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or
the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others...

...Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the
women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most
powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the
structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are
known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the
rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must
remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is
happening of which they are not quite aware."_

[https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm](https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)

~~~
js8
What about democracy? It is a clear rule (one person one vote) and yet it is
not hierarchical.

~~~
kristianc
> What about democracy? It is a clear rule (one person one vote) and yet it is
> not hierarchical.

Most, if not all societies do not implement direct democracy, where decisions
are truly made by one person one vote.

Most at least employ an abstraction such as representative democracy, and the
United States employs an abstraction upon an abstraction with the electoral
college.

~~~
jadbox
Couldn't you have both? You have the right to a direct vote, but you also have
the option to bestow your vote to a representative to cast for you. Seems like
a neat idea and solves many of these structureless problems. Many people know
that a topic is out of their reach or interest, but they may know someone
knowledgable to give their vote to to cast for them. If they feel that person
doesn't represent them, they can immediately reclaim their direct voting
right.

~~~
jacques_chester
What you're describing is proxy voting. It works well in certain
circumstances: primarily in shareholding, where there are well-understood ways
to divvy up authority. But most proxies are given with general power. This
makes them comparable but not identical to a representative system.

The problem with proxies for politics is twofold. First, there is the business
of carving out subjects. If I hand John the power to vote on transport and
Jill the power to vote on buses, who votes on the integrated schedule for
subway-bus terminals? What happens if they both vote? How do I maintain
anonymity under these conditions without getting double counted, possibly even
cancelling myself out through my proxies? This problem doesn't arise in
regular proxies because I can see how my proxy voted and anyone can see who
was acting as my proxy. That's not compatible with ballot secrecy.

The second problem is the usual problems of direct democracy, chief among
which are demagoguery and mobs. Representative democracy is sluggish compared
to direct democracy. That is a feature, not a bug. Imagine if twitter mobs
could amend legislation.

~~~
jadbox
This is a nice response, thanks. The one miscalculation here is it's clear
that representational democracy is also rife with demagoguery. Because the
system is 'slower', it gives those in power the ability to cause damage to the
system, but keep their office because they support other populist sentiments.
Often the issues that are most important are the ones that get abused, while
the popular-but-less-important issues are the ones that people vote on for
their representative. Without the representative, then these less popular
topics can be voted on justly/rightly by people that need these bills
(minority issues in particular). I agree though that the speed of direct
democracy can also be problematic in a similar way: too hasty decisions on the
popular topics.

------
jatsign
"A chair who asks, “Is everyone OK with choice A?” is going to get objections.
But a chair who asks, “Can anyone not live with choice A?” is more likely to
only hear from folks who think that choice A is impossible to engineer given
some constraints."

It's funny - I've adopted a similar approach towards getting my kids to agree
on something with each other. Instead of asking, "Should we do A or B or C?",
and having one want A and the other dead-set on B, I ask which one do they
definitely NOT want to do. Works pretty well for kids under 10...

~~~
elamje
There was a good podcast with a famous FBI negotiator, Chris Voss, who
recommends if you want to sway someone, frame it as, "are you opposed to doing
X?" rather than "should we do X?". People are more likely to agree with the
former.

~~~
lucb1e
Would that still work after having worked in such an organisation for years,
if the question is always phrased that way, or is it just an uncommon way of
phrasing that works only so long as people are not yet thoroughly used to it?

~~~
kthejoker2
Getting a shared mindset on what's at stake with a decision, regardless of the
outcome, is the critical point.

This is a great way to understand if anything at all is at stake.

------
claudiulodro
Assuming whatever you're trying to do is a good idea, my method is to just
write a "heads-up"-type message and just go for it.

For example, "I'm going to do foo. If anyone has any concerns or anything,
please let me know". This covers your ass, provides a discussion/feedback
area, and lets you actually get things done without a lengthy bike-shedding
process.

One important lesson I have learned in my career is that fortune favors the
bold.

~~~
kradroy
We used to have an engineer who used this maneuver. He abused it because it
was effective. We do have an issue on our team with engineers being
indifferent to new ideas, and our manager loves consensus. Regardless, this
engineer thought his ideas were always "good ideas." They weren't. He was
eventually chewed out by our manager because he was becoming a passive-
aggressive tyrant. He left the company soon after that.

Nevertheless it goes to show that fortune does favor the bold, but that
fortune might be at another company.

