Is there a version of this that doesn't force me to click through slides with very little content on each one, as if I were in kindergarten? To whoever wrote this: I can read.
It’s clearly a presentation. If you want a different representation, point an LLM at it and ask it to transcribe and rewrite in the form you prefer. I just tried with ChatGPT and it works fine. Retrieve the PDF link (ChatGPT will generate a working link for you - session tied I think). Then proceed to do what you must with it.
Many tools are available today to alter data representation. And frontier LLMs have high fidelity. You don’t have to wait for someone to help you. Claude helps those who help themselves.
There’s a lot that’s good here, but you just can’t be slime molds in a modern capitalist corporation.
A substantial portion of company goals is set by a very small group that is far removed from the day to day work, and the goals are often connected to timelines and financial expectations well before any team member gets into the project.
To have slime mold like behavior, a corporation would have to hire employees, give them time and resources, and general guidelines and goals, but let specific targets and projects bubble up.
This is fundamentally incompatible with a next-quarter profit driven corporate financial structure.
It's been a long time (5 years?) since I encountered this last. Despite the idea making total sense to me, I am no clearer than I was then on how to actually do this in any org I have been a part of or managed. Where does this work? How did you do it? Does it work?
An aspect that’s missing from this analysis is distributed vs centralized decision authority. In militaries and in tech startups a “squad” or “two-pizza team” are empowered to make decisions for their local domain because they have the real-time context. The decentralized decision authority that happens with matrix-style management is a much higher contributor to coordination overhead than the top-down or bottom-up axis described here.
An autonomous team that does what they are told or an autonomous team is free to pursue opportunities as they see fit are both useful and can react quickly. The question is how much scaled alignment you need to execute a particular goal.
You can’t invade a country with one squad of 10,000 soldiers or 1,000 squads of 10 that do as they please. You need to delegate execution authority to small teams who are aligned to a shared goal.
Similarly, you can’t expect one group 10,000 devs with no internal structure to explore and find interesting opportunities to explore; you’ll just get noise. Nor can you try to manage 10,000 devs directly. You won’t be able to grok the context.
Complexity management in organizations follows the same patterns as in code. Single responsibility, don’t repeat yourself too much, encapsulation, etc.
It’s really a function of information theory, the more people you have to ramp up or keep current on context, the lower your ability to make and stick to decisions.
I don't think the author is really super familiar with some of those other organizations he mentions so he's reflecting how he thinks they work rather than how they work. That said the observations are still pretty good.
> You need to delegate execution authority to small teams who are aligned to a shared goal
It's been a while since I read the slides but this is basically what the author is advocating for and what doesn't tend to happen in dysfunctional organizations.
> Complexity management in organizations follows the same patterns as in code. Single responsibility, don’t repeat yourself too much, encapsulation, etc.
There are a lot of parallels. But organizations have people so that's an extra factor. You can't just "refactor" them without thinking about people's egos, objectives and such. So a lot of thought is needed into how to build effective organizations and sadly not enough thought is given is most companies.
> is advocating for and what doesn't tend to happen in dysfunctional organizations.
Agreed the observations are interesting, and that’s what is being advocated for, I just don’t think top-down vs bottom-up is the axis that impacts that as much as disturbed vs… I said “centralized” but probably “localized” is a better term.
Many tools are available today to alter data representation. And frontier LLMs have high fidelity. You don’t have to wait for someone to help you. Claude helps those who help themselves.
A substantial portion of company goals is set by a very small group that is far removed from the day to day work, and the goals are often connected to timelines and financial expectations well before any team member gets into the project.
To have slime mold like behavior, a corporation would have to hire employees, give them time and resources, and general guidelines and goals, but let specific targets and projects bubble up.
This is fundamentally incompatible with a next-quarter profit driven corporate financial structure.
I think the ideas are solid but it's the C-suite that needs to deal with this and rarely cares. In other words, it's about organizational culture.
Usually they are structured in ways that can be gamed and the structure is defined by those that benefit most from them being gamed.
But then again, this is a view from the underbelly of corporate life and I may be missing something.
An autonomous team that does what they are told or an autonomous team is free to pursue opportunities as they see fit are both useful and can react quickly. The question is how much scaled alignment you need to execute a particular goal.
You can’t invade a country with one squad of 10,000 soldiers or 1,000 squads of 10 that do as they please. You need to delegate execution authority to small teams who are aligned to a shared goal.
Similarly, you can’t expect one group 10,000 devs with no internal structure to explore and find interesting opportunities to explore; you’ll just get noise. Nor can you try to manage 10,000 devs directly. You won’t be able to grok the context.
Complexity management in organizations follows the same patterns as in code. Single responsibility, don’t repeat yourself too much, encapsulation, etc.
It’s really a function of information theory, the more people you have to ramp up or keep current on context, the lower your ability to make and stick to decisions.
I don't think the author is really super familiar with some of those other organizations he mentions so he's reflecting how he thinks they work rather than how they work. That said the observations are still pretty good.
> You need to delegate execution authority to small teams who are aligned to a shared goal
It's been a while since I read the slides but this is basically what the author is advocating for and what doesn't tend to happen in dysfunctional organizations.
> Complexity management in organizations follows the same patterns as in code. Single responsibility, don’t repeat yourself too much, encapsulation, etc.
There are a lot of parallels. But organizations have people so that's an extra factor. You can't just "refactor" them without thinking about people's egos, objectives and such. So a lot of thought is needed into how to build effective organizations and sadly not enough thought is given is most companies.
Agreed the observations are interesting, and that’s what is being advocated for, I just don’t think top-down vs bottom-up is the axis that impacts that as much as disturbed vs… I said “centralized” but probably “localized” is a better term.
Funnily enough it’s extremely relevant to agents/subagents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfbLSl_4o78