Zappos says goodbye to bosses

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2014/01/03/zappos-gets-rid-of-all-managers/#

by webdisrupt • 13 years ago

98 84 13 years ago

I'm pleased to see more and more companies shedding more traditional management structures. I think they are the source of pain for a lot of people who flee corporate life to pursue their own ideas.

aestra2• 13 years ago

Traditional management structures have their downsides, but I think they can be done well. I have also seen companies do non-traditional management structures that have just been a huge clusterfuck in implementation. It's all about implementation, I believe. I think it is important to keep metrics so we can see what works best for most organizations.

vvvVVVvvv• 13 years ago

Data, not metrics.

Data is facts, it's not opinionated.

Metrics, on the other hands are built upon data but are often carrying an agenda with them, they're political (whether it's office or nation politics) tools.

twistedpair2• 13 years ago

Whatever the data/metric is, people will pander to it or game it until it is meaningless. Data itself is easier to perlustrate in the future to see different interpretations, but usually the C-suite will see what they want to see and be told what they want to hear.

sasvari• 13 years ago

previous submission and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016107

lps41• 13 years ago

I find it interesting that the number of Amazon-related articles in the Washington Post seems to have increased since Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Post.

Note that Zappos is owned my Amazon.

stingraycharles2• 13 years ago

I think that's more of a coincidence than a real conspiracy. Bezos has a lot more to lose than to gain if he were in fact pushing these types of articles.

gress• 13 years ago

How would it be proven and what would he lose?

gtCameron• 13 years ago

So your theory is that Bezos spent $250 million of his own money to buy the Washington Post so that he could get more coverage of Amazon in one newspaper?

josefresco3• 13 years ago

More like; if you spent $250 million of your own cash to buy the WP you might as well use it to get more coverage of your other companies.

Just because it's not the primary reason does not mean it's not happening.

mbesto2• 13 years ago

It's actually a good strategy.

talmand2• 13 years ago

I would see it more as that maybe the employees of the Washington Post may be posting more Amazon related stories in an effort to do what they think will make the new boss happy without finding out if that's what would make him happy.

vdaniuk• 13 years ago

Any proof that it is actually happening and not just your personal version of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?

twistedpair2• 13 years ago

Amazon "bar raisers" hiring article in the WSJ yesterday. Bezos doesn't own it yet to my knowledge.

oh_sigh• 13 years ago

I suspect you haven't actually done an analysis on the frequency that amazon is brought up pre/post Post purchase. Please prove me wrong.

edw519• 13 years ago

Tech billionaire checklist:

  - security detail
  - private jet
  - yacht
  - professional sports franchise
  - foundation
  - once respected media outlet as personal mouthpiece

Once again, Jeff Bezos leads the way.

(Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, parent company of Zappos, owns the Washington Post.)

svantana• 13 years ago

I was most surprised that they don't include disclosure of this relationship when mentioning Amazon in the article. I thought that was comme-il-faut of serious journalism.

smackfu• 13 years ago

I see this at the end now:

Note: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post

belluchan• 13 years ago

They should have a disclaimer, but it's not exactly an ad for shoes at Zappos. As a customer I'd be worried by the instability such a big unproven change could bring to deliveries and customer support. It's a pretty fair and interesting article, but that's just my take.

aestra2• 13 years ago

I think its more akin to a PR piece about the company.

nhangen3• 13 years ago

'once respected media outlet as personal mouthpiece'

That should be given more focus IMO

SimHacker• 13 years ago

Jeff Bezos also needs a psychiatrist and a lobotomy.

adventured• 13 years ago

When did the Washington Post stop being respected? And by whose judgement?

stingraycharles2• 13 years ago

For more information about this particular management style, see:

http://holacracy.org/

It's linked from the article, but it deserves to be more prominently noted.

josefresco3• 13 years ago

"Instead, there are people known as “lead links” who have the ability to assign employees to roles or remove them from them, but who are not in a position to actually tell people what to do. "

You say tomato I say tomato. Seriously though, renaming a title does not equal removing it from your business structure.