~~~
roland35
The challenge, as with many things in life, is to strike a good balance. In
this case between being bold and being a good team player at the same time.

What I have tried to do in the past is:

1) Take an idea out to a "proof of concept" stage, whether that is a white
paper or an actual functioning demo but no further. People often need to see
something, not just hear it.

2) Have a cosponsor or two to work with you. At first you may think that you
are not getting full credit for your idea but I believe it shows more
leadership than just striking out on your own. Plus you don't want your team
to despise you like that aforementioned engineer.

3) Be humble, solicit feedback, and really listen to it!

------
Drdrdrq
Interesting that most comments deal with why flat structure doesn't work.
Newsflash: of course there is always a boss. Someone needs to sign the
paycheck after all. But the term "flat structure" usually refers to lack of
_middle_ management. And yes, that _can_ work, and much better than
traditional hierarchical organization. But it takes a great leader and capable
employees to achieve that. I am lucky to work at such place and it rocks.

As for reaching consensus, I think the idea is great. Instead of seeking
consensus try to find a few proponents and make sure nobody sees fundamental
flaws... I think this is a perfect tradeoff between doing the right thing and
moving fast.

~~~
blueboo
Indeed, like any management strategy, it can be done poorly, inadvertently
incentivizing people to form shadow organizations, or it can be done well,
encouraging people to engage in good faith and reaping the promised benefits.

In practice, we get lumpy mix of good and bad implementations within
organizations. It takes a lot, however, to overcome the near-term, personal-
empire-building incentive. "This way is better for everyone" isn't going to
cut it for a significant proportion of folks. If you bake it into the bones of
your recruitment process and in your management training, there's a chance
it'll be an authentic value of the org. And even then it's hard to shake the
suspicion that this strategy only further rewards showhorses and marginalizes
in-the-trenches doing-thankless-work types.

If you get an extraordinary manager, she can mitigate that, but your culture
isn't robust if it relies on the extraordinary.

------
kirubakaran
To bastardize Greenspun, any sufficiently large flat org contains an ad-hoc,
informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of top-down org.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule)

~~~
narnianal
Regarding Greenspun I have to think about a colleague. He is a studied
mathematician. So in the past 15 years he was working on a tool in Perl. Now
he switched teams and is tasked to work on a Python problem. You don't hear
about him for weeks besides he need to setup is development environment. Then
he comes back and starts to code. It seems like he doesn't need to spend any
time learning Python. You look into his code and also have no idea what's
happening or why it's working.

What he basically did was implement his own programming language out of lists,
dicts (hashtables), and functions, with class hierarchies, type checking,
inheritance, etc. And the time he spent "setting up his system" was the time
he needed to basically code his VM engine in Python instead of Perl, and then
adapting his standard library files to the quirks of the underlying
interpreter.

It was weird for me at first, but actually makes sense if you look at it
mathematically. A math lover starts with defining zero, one and plus, right?
So this is the only logical way to program for him. He doesn't even know what
a VM or standard library is.

~~~
mikeklaas
That's horrifying.

------
pjc50
While I'm very much in favour of reminding everyone of Tyranny of
Structurelessness and shadow hierarchies, the article is referring to a more
IETF-like situation of voluntary collaboration. Here there are other sorts of
shadow hierachy:

\- Postel decentralisation: it used to be the case that a lot of important
internet functionality was run through one person. Less so these days, but
there will still be critical individuals.

\- Fait accompli. This is really apparent in browsers, where the W3C
inevitably lags actual practice and features tend to be introduced by
deploying first and standardising later.

~~~
tialaramex
The article makes an early mistake in describing the IETF as "membership
based". Nope. You cannot join or leave the IETF, it has no members, everybody
who is interested can and should participate. It likewise confuses itself by
insisting on calling the hum a "vote" even though it acknowledges that humming
mustn't be used to try to enumerate support which is exactly the point of
voting.

The IETF process works because of _what it's for_ and could not usefully be
replicated in contentious political environments. Rough consensus and running
code builds SMTP but it doesn't end the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Because the IETF deliberately has no actual power, in the end the worst that
can happen is you didn't agree anything and have to roll your own. You are
"at" the IETF (many people never attend a physical meeting, and that's fine)
to reach an agreement, and if you can't agree then too bad but it cannot stop
you pressing on anyway.

