24 People, No Managers: Buffer's "Decision Maker" Experiment
Our decentralized approach for decisions passes the torch of responsibility, enabling fast-paced iteration without the need for approval processes. Individuals make urgent, locally optimal decisions. Any misalignments are then ironed out quickly afterward.
Lenny Rachitsky • How Perplexity builds product
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Decentralized decision-making is more effort compared to someone making the call because they are higher up in a power hierarchy. We know that. That’s the trade-off we make for enabling higher autonomy of teams and individuals, which ultimately leads to more innovative products and more fulfilled people.
Manuel Kublbock • How we make decentralized decisions
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If the residents of our cities had to wait for authorization from the boss for every decision they made, the city would quickly grind to a halt. Yet in our companies we see a very different organizing principle at play.
Brian J. Robertson • Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World
this was my company, what would I do?”6 By distributing power in this way,
Brian J. Robertson • Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World
In truly decentralized organizations, we follow the principle of subsidiarity: by default, decisions should be made by the people who are directly affected by those decisions. Higher levels of bureaucracy should only perform tasks that cannot be performed effectively at the local level — that is, the authority of higher levels of bureaucracy should
... See moreJoanne Molesky • Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale
The philosophy is that you push the power of decision making out to the periphery and away from the center. You give people the room to adapt, based on their experience and expertise. All you ask is that they talk to one another and take responsibility. That is what works.
Atul Gawande • The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right
My goal is to structure teams around minimizing “coordination headwind,” as described by Alex Komoroske in this deck on seeing organizations as slime mold. The rough idea is that coordination costs (caused by uncertainty and disagreements) increase with scale, and adding managers doesn’t improve things. People’s incentives become misaligned. People... See more
Lenny Rachitsky • How Perplexity builds product
Britt Gage added