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.
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.”
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?”
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.”
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.”
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.”
There are no bad ideas. — Said at the start of a brainstorming session. Every idea is welcome.
Leave your titles at the door. — In this meeting, rank does not count.
Everyone has a seat at the table. — Everyone here has a voice in the decision.
That’s above my pay grade. — Someone more senior has to decide this.
The loudest voice in the room. — The person whose view wins because they speak the most.
Justice Felix Frankfurter said: “The Chief Justice is primus inter pares.” The Latin means “first among equals.” Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that his vote “carries no more weight” than the vote of any other justice.
The chief justice still has real power. He speaks first at the justices’ conference and proposes a vote. When he votes with the majority, he decides who writes the opinion of the Court.
In 1970 Robert K. Greenleaf published an essay called “The Servant as Leader.” It introduced the term servant leadership. He wrote: “The servant-leader is servant first.” He also proposed a test: “Do those served grow as persons?”
The idea came from Greenleaf’s reading of Hermann Hesse’s novel The Journey to the East. In the story, a servant named Leo does the group’s chores. When Leo leaves, the group falls apart. Later the narrator learns that Leo was the leader of the order.
In his 2014 book Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek tells of a Marine Corps general who told him: “Officers eat last.” Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line.