This part of the model also worked for CA/B. CA/B initially exists as a
meeting between two groups that both want something, the Certificate
Authorities want a sales promotion tool and the Browser Vendors want better
validation. But the CA/B meeting lived on long after that discussion bore
fruit, because it turns out that _agreeing_ among yourselves is much better
for everybody than if you all just do whatever you want and hope it works out.

------
joshiefishbein
I currently work within a profit-share-based flat-org. We have a rule to never
exceed 12 people in company size. Sure there might be several of us that are
"core" members and others that come and go throughout the years. So in a sense
this seniority has translated to hierarchy to some degree.

We're all mostly web developers so the mind-share is important since our
technologies move fast. Decision making doesn't cost us a lot of time because
there aren't many big decisions to make. Our only producer and founder see
client faces the most, but not exclusively. We do good work and rely solely on
previous clients and referrals banging our doors down for more work – so we
fortunately don't have to worry on that front or "crown someone" with biz dev
because it's on autopilot for the most part (definitely over-simplifying the
work it takes to get a client in the door but you get the picture).

One would assume that our profits would cap out eventually because we aren't
scaling the labor-force, but we just keep getting better paying projects and
have a few internal projects that provide some passive revenue – so we've been
able to nearly double our revenue year-over-year for the last few years and is
now stably seven figures.

Our big decisions come down to whether or not to hire a specialized dev for an
upcoming scope or maybe what conference we attend that year. These decisions
don't happen often but they happen openly and almost everyone is satisfied
with the result almost all of the time. "Almost" is used unapologetically
because we all know there's never been a perfect organization and that keeps
everyone involved perfectly happy. We can't always be skipping around in the
cotton candy fields and enjoying the sugar rain like the unicorns we truly are
on the inside – so when we have to go to work we recognize that our pattern is
better than the vast majority of agency-models here in NYC and are still
delighted by our cumulative work experience day to day.

Flat-org is sometimes tossed around as if it projects itself as a silver
bullet to organizational overhead. But anyone that cares to think clearly for
a moment can recognize that any org structure has a place and time and that
there will never be a one-size-fits-all solution to managing people.

~~~
maxxxxx
That seems a like a great place to work.

~~~
joshiefishbein
It has been so far.

And we're hiring:
[https://www.sanctuary.computer](https://www.sanctuary.computer) so come see
for yourself

------
twoquestions
It seems there's an ideology here (in the Gary Bernhardt sense:
[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology)),
that flat organizations are _impossible_. Not just bad or inefficient, but
literally cannot possibly happen, that it will always and forever immediately
decay into a shadow oligarchy (which to be fair can happen).

Is it really that hard to take these people at their word, along with other
companies without a stated strict and rigid hierarchy? Little wonder such
organizations are hard to build, especially in a culture that holds the very
notion in contempt.

------
nvarsj
The comments here have completely derailed. Remove "flat organization" from
the post title, and the article is still valid. It's talking about consensus
making which applies to any org structure.

------
pinkfoot
Find out who can approve an invoice for payment. He's the boss.

~~~
stevenpetryk
It takes really little effort to use "they" instead of "he" to include all
people.

~~~
syntaxing
Serious question, I was taught in High School that he is grammatically correct
as a gender neutral pronoun where the gender is unknown[0]. Is this not the
case anymore?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-
person_pronoun#Generic_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-
person_pronoun#Generic_he)

~~~
lucb1e
I've heard that too (though not as part of any official education), but I'm
not sure I really like it. As far as I know, men have always had the upper
hand in the part of history that shaped most of our current society. When
prompted about it, it's easy to go "oh no, I didn't mean it has to be a man, I
meant it generally", while the word still obviously refers to a male. It
almost certainly reinforces an expectation of male leadership. I sometimes use
the 'wrong' gender on purpose ("she" when talking about male-dominated
professions and vice versa), just to make the reader realize that's an option,
hopefully getting used to the idea and not frowning when they hear of an
actual case where an uncommonly gendered person is (studying for / a candidate
for) $profession/$role.

------
dhruvrrp
Rough consensus is a really naive solution to making decisions. Being in a
flat structure doesn't change the fact that different people have different
requirements.

Just because you have more people "agreeing" to one particular idea doesn't
make it the right idea.

