[Earw0rm]

Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the thread:

Absence of titles does not mean absence of hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence of social power.

At their best, flat hierarchies do as described.

At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist.

Humans are complicated, and we do seem to have a certain amount of low-level social wiring for hierarchy and pecking order, even if it's far from absolute.

I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota, but there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop button - while formally permitted - has a social cost such that only a certain few are effectively given permission to do so; large amounts of energy are expended either attempting to belong to that few, or currying favour with them. Power tends to accrue to those most inclined to seize it.

Whereas in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting, training and oversight.

TLDR, flat hierarchy can be better than rigid hierarchy, but nominally "flat" hierarchy with power-gradient characteristics can be the worst of both worlds.

[wisty]

Toyota has tonnes of heirarchy.

Their "andon" just means that if anyone suspects a fault, they raise a red flag (old school andon - a literal flag, US companies heard it and made it an app lol) and the line goes down until it's fixed.

This isn't anarchy or even democracy. It's totally standard for anything safety critical, Toyota just treats a flaw in a Corolla engine the same way most people treat airline crashes.

A US carrier group has tonnes of heirarchy but if the lowest ranked person sees loose spanner on the deck the whole thing shuts down instantly.

[PaulHoule]

It is an interesting thing about the best military organizations is that they have hierarchy but also push a lot of responsibility downward. E.g. we don't see anything noble about The Charge of the Light Brigade

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-t...

An infantry platoon does have leaders, it does follow orders, it is the thin edge of a very long wedge, but it has a lived reality of the members improvising under pressure.

[bluGill]

> I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota, but there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop button - while formally permitted - has a social cost such that only a certain few are effectively given permission to do so;

It works at Toyota because the stop button is something you push for specific weird things. You don't push the stop button because you think the Camry should have been designed to fit a big V8.

You push the stop button because you noticed something looks weird that might affect quality. See some rust on a part that normally doesn't have rust - push stop: better to pay the entire factory to stand around doing nothing for two hours while engineers decide that is harmless surface rust than the ship a product that is defective to customers. (this is a real situation - the engineer who decided to use those parts also monitored warranty/repair on those machines for the next few years, in case he was wrong he would have done a recall at first sign of trouble, but those machines didn't have problems any more than others so his decision was verified. I won't name the company)

I would guess the majority of times people hit stop they are eventually told "not a problem but you were right to stop just in case so thank you". There are a few times where hitting stop prevents shipping something that would fail horribly and often the part that would fail isn't visible to inspectors unless they are at the exact spot on the line someone saw it and hit stop.

[mmooss]

Agreed. As another example, many managers say their 'door is open', they welcome negative feedback, etc. Only a few are serious enough about it to understand how to do that (including managing their own emotional response).

> in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting, training and oversight.

Often they are people with connections or money, or high technical skill and complete incompetence as a manager. That's one reason people go to flatter structures - the workers do better on their own.

Organizing people toward long-term goals is a challenge. There is no way to make bad performance, incompetent or malicious, into good outcomes; no organizational design will save you.

[tensegrist]

> nominally "flat" hierarchy with power-gradient characteristics can be the worst of both worlds

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

[csours]

> I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota,

I've never worked for Toyota, but as far as I can tell they take this very seriously. You can look up a history of NUMMI for a case study

[PunchyHamster]

> At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist.

But that's just how it works in typical normal hierarchy. The normal hierarchy just makes it easier to "pick a target" you need to please

The falling of any, whether formal or flat, is incentive misalignment, if a given structure makes it so screwing other people over so you look better is profitable, it will inevitably happen. And it's really hard to align incentives that way, like how even in "flat" companies often working on new shiny profitable brings more capital (whether social or actual) than maintaining long-term project

> I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota, but there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop button - while formally permitted - has a social cost such that only a certain few are effectively given permission to do so; large amounts of energy are expended either attempting to belong to that few, or currying favour with them. Power tends to accrue to those most inclined to seize it.

The idea that gets lost in the translation is empowering people to put stop to things that can in long term be net loss to company and trusting worker with knowing enough about their job that the power won't be used willy-nilly.

For the idea to work you not only need culture where that won't be shunned by some manager coz it made him miss their KPIs, but also having each worker be competent enough to know where to use the power

[mrguyorama]

You specifically need a culture that considers "Unskilled labor" to be an oxymoron. Where a literal assembly line worker feels like they have enough expertise to say "No, this is a problem worth stopping production over".

American car companies for example have always preferred to just keep the line moving and have a later QA step fix up the problem, or literally push the problem onto the dealer.

You need to treat even your low employees as not replaceable cogs in a machine.

This is the opposite of what American business school culture has taught for decades, which is why Toyota was unable to teach GM how to do what they were doing.

Not only did GM managers not do a good job of respecting their employees, but decades of that lack of respect meant that the employees didn't trust management enough to play along with the system in good faith. Everyone was "Defecting" and it makes everyone worse off.

Yet Japan DOES have a strictly hierarchical work culture, where openly countering something your boss says isn't exactly welcome. So I wonder how this sort of "Trust your employees to have good ideas" thing came about.

