Eh. I worked at a reasonably holacratic/flat organization (a high-profile agile consultancy, actually), and when I say it was flat, I didn't know who my boss was, or who to give notice to when I quit. It was honestly very flat, and in no sense did this mean "secretly rich white guys ran the show." It did lead to a bit more cliqueyness than might otherwise have been desired.
I think that a holacracy, like most things dealing with human beings and their behavior, is dependent on the specific human beings in question with regard to whether or not it will succeed.
On a slightly meta level, it is interesting why the startup/development culture seems to flock to articles like this, saying "such-and-such thing can never work as a solution to people problems because it didn't work here" - we see this crop up on HN constantly, pro- and anti-, with things like working from home, pair programming, etc. Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"?
I think I work at the "high-profile agile consultancy" you're talking about.
I've been there two months and I still have no idea who I talk to about X, where X is a variety of things. Before getting staffed on a project I spent time working on whatever I wanted to learn. At several points I wondered if there was someone I should check in with. It felt so weird to just do what I wanted without having to get permission or justify it to someone.
That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager, especially a non-technical manager.
Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"?
I couldn't agree more. I think the flat model works at my company because harassment wouldn't be tolerated by anyone. I turned down positions at startups because their culture was too fratty. Even if they had a management system I wouldn't have felt comfortable bringing up issues.
That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager, especially a non-technical manager.
After working in a flat organization (I'm 99% sure we're talking about the same place here) like we do/did, I agree. It's amazing how much more productive you can be (provided you're a generally high-aptitude, motivated person to begin with) when you are left alone to do what needs to get done. I'd prefer only to work in similar organizational structures from now on. In my experience, even the little cliqueyness you get is hardly an argument against the alternatives (rigid organizational structure, difficult to move vertically, documentation, all the waterfall stuff, and/or the domineering personality of a god-complex startup founder)
Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"?
Weak opinions make for weak conversation, especially between strangers. All the participants need the ability to appreciate nuanced positions in order to gain value from weak opinions.
This isn't unrelated, either; it's one of the reasons that cliques form in the first place. The extreme position is inevitably simpler than moderate ones, and thus acts as a more solid common ground for group formation. And it's also why we have institutional structures: things like accredited universities and portfolios and interview loops: they help filter for people who can appreciate the relevant nuance so that milder and deeper conversations are easier to come by.
The extreme position is inevitably simpler than moderate ones, and thus acts as a more solid common ground for group formation.
While I certainly agree with you that this is true, and while I am certainly not surprised finding this sort of thing on HN, it would be nice if discussions could start from less extreme positions. In my weak opinion, anyway ;)
Discussions could start from less extreme positions if we had two things: (1) minds in the habit of being constructively critical and (2) ways to capture many, many opinions with minimal cost.
For #2, I think that a technological solution can be started on, though I admittedly have no idea what I want (or I would have started on it myself). The weakness of democracy, and the Internet, is that our tools for discussion are really, really weak. They do this thing where they're kinda-sorta paying lip service to real-time conversation... except that they're very much not. And they pay lip service to long-form discussion, except that no one really has the time, energy, or reason to properly parse an essay-length exploration of a subject.
This needs to change. Despite what Jeff Atwood seems to think, a better forum isn't really an answer: all that does is capture all the drawbacks of human conversation, notably the difficulty of acknowledging the many nuances in thousands of other opinions. Dozens, our human brains can manage on a good day and with some talent. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions goes from silly to impossible. But we need to find a way to do it anyways.
I guess flat organization means that you build the company bottom up but unfortunately companies don't work efficiently this way. Why? My most recent experience with flat organization revealed the fact that people judged by the perception of their merit not the real value or expertise. Since everybody is biased towards certain things, based on your gender, race or background, this makes flat organizations vulnerable of people forming cliques and jinxing other people's work outside their group. Politics get even stronger in such an workplace, now you need to make these groups happy instead of just going to the right manager or exec to get something sorted. These groups can promote broken ideas, screw other other groups and have subpar performance and blame it on other groups. Without management and data collected (how long does it take to deliver a feature, how many support hours the company need to spend on a product they wrote etc.) it can get nasty very quick.
Summarizing: I don't think that flat organizations are any better than hierarchical structures, I have experience with both and I believe that flat workplaces suck more especially above a certain size (200-300+ people).
