On October 7, 2003, California voters removed Governor Gray Davis from office. In the recall election, 55.4 percent voted yes. It was the first recall of a governor in California and the second in US history, after North Dakota recalled Lynn Frazier in 1921.
The Hundred Days
On July 24, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke in a fireside chat about “the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”
Gallup calls the first months of a presidency “the honeymoon period.” It found that “all but Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter had higher approval ratings about 100 days after taking office” than at the start.
The Vocabulary of Earned Authority
Earn your stripes. A newcomer proves himself or herself before others accept the authority.
Pay your dues. Do the hard work first. Rank comes later.
He’s lost the room. Said of a coach or a manager whose team no longer follows him. He still holds the title.
Lame duck. Merriam-Webster: “an elected official or group continuing to hold political office during the period between the election and the inauguration of a successor.”
Holacracy at Zappos
In March 2015 Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of the online shoe retailer Zappos, sent a memo that committed the company to self-management under a system called Holacracy. Employees who did not want to work without managers were offered a buyout. “Self-management and self-organization is not for everyone,” he wrote.
Fourteen percent of employees took the first offer. By January 2016, 18 percent of the workforce, about 260 people, had left since the memo.
Welcome to Flatland
In 2012 the video game company Valve published its Handbook for New Employees. One section is called “Welcome to Flatland.” It states that “we don’t have any management, and nobody ‘reports to’ anybody else.”
In 2013 Jeri Ellsworth, who had led Valve’s hardware work and was laid off in February, described what she had found there: a “hidden layer of powerful management.”
No Managers at Google
In 2002 Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers,” David Garvin wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2013.
“That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page.” Years later, Google’s study of its managers began with the question: “Do managers matter?”
The Tyranny of Structurelessness
In her essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness, Jo Freeman wrote about groups that refuse to have leaders. Her conclusion: “there is no such thing as a ‘structureless’ group.” In such a group, she wrote, “‘structurelessness’ becomes a way of masking power.”
His Highness the President
In 1789 the first Senate debated how to address George Washington. A majority favored “His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.” The House of Representatives disagreed. It resolved that “it is not proper to annex any style or title to the respective styles or titles of office expressed in the Constitution.”
On May 14 the Senate gave way. The title remained “President of the United States.” Senator Ralph Izard began calling Vice President John Adams, who had pressed for titles, “His Rotundity.”
Nothing Without Its People
On November 17, 2023, the board of OpenAI fired its CEO, Sam Altman. Microsoft quickly hired Altman and the co-founder Greg Brockman to lead a new AI research team. On November 20, more than 700 of OpenAI’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter. They said they “may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary.”
The letter demanded that the board resign and reinstate Altman and Brockman. On November 20, the chief technology officer, Mira Murati, posted: “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” On November 21, OpenAI announced that Altman would return as CEO. Most of the board was replaced.
Pell-Mell
On December 2, 1803, Thomas Jefferson hosted the newly arrived British minister, Anthony Merry, and his wife, Elizabeth, at dinner. Jefferson did not escort Mrs. Merry to the table. He “instead escorted Dolley Madison, whom he seated at his side.” Merry had to find his own place at the table. He felt insulted.
The custom was called “pell-mell,” a “disorderly mingling of guests without any attention to rank or title.” Jefferson wrote it down as a rule: “When brought together in society all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office.” At public ceremonies, the families of foreign ministers were to take their places “as they arrive, & without any precedence.”