in my role as a more traditional COO (which I also thoroughly enjoyed) I was touching on a large number of parts within Buffer. It also created a certain level of pressure, one that Joel described very well in this post. I felt the urge to try and “keep everything together” and within an arm’s reach so everything would go according to plan.

With... See more

Traditional corporate structures rewarded political skill. Knowing how to manage up. Building alliances. Navigating approval processes. Playing the game of bureaucracy.

Flatter structures with radical decision-making authority require different capabilities. You need people who can make decisions when there’s no manager to defer to. Who can work... See more

In the running of a company of whatever size, the hardest thing to manage is usually this: the delicate balance between the necessity for centralized control and the equally strong need for employees to have enough autonomy to make maximum contributions to the company and derive satisfaction from their work. To put it another way, the problem is... See more

There’s a healthy culture of grabbing the work that most energizes (or annoys!) you combined with giving ambitious tasks to one person, regardless of title or org structure or team, and just letting them be owner, full stop.