~~~
kradroy
Decision making is fraught with lack of knowledge and uncertainty. I favor
rough consensus. Face it - you're never going to get the best or "right"
solution in most cases or practically ever. It's good enough to get something
that most people _involved_ think will work. I emphasize "involved" because
there are always individuals who don't really care about the decision at
inception. They sometimes complain if the idea doesn't work out, but then you
can point back to the discussion and tell them they had a time and place to
give their input.

I feel exercise of decision making is mostly about having stakeholders be
aware that a topic is being discussed and making a space for open discussion.
The outcome of the decision is largely irrelevant.

------
asdfman123
There should be someone designated to gather rough consensus and act upon it.
Someone who leads the group. Perhaps they could be called a "leader"?

~~~
the-pigeon
Yeah. I've never seen "flat leadership" work. Someone always becomes the
leader just without the title.

Personally, I strongly prefer formalized structures over informal ones because
then everyone is on the same page and the right person can be chosen to lead
instead of it just being the one with the loudest voice.

~~~
ellius
People not being on the same page is a massive problem. It especially
constrains the leader herself, because she can't make any strong, clear
decisions without second-guessing whether she has the authority to do so.

------
davesque
It just seems too fashionable to talk about flat organizations nowadays. And,
as many have pointed out, it's a bit ironic since organizations that claim to
be flat tend not to be in practice. It's obnoxious when people claim that
things are one way when, in fact, they are another.

It seems people have developed some kind of allergy to leader figures. In the
US, this probably has a lot to do with the political situation. The current
president is non other than the antithesis of a good leader --- and he's "on
top", if not literally, then figuratively. Elsewhere, it's probably just
cyclical. We're at the bottom of a leadership trough in history.

However, I can't count the number of times I've wished for a good leader
lately. Call me mentally lazy or a conformist, but I want someone to give me a
sense of direction and purpose. I want someone I feel like I can relate to and
trust. Maybe I'm just the type that gets a lot out of mentoring relationships.

I guess it's just one of those things where you need to be the change you want
to see in the world, eh?

------
bigred100
I’ve only had about two years of software experience, but my (junior) opinion
is that I’d prepare to spend even more of my brainpower on political cagematch
fights than usual, as non-hierarchical means my “equals” are going to start
trying to intercept credit, take lead on things, etc. and position themselves
as de facto managers without me being able to tell them “fuck off, you’re not
my manager.”

~~~
papln
It is said, "Success has many parents. Failure is an orphan."

Before you get into cage matches, engage with your colleagues respectfully and
maturely, politely declining suggestions you disagree with, before rushing to
cuss them out.

------
crankylinuxuser
Our hackerspace runs in a "flat manner".

In reality, there are people that are, in a Animal Farm sense, "more equal"
than others.

It also means there's very little responsibility for our shared space, little
responsibility for operations, other than what individuals take on.

It also means that avenues that we could do (work more with First Robotics, or
review if what we're doing is the best for our mission) is shouted down by
said "more equal" members.

Sadfully, to that end, changes that I believe would be better can't even be
discussed. I've quit doing so, and just pay my dues and have my 3d printer
there (bed size is 500mm x 500mm x 400mm) along with 3dp equipment.
Admittedly, its a sad way for me to "interact", but I'm not one of the 'in'
people...

I'd much prefer if we actually had some hierarchy. We don't need to have every
position delineated, but a basic framework makes a ton of things clear. Right
now, I can't even figure out who knows how to make a static IP in the
hackerspace's dhcp table. _Someone_ knows.

~~~
icebraining
Would it work better if those "more equal" members were explicitly above the
rest of you?

~~~
maxxxxx
With a clear hierarchy you also have more accountability.

In my company (which isn't flat but like everywhere else there is a shadow
hierarchy) we have a few people who have the ear of upper management and
influence decisions but are never held responsible for bad decisions they
influenced. Sometimes it's really infuriating to be blamed for doing stuff you
thought was a bad idea while the people who wanted it that way get no blame
but can put their name on successful projects.

------
maxxxxx
Whenever I hear about flat organizations the old quote comes to mind: "All
animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". It seems to
me that all these orgs are a few people at the top that have a say and
everybody else needs to survive through a lot of political skill.

------
jedberg
I'm still looking for someone who works at Valve who can tell me the nuts and
bolts logistics of how things actually work there. If there are no bosses, how
are decisions made? How are raises actually determined? They publish their
handbook but the logistical details aren't in there.