Why not call them managers and simply take away the elements of their job which cause issues? Seems to be this is more about drinking the kool-aid than it is about actual structural changes to how things are accomplished.

kfk• 13 years ago

Why not call them managers and simply take away the elements of their job which cause issues?

But what are those elements? A good boss keeps a LOT of crap away from its employees, a bad one is the exact reverse. I want a manager, he does most of the crap political work for me while I grow professionally.

Is it a problem managers exists or is it a problem some companies can't manage to hire good ones?

modoc2• 13 years ago

Yes exactly! The best boss I ever had explained his job like this (and yes probably some ego stroking in there):

"You guys are like a rock band. You're the stars. You need to show up, practice, and play gigs on schedule.

I'm like your band manager. It's my job to take care of all the random crap like booking tour buses, replacing blown amps, and protecting you from the annoying label guys so you can just focus and do your magic."

It's a good analogy. A good manager protects their team and lets them focus on their work and gives them what they need to succeed.

josefresco3• 13 years ago

They clearly think they've already done this by the "creation" of a new title (non-title?) within the company called lead-links. They've also identified that the ability for managers to tell employees what to do is one of those understandable characteristic.

I don't agree, just stating what they think they've figured out. I'm suggesting a manager (sorry lead-link) who can assign and remove people but not be involved in what they're actually doing to be highly problematic (I'm probably oversimplifying)

While developers may prefer to have their nose buried in code, there needs to be someone else who is coordinating the team and making sure the pieces are fitting together.

Anyway you phrase it, it always comes out looking like a manager.

You might say "why not require the developers to manage themselves" To that I'd say not everyone wants to manage themselves or others, and some folks don't want to be buried in work but would rather coordinate and lead a team.

Let the managers manage! If they suck, fire them. Don't feel the need to re-invent business just because your managers aren't doing their job.

nhangen3• 13 years ago

Exactly. A boss does a great job of going to meetings so that I don't have to. When I was a manager, it was my job to set priorities, and share information that was relevant to the team's job without distracting them by sharing information that was irrelevant or too much too soon.

I'd be really scared of working in an environment like this because it fosters politics and infighting.

Spooky23• 13 years ago

As a manager, oftentimes your incentives are not aligned with the well-being of your team.

Depending on your personal character and career objectives, this means different things. If you have an objective of making a splash and moving out of your management role, burning your team while achieving something that makes you look good will advance your fortunes, and some other schulb will bear the costs.

codingdave• 13 years ago

One problem is that "keeping the crap away from your employees" can become a solid barrier to employees whose desired career direction involves strategic leadership.

Those employees can have a hard time getting involved at higher levels of the company, exactly because their job is so cordoned off from everything. Which leaves people in the cliched position of needing to perform well enough Job A to get promoted out of it. (Which has always been a logical flaw in the corporate world.)

There certainly are other solutions to this problem -- this is just one solution, and is probably also targeted as a solution for other issues as well.

latj3• 13 years ago

The problem is that "crap political work" exists at all.

The normal way organizations try to decrease the amount of crap political work is to hire someone who just works on that crap all day. Managers.

Instinctively, you would think- this person produces nothing, adds nothing to the product, they should serve the actual workers. But this isnt usually the case.

Long term planning usually gets lumped into a manager's work load because its not something that needs to be done to get today's work completed. Because they are involved with planning future work, they end up owning that work later, hiring the people who do it, etc. There are also fewer of them in number and are more outspoken, so they end up being the one guy the bosses talk to.

Here is an alternate reality. An engineer comes up with a good idea for a new feature. He talks to his buddy DBA and SysAdmin. They think its a good idea so they agree to help out when they can. Engineer asks fresh out of college designer to help. Designer respects the reputation of the engineer and joins the team. A sales guy hears about the new feature and it sounds similar to something customers have been asking for so he tells them he can sell it. The bosses see a cluster forming in the corner and walk over and ask what they are up to. The feature is actually already implemented and being tested. Boss says it looks good, asks an analyst to see what its affect on factor x would be, walks on to a different cluster he sees forming across the room.

