Pretty sure this is all going to amount to BS. Humans like hierarchies and power. When someone realizes they can make themselves more important than others and as such curry favor with "lead links" they won't hesitate to do so.
Of course, I used to have a former Zappos manager as a boss and found him wanting, so maybe I am just bitter.
This seems like a great pr story. Could someone with relevant experience explain how a story like this is planted in a reputable newspaper like WSJ or NYT? I don't quite understand the m.o.
I don't do PR, but I've managed our relationships with PR firms. Rule #1 about dealing with the media: do their work for them.
The practice of getting PR pieces presented as news can be quite simplistic. One way to go: A company hires its own press agent or uses a PR firm (typically the latter for smaller companies). PR firms' specialty is in cultivating relationships with reporters, editors, and the like. It's no big trick; mostly just human relationships and the ability to provide the newspeople with stuff they can use to get their job done. In other words, they understand the "domain" of news.
Then the original company funnels information about stuff its doing to their PR firm on a regular basis. The PR firm takes the stuff it thinks might be interesting to the outside world, helps put some spin on it, and shops it around to the contacts they think might be interested in the stories.
If the newspeople bite, what happens next can depend on a variety of factors. But the hard work's been done at this point.
It should be noted that this isn't the only path things can take. This story has been making the rounds for a week or so now. It's quite possible that the WaPo was never contacted by any PR folks; instead they just saw it on other news outlets and wanted to follow up for themselves.
This isn't just the NYT or WSJ in general, it's a specialized blog on "leadership" that has a separate email for story suggestions. So it can be specifically targeted by PR.
There are quite a few companies that run with an 'unconventional' management structure. A recent link on HN was to a HBR study about Morning Star, a mature company that has run with a 'no managers' strategy for years.
Valve is run more like a FOSS project with no official hierarchy. Holocracy is about refactoring the traditional org chart into a more task-based model. Brian Robertson, one of the guys who started the concept, explains the differences here:
http://holacracy.org/blog/whats-wrong-with-your-organization...
Of course, I used to have a former Zappos manager as a boss and found him wanting, so maybe I am just bitter.