~~~
Jerry2
This is the best description of how Valve's "flat" structure works in
practice:

>Some of Geldreich's comments are similar to comments Ellsworth made after
being let go by Valve. "...There is actually a hidden layer of powerful
management structure in the company and it felt a lot like high school,"
Ellsworth said in 2013. "There are popular kids that have acquired power in
the company, then there's the trouble makers, and everyone in between."

>Geldreich similarly describes 'barons' who are in with the executive arm of
the company in question, and a culture in which employees must curry favor
with influential 'sponsors' to enjoy stability.

>At self-organizing firms you might be placed into a huge open office and
given massive monitors. This is to normalize all communications and for more
effective surveillance. Everything will be monitored either directly by a
corporate arm employee, one of their barons or friends.July 16, 2018

Rest: [https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-
ruthless...](https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-
industry-politics/)

------
leoc
Quoting my self from a comment on another article
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468090#19468699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19468090#19468699)
:

> AFAICT—and again, I'm just someone who read about this stuff in magazines as
> a child—this kind of management-theory/theory-of-the-firm study and
> experimentation really was much more prominent in the public eye twenty-five
> or more years ago, and has faded from popular awareness since; maybe because
> the work itself is less common, and less influential on institutions,
> nowadays too. I think that's a pity, because it seems relevant to some
> supposedly-new things you see generating excitement nowadays, especially in
> the vicinity of the tech industry. For example the whole Valve
> structureless-or-notionally-structureless-organisation effort is probably
> pretty well prefigured in the work of a generation of management consultants
> who looked at and tried out all kinds of institutional structures or
> absences of structure beside the traditional corporate model, generally in
> pursuit of much the same ends—more innovation, more amenability to change,
> better decision-making—and with similar mixed-to-disappointing results.

I find it weird to hear this kind of thing discussed without reference to
previous research.

------
fuggles
Have been thinking about this a lot lately. Not just decision making, but how
to actually function in a healthy way in the day-to-day, in a flat org.

The place I work recently restructured from a more traditional hierarchical
structure to SAFe - so the business has a well defined hierarchy, while
engineering teams are completely flat. Almost 4 PI's on (~9 months) the
promise of "self organizing teams" has not been realized.

We have a lot of communication problems, especially technical cross team
communication. The development process wants to move much faster than the
information actually flows, and if the information does actually flow what is
communicated is wrong/incomplete. So what ends up happening often is that
teams choose to operate in their own bubble.

Another issue is having common direction across all teams, while also allowing
teams to operate autonomously. That common direction is missing so you end up
with work from one team being very different from work by another team, and in
a system that integrates a lot of different components it is awkward to
navigate and work in.

The above, among other things, brings out "2nd order effects", like strained
inter-team relations, to put it lightly (so there is an additional policing
aspect to contend with there as well).

We have a System Architecture group (as defined by SAFe) but their time seems
to be consumed by meetings and managing information flow and coordination
across teams. There is also a "shadow hierarchy" (as others have mentioned
thus far on this thread) that has emerged, and that helps a little, but it's
really a poor solution.

Curious on anyone else's thoughts/experience here.

~~~
lucb1e
You're using some lingo I never saw before, what's a SAFe and a PI?

~~~
dragonwriter
SAFe is the Scaled Agile Framework.

[https://www.scaledagileframework.com/](https://www.scaledagileframework.com/)

------
raedah
The Decred open source project approves spending on proposals based on stake
holder vote, 60% yes for approval.
[https://dcrdata.decred.org](https://dcrdata.decred.org) shows $17m in the
treasury currently. Votes are the final say. Current and past votes are
viewable on [https://proposals.decred.org](https://proposals.decred.org) . Its
all open source, docs
[https://docs.decred.org/governance/politeia/overview/](https://docs.decred.org/governance/politeia/overview/)
code
[https://github.com/decred/politeia/](https://github.com/decred/politeia/)
voting charts
[https://alpha.dcrdata.org/proposals](https://alpha.dcrdata.org/proposals)

------
grawprog
My work's been effectively operating as a flat organization for the last
several months as our manager's been away on leave. It works for the most part
as we all have our own jobs we do and all know what we should be doing. Until
it doesn't work. There's no accountability with the schedule and a big
communication problem between everybody. When things change, nobody really
knows whats going on, when mistakes are made everybody's quick to point finger
and problems take longer to solve. You really notice the lack of a manager
when they're gone. All these little things that used to be taken care of now
fall onto whoever happens to be around to deal with it and it's definitely
been causing problems we never used to have before.

