More than ever, companies are under pressure to be more productive and effective.
Yet it seems inevitable: as your company grows, so does complexity, leading to inefficiencies.
Is this complexity truly inevitable?
Founders
Paul Graham shares his insights into a better way to run companies: “founder mode.”
Founders stand out because they care deeply about both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details.
Founders are committed to the entire venture: vision and execution, strategy and reality, the whole and the parts.
Professional Managers
In contrast to founders, Paul Graham argues we’ve been misled by the conventional wisdom of relying on “professional managers” skilled at managing up and delegating.
His point: too much delegation is bad for business.
What’s more, managers delegate through several layers of management and form separate hierarchies focused on specific functions.
This results in elaborate management structures that hinder both simplification and optimization, despite everyone’s best efforts.
The harder everyone works, the more they may actually contribute to complexity and churn, directly contradicting the goal of maximizing “work not done”.
What’s the solution?
Part of the solution is good managers, not the “professional managers” Paul Graham critiques.
Another part is good makers, working on a maker schedule (another insightful article from Paul Graham).
But, like founders, how do you keep a solid grasp of both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details?
Empowered Enablers
The crux of it is empowered enablers: hands-on individuals who deliberately create and relentlessly refine organizational structures, management frameworks, and elegant tools to make people’s lives easier, not harder.
Empowered enablers who deliberately create and relentlessly refine organizational structures, management frameworks, and elegant tools to make people’s lives easier, not harder.
It’s easy to overlook enablers because they don’t deliver value directly.
On top of that, in practice, enablers can underserve and undermine makers, causing more harm than good.
You also want to encourage makers to take care of themselves—acquiring the skills, capabilities, or team members they need to operate independently, unencumbered.
That said, enablers make sense as your organization scales, and you’d be remiss not to give them the attention and support they deserve.
Radical Simplification
These enablers should embody one principle: radical simplification.
Radical simplification is crucial to counter the natural tendency in any growing organization to add more and automate.
Mere simplification won’t stand up to the pressure from stakeholders to keep adding features and process steps, and automation can rapidly and insidiously increase complexity and technical debt.
To stay effective, you need a deep commitment to simplifying at every turn.
Vision without simplification is hallucination.”
—Agile Native, Complexity Is the Enemy
In this case, oversimplification can actually be a good thing:
If you’re not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you’re not deleting enough.”
—Elon Musk, Lex Fridman Podcast #438
It’s all about discerning what matters.
We came to value intelligence, defined as the ability to discern important from unimportant.”
—Richard Vague, Founders Films: Key Characteristics that Really Matter
Discerning what matters and focusing on it.
Less, but better.”
—Dieter Rams
It’s essential to approach simplification from the very top of the organization, looking across functional silos. This way, you’ll see the big picture and keep finding ways to simplify and optimize as you zoom in.
Equally important, you should focus your efforts toward a clear target state, even though that target state will likely change over time.
Incremental implementation is good, not incremental thinking.”
—Agile Native, Carefully Outline
Is It Time?
Is it time to radically simplify the way we work and structure large organizations?
Why not aim for simple, coherent, and powerful organizational structures, along with elegant tools that boost efficiency and productivity?
Just as technology companies have recognized the value of hands-on engineers, all the way up to Distinguished Engineers, it may be equally wise to empower hands-on enablers dedicated to modernizing management practices.
In many ways, founders are the ultimate example of empowered enablers. While their role doesn’t center on organizational structures and tools, their ability to effectively connect the big picture with the nitty-gritty details sets the bar for what enablers should strive to achieve.
So go for it, empower enablers who will radically simplify—and become the leanest version a large company can be.
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Featured Links:
How Brian Chesky Runs Airbnb: Founder Mode
Agile at Scale Using Containers