As their work on the feature is wrapping up people keep their ears open for the next project they'd like to work on. Everyone moves on to other ideas. People with good ideas become the nucleus for new clusters. People with good skills become members. From time to time the bosses look at the islands- the people always sitting by themselves. Either they are genius uber productive people or they are people who will probably be gone soon.

was_hellbanned• 13 years ago

In my own vernacular, this is the difference between a manager and a boss.

A boss tells people what to do. A manager manages them, leads them, makes sure their needs are fulfilled, and protects them from unnecessary distractions.

proofofconcept• 13 years ago

Labels are important to the way people think and the word "manager" has inherited a lot of baggage from American corporate culture at large. Giving the position they are trying to define a new name isn't wrong-headed if what they are trying to do is avoid a clash between the attitude they want their "lead links " to have towards employees and the attitudes attached to the title "manager" that people may otherwise import into those relationships (not to mention qualifications, compensation, etc). This isn't to say that it will take, or lead to the results they want if it does, but I can see how starting from scratch would look easier to the Zappos executives than fighting against a ingrained cultural expectations would.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

Terminology is important, and it shapes how people think about things. If you call someone a manager they'll think they're in charge, that they tell people what to do, that they are responsible for "their" workers, and so on.

sanderjd• 13 years ago

Also, "assign employees to roles or remove them from them" sounds exactly like telling people what to do. What is a "role" if it isn't a high-level statement of what someone is meant to be doing?

rayiner• 13 years ago

Why not call them managers

Because they're not actually empowered to "manage" people? It sounds like what they're doing is deconstructing the role of "manager" and distributing certain elements of that role to different people. It doesn't appear to be a simple s/manager/"Lead Links".

mbesto2• 13 years ago

Innovative business structures that get press are simply good hiring tools. It's a way of signalling "we want the best people and this is the organizational structure the best people want".

Most people have heard of Valve, 37signals, Zappos, Google etc. not just for their products but also because of their attractions as employers. This is good marketing for what most of us deem as an extremely competitive talent squeeze.

nomade04• 13 years ago

I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind Holacracy. It's not as simple as Lead Link = Manager. You can find more in this video if you're interested in the difference: http://holacracy.org/resources/the-lead-link-role-in-holacra...

jasonwatkinspdx• 13 years ago

It's not tomato tomato. "Lead Link" is a specificly defined term from a management process theory called holacracy (as mentioned in the original article).

You can read the details of holacracy here: http://holacracy.org/constitution

There are signifigant differences between what a lead link does and a traditional manager. They act more as a spokesperson for the accountabilities and priorities delegated to them by a larger democratic process.

This is yet another example of a flippant and largely content free criticism on hackernews made from a position of ignorance on the topic. I'm ambivalent on whether holacracy is a good system as I have no personal experience with it, but lets at least talk about what the article is actually about rather than just pattern matching whatever random crap is in people's heads.

woah• 13 years ago

The "mid-brow dismissal"

caprad• 13 years ago

This may mean something to the people who study management, but since most organizations use managers, and different managers have different styles then this already exists.

I had a manager like that, set you a task, and how you did it was up to you. As long as it was progressing, he didn't care if I never came in except for the meetings.

talmand2• 13 years ago

So, poor performers can be identified if "they don't have enough roles" or "they're not a good fit for the company culture". What happens to them? I guess there are executives at a higher level that have the authority to fire these poor performers?

These "lead links" sound like managers with less authority to me.

If they are hoping for natural leaders to step forward then that seems how you become a manager in that company, you ask for it. Which, in some cases, is probably a better system than what many companies have in place that places people in roles they shouldn't be in.