------
trustfundbaby
I find that places that harp on their "flat" organization tend to be places
where the people in charge are just trying to defer the hard work of putting
structure in place or just afraid of it for whatever reason.

In my experience flat organizations just try to keep everyone happy by making
them think they have decisive input on things that they honestly shouldn't,
past a certain point.

I find (completely anecdotally of course) that they don't scale, and I think
what the writer (who ironically is a lead engineer at this supposedly flat
organisation) is running into are the limitations of this flatness once it
gets to a certain point ... I bet the next post will be something along the
lines of

"Managers: a necessary evil"

------
hinkley
I'm sure you've all worked some place that talked about 'meritocracy'. I'm
sure most of you have worked some place where every time a promotion happens,
people joke about "I thought you were already a <new job title>".

Years ago someone put me onto this phenomenon. Some people in a business have
no trouble making decisions and others are hesitant for a myriad of reasons,
from self doubt to not wanting to be responsible for the consequences, to just
not liking being randomized. These people will line up behind folks who seem
confident, and as this manager half-joked, all he really had to do was 'show
up' and start making decisions and people would follow him.

The best description I've ever heard of this phenomenon, and describes my own
experience, is that people are looking for and will line up behind someone
they can trust. If you sound confident they will give you the benefit of the
doubt. But if things go wrong and you don't jump on the problem, they get
burned and they won't listen to you as much in the future, even if you are
ostensibly in charge. Strong opinions loosely held, own your mistakes, be good
at troubleshooting, talk to other teams (even knowing things an hour before
everybody else makes you look a hell of a lot smarter), and people will defer
to you even without a title. Because even if the boat goes down they know
you'll go down with it instead of running away. People will take your advice,
rank be damned.

That said, there are darker patterns here too, that could easily dominate in a
'flat' organization. Hoarding knowledge forces people to defer to you. There
are obvious flavors of this that I don't need to explain, but here's one I see
all the time but others miss: modelling systems to exactly reflect your mental
processes (instead of a simplified version, see Brian Kernighan on debugging)
means nobody else can work on it except for trivial things. This makes people
feel stupid, and imposter syndrome stops them from fighting back.

As one of my bosses said, you should fire all of the 'indispensable' people
because they are holding up progress. An earlier boss started a new project
and wouldn't let a bunch of us work on it because we were 'too important' to
the old project. I think maybe 2 of us figured out this was a trap and worked
to hand off our stuff.

------
kristianc
> At Doist we believe that open and sincere communication improves our
> decision-making process. That’s why we’ve built a culture that encourages
> feedback at all levels of decision-making

Who is 'we' and doesn't that get to the nub of the problem? It's highly
unlikely that they held a group conference and decided what 'we at Doist'
believe.

That 'we' actually refers to a small subset of leaders who decide, and it is
'flatness' and stagnation for the rest.

------
kbuchanan
The article touts transparency as being the virtue that led them to a flat
organization. I'd argue that _it's within an explicit hierarchy where
transparency (e.g. who makes decision, who earns more, who gets promoted)
actually flourishes_ with the lowest cost. As other commenters have pointed
out, a hierarchy will emerge regardless, however, transparency will be subdued
beneath secret cabals and handshakes.

------
Joeri
A good resource to learn more about scaling flat self-organizing organizations
is the book _Reinventing Organizations_. It's a curious mix of dreamy hippie
philosophy interspersed with very practical examples of flat orgs and how they
remain flat while still getting things done.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
+1, I love RO. The Holacracy book is also a great read for an implementation
of what a built-out Teal (though not quite flat) system can look like (and how
it responds to objections like the ones seen in a lot of these comments). Of
course, you have to unlearn all the stuff you learned about Holacracy from bad
business mag articles....

