This makes a lot of sense to me. At the very least, I think that most American organizations undergo a substantial cultural transition as they scale, so it makes sense we'd also need a process transition.
The problem I see is that people aren't really willing to be honest about the cultural transition that happens, so we also can't be honest about the process transition.
I think Agile-ish approaches work very well in startups, because the structure is pretty flat, and the goals are shared. But as companies grow, they tend to become what I think of business feudalism: hierarchical, control-oriented, territorial. For that, it makes sense you need different processes. And I think large company Agile is in effect Waterfall with a faster cadence, so you get that different process. But nobody will admit it. "We're doing Agile," they say, with too-bright eyes and gritted teeth.
What I wonder is: what if instead of killing the peer culture and the human-centered process as we scaled, we kept them?
At scale many organizations create substructure that contain strong peer culture and human-centered process, so it isn't lost, it's localized.
I think that the big challenge is to recognize that hierarchical structure isn't good or bad, it's something that most natural systems do in response to scaling. If we understand it as a design parameter we can make it humane.
The first part makes sense to me, although I don't think I've ever personally seen it happen. What percentage of companies would you say operate in the fashion you describe?
When you talk about hierarchy as natural, I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I mean hierarchy as a system of power/control relationships, with each unit having an actor in charge and totally containing sub-units. E.g., the classic army chain of command. I can't think of anything natural that has that. Flocks and troops have leaders, but I think humanity is unique in its extension of social dominance to many-layered nested structures controlling millions of individuals. So I'd call it essentially artificial.
I agree that we can apply a hierarchical analytical model to many natural systems, but I think there are plenty of other models we could apply, just ones that aren't as easy for current human brains. E.g., we could talk about fractal, self-similar, or recursive processes; those have no connotation of primate dominance. Or note the shift away from "great chain of being" analyses of nature toward ecological and non-teleological analytical models. When all you have is social primates, everything looks like a hierarchy.
I would certainly like to believe that we can make hierarchies humane. But given that a fundamental characteristic is individual power over others that increases as you go up the chain, and given human fallibility, cognitive limits, and human nature, it seems to me they have to become essentially inhumane at some size. And in practice I certainly see a correlation between hierarchy size and inhumanity.
Correlation isn't proof, of possibility, of course. Just natural tendency. Are there large hierarchies you think violate that correlation, where they have gotten more humane with scale?
> The first part makes sense to me, although I don't think I've ever personally seen it happen. What percentage of companies would you say operate in the fashion you describe?
Ever worked in a chain restaurant? Camaraderie among coworkers at a site under a manager (so hierarchy) and not as much peer connection across sites.
I'd argue that you are using a narrow definition of hierarchy that is centered on ideas about power rather than dynamics in emergent systems. The arterial structure of a leaf is hierarchical. So are airport connection patterns. Whenever you have preferential attachment or costs associated with material or information transfer there's a force toward hierarchy, designed or not. Systemic effect. No primates needed.
The interesting bit to me is that if we considered something non-sentient, like a network router that controls flow over a set of nodes, it would be easy to anthropomorphize it purely based on its behavior and see it as exerting dominance when it makes its routing decisions if they don't align with what we want at that moment. Although there can be abusive hierarchy, there's something deep to be considered in that scenario. We might be inclined to see all hierarchy as bad because that sort of conflict of interest can happen, willed or not. That's why, where there are power relationships in employment or even representative democracy, systemic integrity and human values depend upon gaining and maintaining consent.
I have worked in a chain restaurant. And that's one of the experiences that convinces me of the essential inhumanity of deep hierarchy. There was some coworker cameraderie, sure. But I don't think there was anything human-centered about the place. Workers were replaceable, disposable units. Much of the worker bonding was despite (or against) the company and the managers, not because of it. And restaurants in some ways have it easier, in that the purpose of the work is present and visible. For many organizations, that's much less true.
As to definition of hierarchy, the last half of the word literally means "rule" or "government", like monarchy or oligarchy, so I'm comfortable with my definition. I agree one can use it as a metaphor to understand natural systems, but it's only a metaphor. And as with the Great Chain of Being, I think it's a dangerously easy one to over-apply.