The roles are still there, some of the requirements and responsibilities are shifted a bit, but they just removed the titles.

nhangen3• 13 years ago

Makes me wonder if part of the intent is to reduce salaries. No managers = no manager salaries. Kind of like getting a promotion without the salary increase, or increased duties without increased pay.

nomade04• 13 years ago

Yes, ROLES are still there, definitely. See "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 and a post by a Zappos employee about Holacracy: http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...

methodin• 13 years ago

I just can't see this working. People are different. Some need to be led more than they can lead, some have a strong voice and others are quiet. Does anyone have any evidence to the contrary?

By work I mean, inevitably it will settle into a more informal hierarchy but still there in practice (just not in title).

gms7777• 13 years ago

I agree that it will settle into an informal hierarchy, but I think that is exactly what they are looking for. They mention that they are looking for natural leaders to step up and such. I think the beauty of this plan, if it works, is that people will gravitate towards the roles that they are naturally good at and the heirarchy that emerges could be far better formed than anything that could have been built by hiring managers top down. Not to mention it will be fluid and can adapt with the company as it grows and changes and new projects come along.

That said, I think this can go either way. Not having defined roles and relationships might cause more friction that it relieves. And to quote Douglas Adams, "It is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it". This might just cause a lot of uncertainty with those willing to yell the loudest trampling those around them.

I'll be watching curiously.

wil4213• 13 years ago

show me any group of five human beings or five apes or five dogs, and I want to see the one where a status difference does not emerge. It’s who we are as creatures.

This. The need for management arose once we stopped being nomads and started to organize ourselves into collective groups. Look at Native Americans, even they had Chieftains.

humanrebar• 13 years ago

Look at Native Americans, even they had Chieftains.

What does that mean?

wil4213• 13 years ago

I was trying to look for a traditional group of people that were pre Industrial revolution. That had organized groups of people with leaders or "managers". People started to study management in the 1800s so I wanted something before that time.

Working right now so I was in a rush and Indians were the first to come to mind.

mjewkes• 13 years ago

http://www.waketech.edu/sites/default/files/libraryfiles/ere...

"Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can't accept this... So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle."

wil4213• 13 years ago

Managers get chosen to be managers they dont all of the sudden come in after they do something important and say I am a manger or team lead or what have you.

gruseom• 13 years ago

Status difference can take many forms other than management hierarchy. Indeed, one big problem with management hierarchy is that it messes with the "native" status system of the creative disciplines, which is based on technical merit and peer respect. That contradiction is well known to most of us who have spent time on a software team at a non-software BigCo.

So the point is not to get rid of status difference (which would mean replacing human nature and thus be foolish) but to find organizational forms that are better aligned with how creative work gets done.

VLM• 13 years ago

I miss the associate -vs- employee meaningless fad. I guess its inevitable that some other group gets a meaningless renaming fad.

Uchikoma2• 13 years ago

I'm pro new org structures and ways to work together. I'm interested in Valve and Zappos and others.

But the nagging feeling is what this Valve employee (who was fired) described: The company is led by the bullies just like in highschool.

nomade04• 13 years ago

Yep, it's definitely the risk when you get rid of an explicit structure – it gets replaced by a new, implicit one. In contrast, Holacracy doesn't just get rid of hierarchy, it REPLACES it with another structure – and in many ways, it's MORE structure (unlike what the press says). See more in these two blog posts that were published in reaction to the press buzz and the misinformation: - Five Misconception About Holacracy: https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 - Zappos at Holacrach (by Zappos' Head of Labs Tech): http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...

Uchikoma2• 13 years ago

Thx, highly appreciated.

ionforce• 13 years ago

Does anyone have a plain English explanation or infographic for Holacracy? Sounds like a lot of smoke and mirrors and happy thoughts.

What is the secret sauce in Holacracy that makes it different from hierarchies?

nomade04• 13 years ago

I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind Holacracy. We definitely have a lot of work to do to explain Holacracy outside of our trainings & consulting services - we're a young company and haven't focused on that as much so far, but it's definitely something on our radar (especially after this press storm).