------
noisy_boy
In my experience, hierarchy (explicit/implicit) is necessary to conclude
differences which are grey. In fact, there are cases where I have seen one
side make their points logically enough that they are basically black & white
and the other side sticking their guns saying "good points, but I think I
would prefer to go ...". One might rightfully say the issue is deeper but we
don't always have the luxury of choosing the most well fitting team. Somebody
with the authority (granted/earned) has to step in and say "I have heard all
sides and this is what we are going to do". Saves endless bickering over never
ending e-mail chains.

------
edmundhuber
Are there examples of flat organizations that have to meet make-or-break
deadlines? I'm a little skeptical of a flat org's ability to hold itself
accountable to externally-imposed deadlines/requirements/etc.

------
robomartin
The answer is simple: Decide to leave the fantasy of flat organizations
behind.

Really.

Flat organizations might work for a yet-to-be-discovered species. They do not
work for humans. We can’t even have a picnic without leadership.

------
sopooneo
Answer: you get lucky by having a great flat organization. Great people and
great cohesion.

Structure is a pricey insurance premium. You best case will never be as good,
but neither will your worst be as bad.

------
waylandsmithers
My org uses a similar ranking method for hiring panels-- your feedback can be
anywhere between "I'd quit if we hired the candidate" to "I'd quit if we don't
hire this candidate" with a couple options in between, and no option for
"maybe" or "I don't know". Of course people try to get around that by saying
things like "soft yes"...

------
howard941
A few related Zappos discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964404)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239471)

------
nestorherre
Offtopic: browsing the doist blog for the first time, plenty of valuable
articles about productivity in there.

------
dpeck
Easy, you simply make the decisions within the confines of the shadow
hierarchy that exists within all flat organizations.

~~~
adrianmonk
A slightly radical theory: flat organizations are set up to foster that
intentionally.

Suppose your company has the idea that they want to identify and reward
natural leaders and/or those who test limits and push through boundaries.

One way to do it is to tell people your organization is flat, then watch for
the people who don't buy that and instead see an opportunity to take charge.

You create a situation with a little bit of an artificial _and completely
intentional_ power vacuum, then you watch who takes it upon themselves to step
in and fill it. By holding a bit of a vacuum, you encourage these people to
show themselves. (And I'm convinced management is actively watching to see who
takes that bait.)

I'd say these are the most common responses: (1) never reach awareness that
it's happening and continue to take flat at face value, (2) see it as
opportunity and take advantage of it, and (3) see it as unnecessary game-
playing and dislike it.

Whether 2 or 3 is better is an interesting question. It might separate the
practical people from the idealists, or maybe it separates the self-interested
from the more community-minded. I can see some of both, personally.

EDIT: I don't necessarily want to be completely dismissive of the idea.
There's something to be said for creating situations that allow for people to
stretch and try out new roles. That's how people develop. This is informal and
stealthy, but it is a way to do that.

~~~
dpeck
You may be overestimating how much management is paying attention. As long as
things are shipped reasonably close to time and no one is filing lawsuits most
stay more concerned with their own goals than that of their staff.

~~~
adrianmonk
You raise a good point. Flat probably doesn't always work this way. It
wouldn't be a good idea to assume that every flat organization is doing what I
describe.

While I'd personally argue that people development is an essential duty of
management, they may not see it as important. Also, in some cases, management
may just see it as a way to be less rigid.

------
User23
I find the Roman concepts of auctoritas, dignitas, and potestas to be quite
helpful for understanding how allegedly flat organizations self organize.
Please note that I’m not saying they apply directly, they don’t, but it helps
to understand social status is multidimensional.

------
kitsune_
Sounds a lot like consent (not consensus) as practiced in Sociocracy or
Holacracy.

[https://patterns.sociocracy30.org/consent-decision-
making.ht...](https://patterns.sociocracy30.org/consent-decision-making.html)

~~~
Matticus_Rex
There's a distinction between the Sociocracy consent process and Holacracy's
process with objection validity, but yeah on the continuum of similar
processes I'd put chaos consensus (which is what a lot of people who attack
self-management/flat are actually critiquing) at one end and Holacracy on the
other, with this and Sociocracy about 3/4 toward the Holacracy end.

------
taeric
My hope is that you can begin by dropping concerns over efficiency.

