Tyranny of Structurelessness

Extremely relevant:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...tl;dr - hierarchies will form whether you want them to or not. If you refuse to endorse an official structure, you'll simply get an unofficial (and more often than not, unaccountable) one instead.

I don't believe this works well, especially in larger organisations. Groups of people naturally form a hierarchy, whether it's officially recognised or not. It's human nature.

The problem isn't hierarchy or authoritarianism (though the latter is a symptom of it), but the distribution of power in any organization (or society), regardless of its goals. The point is simple: shying away from a clear power structure results only in an unfair and unmanageable distribution of power. Companies like GitHub, that believe in "self-organizations" would often fall into this trap once they grow large enough. Julie Ann Horvath's story at GitHub demonstrates how e

Humans have a natural tendency towards social hierarchies. If you don't provide structure people will instinctively create it; so attempting to entirely remove structure from an organization is idealistic and inevitably fails. This usually leads to hidden power structures and counter-productive popularity dynamics. A great classic read about this topic is essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman: <a href="https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.h

Thanks for the book recommendation.It's not really that much about money, as it is about that you cannot built a non-hierarchy at the bottom of hierarchy. The non-hierarchy must come from the top. Maybe there are some outliers for which it works out, because the top level management buys into it, but I don't see it happening in most normal organizations.

Our flat non-hierarchical organisation works, what are we doing wrong?!

Yeah agreed. In fact, orgs that try to pretend like they have no hierarchy frequently have worse culture and higher employee turnover. See: Valve.

Yes, Manu's comic is spot on on this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Cornet#/media/File:%22Org...

the tyranny of structurelessness is arguably worse because there will always be hierarchies and in a so-called flat org they just become invisible and unaccountable

Congratulations! You have re-discovered the Iron Law of Oligarchy (1911). Organizations become oligarchies.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchyTo kick your understanding of organizational problems up a level, I recommended watching CGP Grey's 'Rules for Rulers' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs" rel="nofollo