Dustin Moskovitz and the folks at Asana have created some great pieces of thought leadership on org design which should merit a post on this blog. I want to spend this one on one of my favorites:
The gits: the traditional, hierarchical, command-and-control approach to management clearly doesn’t make a lot of sense in the modern work environment. But the allergic reaction of swinging the pendulum all the way to the other extreme and eliminating management altogether (a-la Valve Handbook) clearly doesn’t work either. Instead, Moskovitz proposes the following approach: aim to distribute decision-making authority as much as possible to the relevant domain experts. Management still plays two key roles:
- Backstop for all decisions – filling in the whitespace where decision authority is unclear
- Drive and guide employee’s personal growth through mentorship
What do you think: should the pendulum start swinging more in this direction? what’s still missing?