For that matter, an slight inverse of the headline is way more important, to
my mind. Avoid slowly making bad decisions. An easy way to help there, is to
not turn every decision into a debate.

------
gcb0
Consensus is the path, not the destination. Implemented it in a project such
as:

Start using the tech. If it explodes it's on you; if other people pick it up
it was good; If nobody picks up and you get tired of fixing it, abandon.

------
notabee
The article very much needs a link to this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality)

------
idlewords
Decisions in a flat organization are made by the informal hierarchy that you
have to discover through trial and error. Be careful not to antagonize anyone
important while you do it!

~~~
tlb
It sounds like fun when you describe it that way!

It's more complicated than a hierarchy. Informal power isn't transitive, so
you can have arbitrary directed graphs with loops.

It'd be an interesting experiment to build a tech startup with an overt
hierarchy, where decisions were made by the person in the room with the most
stripes on their shoulders. The conventional wisdom is that it would suck and
you couldn't hire smart people, but sometimes the big wins are to be found in
such places.

------
sunflowerdeath
I think in "flat" organizations, there must still be a responsible person, but
he should convince people to do what is needed to achieve the goal, not force
them.

~~~
JamesBarney
The problem is bikeshedding. You can burn through a lot of hours arguing about
decisions that do not affect the end goal.

------
he0001
An organization can only be flat if you can’t be fired by someone else or you
can fire anyone else. As long someone can do that there’s always that
inequality.

------
miguelmota
Good advice. The speed of decision making can slow down momentum in a startup
and reaching consensus quickly and efficiently is important.

------
sbhn
Why dont you just outsource decision making to the proof of work consensus
protocol that is so effectively employed by the blockchain.

------
iamleppert
I wouldn’t be taking any advice from IETF, it’s one of the slowest moving
organizations I’ve ever seen.

------
mdpopescu
Use money. People tend to pay more for things / services they prefer than for
those they dislike.

------
samirillian
Great article! But humming does bear a striking resemblance to voting by
acclamation.

------
westurner
Group decision-making > Formal systems:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_decision-
making#Formal_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_decision-
making#Formal_systems)

> Consensus decision-making, Voting-based methods, Delphi method, Dotmocracy

Consensus decision-making: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-
making](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making)

There's a field that _some people_ are all calling "Collaboration
Engineering". I learned about this from a university course in Collaboration.

6 Patterns of Collaboration [GRCOEB] — Generate, Reduce, Clarify, Organize,
Evaluate, Build Consensus

7 Layers of Collaboration [GPrAPTeToS] — Goals, Products, Activities, Patterns
of Collaboration, Techniques, Tools, Scripts

The group decision making processes described in the article may already be
defined with the _thinkLets_ design pattern language.

A person could argue against humming for various unspecified reasons.

I'll just CC this here from my notes, which everyone can read here [1]:

“Collaboration Engineering: Foundations and Opportunities” de Vreede (2009)
[http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol10/iss3/7/](http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol10/iss3/7/)

“A Seven-Layer Model of Collaboration: Separation of Concerns for Designers of
Collaboration Systems” Briggs (2009)
[http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2009/26/](http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2009/26/)

Six Patterns of Collaboration “Defining Key Concepts for Collaboration
Engineering” Briggs (2006)
[http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2006/17/](http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2006/17/)

“ThinkLets: Achieving Predictable, Repeatable Patterns of Group Interaction
with Group Support Systems (GSS)”
[http://www.academia.edu/259943/ThinkLets_Achieving_Predictab...](http://www.academia.edu/259943/ThinkLets_Achieving_Predictable_Repeatable_Patterns_of_Group_Interaction_With_Group_Support_Systems_GSS_)

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thinklets](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=thinklets)

[1] [https://wrdrd.github.io/docs/consulting/team-
building#collab...](https://wrdrd.github.io/docs/consulting/team-
building#collaboration-engineering)

------
meerita
Design by consensus, the worst thing ever.

A Volvo is a Porsche designed by commitee.

------
RocketSyntax
Get data from outside the organization and let that guide you.

------
zby
And nobody mentioned prediction markets yet?

------
dlphn___xyz
there is some form of hierarchy even in flat orgs. best bet is to get buy in
from the seniors

------
whalesalad
You don't.

