[sashank_1509]

I think this is mainly an issue of a lack of formal structure. A bad way to start a company with your cofounder is to expect to reach a consensus on decisions and only that moves forward. It’s hard for 2 people to consistently reach consensus, it’s impossible for more than 2. There needs to be a clear formal hierarchy, people lower in the hierarchy can always disagree voice out the thought but they must commit once the decision has been made (Disagree but commit). If as the leader you see employees doing things behind your back, first you fire them especially if it is duplicitous. Then you have a long reflection on why your decisions were bad enough that employees felt the need to do this. It may be time to hire a new CEO if you think you cannot hold employee respect and trust. There is a sort of prevalent myth in Silicon Valley, that friends start startups and the company structure is flat in its initial days. There are far too many examples disproving this (Amazon, Facebook, PayPal etc) and even in the case where you have friendly cofounders, you still find an implicit hierarchy built on respect and trust which is probably the ideal form of hierarchy. However lack of hierarchy is a recipe for a mess of a company, formalizing hierarchy kills a lot of politics.

[atoav]

There is never a real lack of hierarchies tho. It is just that everybody has their own (which turns out to have a similar effect). If you are lucky all of the hierarchies people have in their heads align with each other. But it helps to have this formalized.

As someone who worked on quite some film sets: Contrary to the assumption many people have, clear roles and responsibilities are good for creativity. In the end the director ans the producer will decide on things, but on a good film set the best idea wins and so the director and producer would be idiots not to listen to their team when they have them.

[sashank_1509]

That’s a great point, never thought of it that way. Hierarchies always exist, if everyone’s aligned you need not formalize it (very rare), else formalizing it helps.