I have seen a selection of different organisational structures and
only one was exceptionally functional in social sense. This was a
team of 8-12 people working on a project so closely together that
they practically lived together.
What I mean by functional is something like this: Everyone has a
defined role in the group and a sense of importance connected to
that role. All of the roles are necessary. There are no
hangarounds. While the roles are "owned" by the people assigned
to them, the others around them also have some skills in other
aspects of the production than their own and can help their
teammates when needed. There is a fluid leadership, meaning that
the people are aware who is responsible for which part of the
process. All the participants are "self-directed" in some sense,
but the area of influence varies based on their role. This means
you do have a "leader" or several at different phases of the
project, but the leader is an actually needed function for the
coherence of the group. The leader is not a more important person
than any other, but the others follow the lead because someone
has to be the one synchronizing the act.
I believe that this is somewhat natural state of teams that have
worked together for some time. What messes up the dynamic from
naturally coming about is that there are people who
1) think that being a leader is a privileged position and
thus strive to lead even if their people skills do not warrant
such role.
2) have not spent time with people, and believe in strange
abstractions like "sending a memo" and expecting that everyone
read it and internalized the core insight.
So, basically there are at least a couple ways in which a person
might have failed their socialization to a degree as to sabotage
teamwork. I am sure there are more.
Even so, a team with poor leader is better than a bureaucracy.
The problem is the point where you scale the team to include
so many people you are not able to talk to people any more.
Then you start appointing people to roles they should never
be in. You start making communication mistakes that would not
happen if you were talking to people face to face. You don't
have effective feedback anymore since you don't see people's
expressions when you go on a rant on that memo.
I expect that there are not many tribe-sized teams around these
days. Some startups for sure. But I think this used to be common
in times when a town was defined by the factory it was built
around. In a situation like that you would have spontaneus
leadership come about, I would think. Not of course in the
highest levels, but among the workers.
Communism tried to do something like this as well, and I suppose
it could have worked out if they hadn't smashed so many
traditions in the process. But I don't think that there is
anything anti-market in the sort of spontaneous tribal
organisation that I am imagining. It does expect less movement
between locations. It cannot work if you are switching jobs
every year.
At the moment I don't see anything that could provide this sort
of structure. It seems that even nuclear family has been
forcefully outdated as a social structure. It's better for
the market, the more lonely you are. That's why we are
individuals now.