There are surely phenomena in emergent systems that relate and are worth studying, but conflating them with primate dominance structures obscures more for me than it reveals. To the extent that nature tells us things, though, it can't tell us what ought to exist. That's our job.
I totally agree that consent is vital for humane organizations. But I think that's in direct opposition to hierarchy, which is about top-down control. American democracy, for example, is basically non-hierarchical. I'm a participant in and subject to at least 9 quasi-independent governments (city, county, state, federal, regional transit district, school district, community college district, air quality management district, municipal utility district), plus various splits (executive, legislative, judicial). None of these controls any of the others. And none of them controls me, either, except in certain deeply constrained circumstances.
That stands in contrast to me to the essentially feudal structures of scaling American businesses. The main rule there is "my way or the highway" for all superiors. In theory, employees can always switch jobs to another company. But that's always much easier on the employer than the employee, so I think that does very little to act as a practical check. Employees and teams can try to carve out niches, but I've always seen that happen at the sufferance of (or with the neglect of) management, never because the teams had much real authority. And the more levels they have above them, the larger the set of people who can ruin things for them without consequence or even awareness.
The only exception I personally see much is at very mission-driven organizations. There the stated purpose really seems to have some teeth; people are willing to leave if they aren't doing good. In fact, right now, one team at Code for America has just demanded the resources to improve their code quality so that they can be more effective at serving their audience. And I just saw them excitedly share your 2002 paper. So I believe it's possible!
I guess what I'm arguing for here is to see what happens when we put human-centered systems first and scaling second. It may be that there are fundamental limits, in which case we'll face some hard choices between economy of scale and treating humans like humans. But I've never even seen a place try. It's always, "Oh, we're getting big, better hire an earl of mobile development and put him under the duke of engineering." Maybe the bankers overthrow the CEO boy-king, maybe they don't. But I've never seen anybody stop to question the dominant paradigm.
Bill, it's interesting to read your reply and see your worldview. It looks like you've had way worse experiences with employers than with governmental entities, and you see living with the former way worse than living with the latter. I know people who see the world in exactly the opposite way. They'll rail all day about how the government affects their lives and constrains their choices (and they have very concrete examples) yet they are happy working within constraints at work and see more opportunity there than they do in their governmental dealings.
Realistically, they have options in both spheres, but they only feel one oppressively and they tend to assume that everyone else does too. Where power is exercised at work they are okay with it - they recognize it as part of the system and don't feel like cogs.
I wish you the best in finding new glasses to see the world of work through, just as I wish the same for people I know who are fighting governmental oversteps. The key thing is - it's not all bad. There is badness out there but structure is not determinative. Look for happy people in any system. You'll find them. What we look for in life does affect what we see, and what we create. Best of luck to you.
I don't think it's that easy. Humans only have a limited ability to handle variation. Treating everyone as a special case (as you do for people you actually know) breaks down as you scale up.
When administering computers we talk about treating them as "cattle, not pets" to increase our ability to manage large systems. Using the same metaphor with people would be offensive but the policy-making impulse is similar.
To some extent it even arises for valuing fairness. We make rules to try to treat people consistently and fairly, forgetting that people are a mess of special cases.
Small companies value consistency too (using the same tools and procedures) but it's just easier and less likely to backfire with fewer people.
The problem I see is that people aren't really willing to be honest about the cultural transition that happens, so we also can't be honest about the process transition.
I think Agile-ish approaches work very well in startups, because the structure is pretty flat, and the goals are shared. But as companies grow, they tend to become what I think of business feudalism: hierarchical, control-oriented, territorial. For that, it makes sense you need different processes. And I think large company Agile is in effect Waterfall with a faster cadence, so you get that different process. But nobody will admit it. "We're doing Agile," they say, with too-bright eyes and gritted teeth.
What I wonder is: what if instead of killing the peer culture and the human-centered process as we scaled, we kept them?