To answer your question, the secret sauce of Holacracy is the Holacracy Constitution – it replaces the CEO in deciding how decisions get made and how we organize. See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=31MljhiyxZ8

Also, you might be interested in two blog posts published in the past couple days in reaction to the often-inaccurrate press: - "Five Misconceptions About Holacracy" https://medium.com/about-holacracy/da84d8ba15e1 - "Holacracy at Zappos" by a Zappos' employee: http://rianschmidt.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/holacracy-at-zap...

endeavor• 13 years ago

This no-managers movement strikes me as disingenuous. The manager is still there -- there's just fewer of them. Big conflicts just get escalated all the way to the CEO/founder/owner.

There was a recent HBR article about Google's management structure. They tried eliminating managers in 2002, but too many people just came directly to Larry when they had a problem (1). Holacracy doesn't scale.

1) http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-mana...

farginay2• 13 years ago

Is there some result in the theory of random graphs that says that you can't have a graph of a certain size without developing hubs? It seems to happen in most systems.

brg2• 13 years ago

There are a number of results about a giant connected component emerging as a Erdos-Renyi random graph increases in size.

A hub however will simply arise as the result of variance.

farginay2• 13 years ago

You say "a hub" but I wonder whether it would be many? How close would such an effect be to hubs we see in scale free networks? In those, preferential attachment seems to induce hubs. Airline hubs are a good example - there's more value in connecting to a well-connected hub.

mindcrime• 13 years ago

I recently read an absolutely fascinating book called The Origin of Wealth.[1] Nominally the topic is economics, but it's far broader than that, talking about how all components of the economic system of wealth creation (including "firms") are part of a Complex Adaptive System, and are often CAS's themselves. The author makes the argument that a firm is a CAS using evolution to explore a "fitness landscape" in terms of it's "Business Plan" (his term that encompasses strategy at various levels within the firm). IF you buy this theory, it has some very interesting implications in terms of how firms should be managed, and the author provides some interesting thoughts.

One point that stood out to me, is that all firms face a constant, internal tension between the need to do "operational stuff" that actually works very well with a traditional hierarchical management approach, and the need to do "exploratory work" which does NOT map well to hierarchy. Failing to understand and manage this tension may be why many firms feel so dysfunctional.

The other point that stood out to me, is the idea that instead of a strict hierarchy - or complete undirected chaos - the best way to combine efforts towards both goals is by having individuals with a high degree of autonomy and empowerment coupled with a strong shared vision and common goals.

In this model, the primary purpose of leadership is to imbue the members of the organization with that "strong shared vision and common goals". Or to put it more simply, you tell people what needs to be accomplished, not how to accomplish it, and trust them to use their judgment.

On a related note, the book Adaptive Enterprise[2] makes a strong case for the idea of high decentralized teams, connected to each other through what the author calls a "Commitment Management Protocol".[3]

I would say that both of these books have some useful ideas that could be applied to construct a better management structure than what most present-day firms use.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Wealth-Remaking-Economics/d...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Enterprise-Creating-Sense-And...

[3] http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-...

juddlyon• 13 years ago

Nice gimick, straight from the Tim Ferriss school of language.

makecheck• 13 years ago

If there are people in the organization who are still tasked with organizing people then they are bosses (or at least, they will eventually act like bosses again).

It is possible to remove the management role, at least at a project level, by using technology. For instance, the first time I saw Trac our team effectively did this.

To be practical however, a technology solution really does require the right group of people. You can’t have people who are uncomfortable logging into web sites, or too lazy to write good descriptions for things, and so forth. You need people who are (frankly) professionals, who look at something like a giant task list and do a fair job of distributing things sensibly amongst themselves. A solution like Trac really starts to shine when people learn the little niceties, like additional formatting in wiki entries or the magic sequences that set up links between things. Again though: you need a team that is willing to work with such a tool in the “right way”. If they do then you don’t really need a manager at all.

helenislovely• 13 years ago

We're doing the same thing at Gamevy. We're small at the moment which makes it (fairly) easy. As for how it goes as we grow - you can check out our blog on the "experiment"! http://giantleap.me/

Zappos says goodbye to bosses

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