Comments
Eh. I worked at a reasonably holacratic/flat organization (a high-profile agile consultancy, actually), and when I say it was flat, I didn't know who my boss was, or who to give notice to when I quit. It was honestly very flat, and in no sense did this mean "secretly rich white guys ran the show." It did lead to a bit more cliqueyness than might otherwise have been desired.
I think that a holacracy, like most things dealing with human beings and their behavior, is dependent on the specific human beings in question with regard to whether or not it will succeed.
On a slightly meta level, it is interesting why the startup/development culture seems to flock to articles like this, saying "such-and-such thing can never work as a solution to people problems because it didn't work here" - we see this crop up on HN constantly, pro- and anti-, with things like working from home, pair programming, etc. Maybe it's too much to ask that we say "different things work for different groups of people"?
I think I work at the "high-profile agile consultancy" you're talking about.
I've been there two months and I still have no idea who I talk to about X, where X is a variety of things. Before getting staffed on a project I spent time working on whatever I wanted to learn. At several points I wondered if there was someone I should check in with. It felt so weird to just do what I wanted without having to get permission or justify it to someone.
That said, I don't think I could ever go back to reporting to a manager, especially a non-technical manager.
I couldn't agree more. I think the flat model works at my company because harassment wouldn't be tolerated by anyone. I turned down positions at startups because their culture was too fratty. Even if they had a management system I wouldn't have felt comfortable bringing up issues.
After working in a flat organization (I'm 99% sure we're talking about the same place here) like we do/did, I agree. It's amazing how much more productive you can be (provided you're a generally high-aptitude, motivated person to begin with) when you are left alone to do what needs to get done. I'd prefer only to work in similar organizational structures from now on. In my experience, even the little cliqueyness you get is hardly an argument against the alternatives (rigid organizational structure, difficult to move vertically, documentation, all the waterfall stuff, and/or the domineering personality of a god-complex startup founder)
Weak opinions make for weak conversation, especially between strangers. All the participants need the ability to appreciate nuanced positions in order to gain value from weak opinions.
This isn't unrelated, either; it's one of the reasons that cliques form in the first place. The extreme position is inevitably simpler than moderate ones, and thus acts as a more solid common ground for group formation. And it's also why we have institutional structures: things like accredited universities and portfolios and interview loops: they help filter for people who can appreciate the relevant nuance so that milder and deeper conversations are easier to come by.
While I certainly agree with you that this is true, and while I am certainly not surprised finding this sort of thing on HN, it would be nice if discussions could start from less extreme positions. In my weak opinion, anyway ;)
Discussions could start from less extreme positions if we had two things: (1) minds in the habit of being constructively critical and (2) ways to capture many, many opinions with minimal cost.
For #2, I think that a technological solution can be started on, though I admittedly have no idea what I want (or I would have started on it myself). The weakness of democracy, and the Internet, is that our tools for discussion are really, really weak. They do this thing where they're kinda-sorta paying lip service to real-time conversation... except that they're very much not. And they pay lip service to long-form discussion, except that no one really has the time, energy, or reason to properly parse an essay-length exploration of a subject.
This needs to change. Despite what Jeff Atwood seems to think, a better forum isn't really an answer: all that does is capture all the drawbacks of human conversation, notably the difficulty of acknowledging the many nuances in thousands of other opinions. Dozens, our human brains can manage on a good day and with some talent. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions goes from silly to impossible. But we need to find a way to do it anyways.
For #1, that's a completely different solution.
I guess flat organization means that you build the company bottom up but unfortunately companies don't work efficiently this way. Why? My most recent experience with flat organization revealed the fact that people judged by the perception of their merit not the real value or expertise. Since everybody is biased towards certain things, based on your gender, race or background, this makes flat organizations vulnerable of people forming cliques and jinxing other people's work outside their group. Politics get even stronger in such an workplace, now you need to make these groups happy instead of just going to the right manager or exec to get something sorted. These groups can promote broken ideas, screw other other groups and have subpar performance and blame it on other groups. Without management and data collected (how long does it take to deliver a feature, how many support hours the company need to spend on a product they wrote etc.) it can get nasty very quick.
Summarizing: I don't think that flat organizations are any better than hierarchical structures, I have experience with both and I believe that flat workplaces suck more especially above a certain size (200-300+ people).