A good place to start would be understanding the holocracy model and why it hasn't become more mainstream yet. Companies like Valve and Medium have experimented with flat organizations to varying degrees of success (I believe Medium ended their holacracy experiment in favor of a more traditional org structure).
Personally, I believe decentralized organizations will look more like small markets than companies. You could almost argue that a completely flat organization is a market. What's the difference between a completely decentralized Uber and a "ridesharing market" of drivers and riders whose logistics, contracts, and payments are handled by a blockchain instead of people?
Employees were shocked and frustrated by the numerous mandates, the endless meetings, and the confusion about who did what.
Holacracy created new winners and losers—and it sparked fresh ideas. With experience and expertise de-emphasized, less “typical” and more junior types have been able to succeed. Introverts have benefited from the expectation that everybody speak in meetings.
Holacracy also lacks some crucial elements, such as a compensation process. The system doesn’t value seniority or the size of your budget. There are no formal performance evaluations. How, then, do you calculate how much to a pay a person, and for that matter, who makes the decision?
Holacracy’s value remains far from proven. Its creator, Robertson, says the process takes five to 10 years to be fully integrated—an eon in business.
Some 300 companies use his system—Zappos is easily the largest—and there have been failures. In early March, content site Medium announced it was abandoning it. Bud Caddell, a consultant who has studied self-management systems, says his former firm, Undercurrent, tried it without success. “I found it extremely dogmatic and rigid and overly complex, and it took attention away from our customers,” Caddell says.
Personally, I believe decentralized organizations will look more like small markets than companies. You could almost argue that a completely flat organization is a market. What's the difference between a completely decentralized Uber and a "ridesharing market" of drivers and riders whose logistics, contracts, and payments are handled by a blockchain instead of people?