zlacker

>>tagoll+(OP)
Flat orgs are very popular right now, but isn’t it a huge benefit of a hierarchical organization with subparts that rather than the President of Azure getting on a VTC and telling the whole division that the goal is velocity he can explain to his reports (a small group) that they need velocity with reliability and they can explain to their reports (more small groups) and so on and so forth?

Yes, nuanced comms don’t scale so why isn’t the answer—-don’t require scaled comms?

>>bradle+b9
One reason is that non-scaled comms suffer from “telephone game”. If you do it like you’re saying, then go down 3-4 levels in the hierarchy and check what people are hearing, it will have mutated away from anything you originally said.

Sometimes to get everyone aligned (as best you can) you have to give everyone the same message at the same time — but it has to be a simple message.

>>wrs+fa
i agree with what you are pointing out.

but i wonder why non-scaled communication (if we can also call it that) works in the military?

>>blondi+gk
I haven't been in the military myself, and I'd be curious to hear perspective from someone who's been in both environments. I think in the military there is a methodology where at each level you break up your goal into fairly independent sub-goals, communicate those sub-goals to sub-teams with an accompanying expectation of autonomy in execution, and allow them to do the same for their sub-teams. In a civilian situation, one doesn't normally have that level of clarity available, either in the goals or in the org structure. And I suspect the military culture is also less effective when it is dealing with a goal that isn't clearly defined.