The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

108 19 6 years ago

One of the scariest things a manager can say about his company, if you're thinking of joining it is, "There's no politics here."

Business guys don't perceive getting what they want as "politics" but as the natural, right thing happening. It's "politics" when it's people who aren't them getting what they want. "There's no politics" means that it's a dictatorship where the boss gets everything he wants-- and that's usually not an ideal place to work.

benjaminjosephw2• 6 years ago

My consistent experience of "flat hierarchies" is summed up well by this quote from the article:

As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 6 years ago

If you're essentially correct, then technically they're not "paranoid delusions", but from outside it can be hard to tell.

silicon2401• 6 years ago

This is exactly why I will never work for a small company again (have only worked for 5-digit companies at least, since then).

How much can I spend on meals during business travel? Why does XYZ get to work remotely or come in late as they please, but nobody else seems to? How did ABC get to go fully remote?

Every workplace has rules, but in my experience, the more vague a company is about their rules and processes, the more they want to mindgame you into asking for less than they would've given. See things like unlimited vacation. In my experience, you can count on successful large companies having clear, well-established processes and expectations because there's simply no other way to run a business of 20- or 40,000 people.

benjaminjosephw2• 6 years ago

I think one of the most interesting observations here is that the informal structures described always exist in an organization regardless of the formal structures. The formal structures should exist to hold explicit power and keep informal power in check but that's not to say that informal power isn't still at play.

The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. This is not to say that formalization of a structure of a group will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn't. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and make available some means of attacking it if the people involved are not at least responsible to the needs of the group at large.

I've found that understanding how informal power works in an organization is extremely important if you really want to get something done - especially if that organization has dysfunctional formal structures.

This article is the best description of the nature of those informal structures that I've ever seen.

sixstringtheory• 6 years ago

Such a well written piece that articulates a lot of things I’ve talked about lately with friends, family and coworkers.

I said just yesterday to someone that there are always politics, it’s only a question of how formalized they are. The less formalized, the more the workplace is probably being bent to the whims of the best manipulators.

So when someone says there are no politics, they are either clueless or pulling the strings themselves.

Same goes with the claim of “no ego” workplaces. OK, either you have only robots working there, or that’s how you treat your humans. But it’s an admission that they can’t or won’t deal with real human problems. In a thought labor industry (I’m a software developer) this is disastrous; imagine a construction company with no protocols for preventing or dealing with physical injury.

convolvatron• 6 years ago

there is a microscopic line between 'dealing with issues like polite adults just trying to get the best outcome' and 'collectively acting like the truth is simply too rude to speak'. maybe not a fine line at all - by the time you've gotten to 'A', 'B' is starting to sneak in.

bitdizzy• 6 years ago

Can you describe some examples of the phenomenon to which you are alluding?

michael1999• 6 years ago

That line has negative width. At least 1/3 of polite behaviour is avoiding rude truths. Some say 100% of diplomacy is the same.

igravious• 6 years ago

    The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)(http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/structurelessness.htm)
    203 points|pron|7 years ago|120 comments

    The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1973)(https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm?)
    115 points|sillysaurus3|2 years ago|20 comments

    The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)(http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)
    98 points|hargup|4 years ago|54 comments

    The Tyranny of Structurelessness(http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)
    32 points|orph|6 years ago|15 comments

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%09The+Tyranny+of+Structurelessnes...

diffrinse• 6 years ago

It's no longer popular to bring up writers like The Philosopher, but Aristotle made the same essential observation over 2000 years ago that it is the nature of humans, no different than bees, to form a political order.

Spinoza pushes this naturalism even further when he asserted that there was no way to prove that human civilization is somehow distinct from termites building giant dirt mounds; "we don't know what a body can do" - being a human body and producing artifacts are the same thing, just like being a human body and auto-organizing politically (a slightly different product) is indistinct. These are things our bodies do.

watwut• 6 years ago

I don't know what you mean by no longer popular. Seems like lately every other HN post have someone bringing up these.

They are brought up way more then they used to be. It used to be that they were mentioned super rarely, now or is all the time.

082349872349872• 6 years ago

Does "Lot System" refer to sortition?

SideburnsOfDoom2• 6 years ago

It seems so:

In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

wwweaponizer2• 6 years ago

https://xkcd.com/1095/

wwweaponizer2• 6 years ago

A downvote? This link is 100% relevant to the topic.

blippage• 6 years ago

I'm hazy on the details, but in the 70's in the UK, there was a car manufacturer (British Leyland?, but probably not) that was taken over by the workers.

The idea was that there was to be no class separation within the workforce: no "them" and "us". There were to be no managers, actions were to be decided collectively.

Only, it didn't work, and they finally conceded that they needed management and structure.

ntnsndr• 6 years ago

I recently applied this article and more to current debates in open source: https://nathanschneider.info/Tyranny

lapinot• 6 years ago

This text pops over and over as some kind of critic to anarchism. Thing is, lots of anarchistic groups have thought about this kind of "covert domination structure". See "A Review of The “Tyranny of Structurelessness”: An organizationalist repudiation of anarchism".

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-mcquinn-a-revi...

The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

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