stoweboyd:

I read a fascinating interview of Ryan Carson, the CEO of Treehouse, by Adam Bryant. About a year ago, when the company had reached about 50 people in size, Carson decided that the company was getting too politicized and not acting like a start-up anymore. So he and his co-founder realized that

this is what people do when you put managers over them. The managers start acting like parents, and the people they’re managing start acting like children.

So they got rid of manager roles.

Adam Bryant: I assume the managers figured they were being fired?

Ryan Carson:  Totally. We said, “You can go back to the role you were hired to do, and we’re not going to cut your pay.” That wasn’t too big a deal, because we don’t have huge differences in pay. Or, we said, you can leave. The company was very divided. Some people said it was insanity. Other people were like, “Yeah!” I felt like a politician for a while, as I lobbied people and explained to them why I thought it was a good idea. We put it to a vote, and 90 percent voted for it.

AB: That was a year ago. Any surprises since?

I’d rather have a person on the front lines make a bad decision and own it than to have someone else make it for them, and then everyone can blame each other. – Ryan Carson

RC: The biggest one is that it’s hard for people to resolve conflict. We found that people weren’t willing to really upset each other, so we introduced a structure for resolving conflict. We say, you have to write down the pros and cons of your argument before you talk. And we’re going to invite a mediator to be on the call from H.R. who has no stake in either side. And the discussion should really be framed around what is best for the company.

Another hard part is that it appears to be very disorganized. There’s a lot happening. It’s kind of like an ant colony. One major drawback for me, as the C.E.O., is that it’s very hard for me to tell exactly what’s happening. But we’re building a simple tool to help us communicate internally. All communication is public inside the company so that at any point someone can get up to speed on a project.

Another thing that’s frustrating to me is I can’t make things happen very fast. There are so many times I just want to say, “Do this right now.” And I can’t. It’s basically against the rules. – Ryan Carson

Another thing that’s frustrating to me is I can’t make things happen very fast. There are so many times I just want to say, “Do this right now.” And I can’t. It’s basically against the rules. But the fascinating thing is that it forces me to be much more human. I have to go in and say, “Why are you doing that right now? Do you know about this? What do you think about that?” Basically it’s what all managers are supposed to do but they don’t because they don’t have to take time to understand why someone is doing something.

I think the system is working. Most of our strategic plans are happening, just not in the order that we originally planned. We still make bad decisions every day, but instead of managers making them, it’s the people actually doing the work. I’d rather have a person on the front lines make a bad decision and own it than to have someone else make it for them, and then everyone can blame each other.

A lot of this comes down to a simple belief that people deep down want to be good at their job. I believe that most people want to do something that matters.

AB: A few devil’s advocate questions. What about measuring people’s performance?

RC: We just don’t. The reason is that when you don’t have a manager to hide behind, your work is truly exposed. We’ve fired people, and the reason is that there’s nowhere to hide, because everything’s public and it’s very clear whether you’re working and doing good stuff. We also find that if people like what they’re doing, then they do an awesome job at it and they don’t require traditional performance measurements.

Perfect example of leanership: eliminate managers, and everyone manages themselves. Yes, with emergent strategy it may appear chaotic, but as Mintzberg observed, what is really being exposed is unintended order (see Metaphors matter: Talking about how we talk about organizations).