[tristor]

> Yet Japan DOES have a strictly hierarchical work culture, where openly countering something your boss says isn't exactly welcome. So I wonder how this sort of "Trust your employees to have good ideas" thing came about.

What happened is that they bought into the Edward Deming viewpoint of Total Quality Control (TQC), and instituted this throughout their business in a way which melded correctly with their culture, ultimately resulting in Kaizen and The Toyota Way. It didn't happen overnight, it happened over a period of about 20-30 years, so that now we think of it as something inherent to Toyota that is not possible to replicate. Because of Toyota's strict commitment at the upper levels and the strict hierarchy of Japanese work culture, once they had committed they expended every necessary effort until the thing was done, which differs from American companies where it's often hard to get folks to even try anything new in the way they approach their work.

[mmooss]

> once they had committed they expended every necessary effort until the thing was done

That's too simplistic to describe the reality of humanity. Whatever Toyota's discipline, it's a matter of degree and they have challenges implementing it.

[Earw0rm]

> But that's just how it works in typical normal hierarchy. The normal hierarchy just makes it easier to "pick a target" you need to please

It means that the org has been intentionally designed with that in mind, so those running it will be aware that this is an operational factor.

> For the idea to work you not only need culture where that won't be shunned by some manager coz it made him miss their KPIs, but also having each worker be competent enough to know where to use the power

And a culture which allows the worker to possess whatever information and context they need in order to exercise that competence effectively. Hiring and training is part of it, sufficiently open information-flow is the other key.

[jorvi]

> At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly how ex-Valve employees describe their workplace.

[Centigonal]

I've heard this about both Valve and Palantir, but they also seem like extremely successful organizations. That's something I really want to understand, because my guess would have been that all the politicking would destroy productivity and hamper decisionmaking.

[cycomanic]

> Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the thread: > > Absence of titles does not mean absence of hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence of social power. > > At their best, flat hierarchies do as described. > > At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist. > > Humans are complicated, and we do seem to have a certain amount of low-level social wiring for hierarchy and pecking order, even if it's far from absolute. > > I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota, but there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop button - while formally permitted - has a social cost such that only a certain few are effectively given permission to do so; large amounts of energy are expended either attempting to belong to that few, or currying favour with them. Power tends to accrue to those most inclined to seize it. > > Whereas in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting, training and oversight. > > TLDR, flat hierarchy can be better than rigid hierarchy, but nominally "flat" hierarchy with power-gradient characteristics can be the worst of both worlds.

> Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the thread: > > Absence of titles does not mean absence of hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence of social power. > > At their best, flat hierarchies do as described. > > At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework to even identify that they exist. >

And that is different from more hierarical organisations how? I mean there are plenty of stories about infiting, thiefdoms, manuvering... in hierarical organisations as well. There's also lots of example we're the disconnect between the top and lower tiers of the hierarchy (i.e. the essence of the hierarchy itself) let to the downfall of the organisation. I also fail to see the connection to the article, the organisation did not seem to have failed (in the view of the author at least), due to the failed "democratic" organisation experiments, but due to the leadership in the current hierarical organisation not listening to the "lower tiers". So if anything it seems to be a problem of the hierarical structure.

> Humans are complicated, and we do seem to have a certain amount of low-level social wiring for hierarchy and pecking order, even if it's far from absolute. >

I dislike these generalised statements about "human nature", there is way too much uncertainty and plenty of counter examples.

That said I agree with some of the other points you made, the post reads a bit weird considering that the author essentially gave up his ability to influence the course of the organisation (both by giving up his leadership seat, but also before by disenganging from the process), and the complains that the organisation did not develop how they wanted.

[Earw0rm]

The difference in a hierarchical org is that the structure is laid out on paper for everyone to see. The power dynamic is explicit rather than implicit.

(At least, it's supposed to be. You do get weird inversions from time to time, when a weak manager is put in charge of a domineering empire-builder, but it's rare - and even in that case, the rest of the org can see the anomaly - as they have a frame of reference to measure it against.)

"Humans are complicated" => that is my uncertainty caveat. We're not absolute-hierarchical nor absolute-flat, in much the same way as we're neither exactly chimp-like nor gorilla-like in terms of monogamy. My observation though (and hardly an original one) is that when we build organisations which try to deny hierarchy, it has a habit of sneaking in thru the back door.

[mmooss]

There are more differences: A formally structured org isn't a flat org with titles attached.

> "Humans are complicated" => that is my uncertainty caveat. We're not absolute-hierarchical nor absolute-flat

yes

> when we build organisations which try to deny hierarchy, it has a habit of sneaking in thru the back door.

The same happens when we try to deny freedom. Empowering everyone, through freedom and universal equality and human rights, is the foundation of the very successful modern world.

As I said upthread, I think the focus on hierarchy and power is really an outgrowth of current anti-democratic politics, even if people don't explicitly think of it that way. That doesn't deny all hierarchy or power - it's a matter of degree: The history of modern democracy is to lean heavily toward individual freedom (for essential moral reasons too).