The Tyranny of Stucturelessness

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and re... See more

Ostensibly, having a flat organization is a good idea. You know, everyone should be equal and have the same rights, blablabla. But not having a formally defined power structure would only lead to the tyranny of structurelessness, where informal power structures form spontaneously from preexisting social relations between members, producing leaders ... See more

...we’ve been trained to think of organizations as homogenous and mechanistic, with a clear set of rules, a command-and-control structure, and the ability to leverage hierarchy to get things done quickly by issuing top-down directives to reallocate resources to meet objectives.

She adds that the less structured a group is, the less control it has over the directions in which it develops and in the projects it engages in:

If the movement continues deliberately to not select who shall exercise power, it does not thereby abolish power. All it does is abdicate the right to demand that those who do exercise power and influence

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There are a lot of organizational structures and lived practices embedded in our bodies that we just enact by default. But through explicit facilitation practices or when we make meetings happen in a certain way, that helps change these conditioned ways of operating. In the process of learning to work this way, what really helps is, again, trust. T... See more