Build an organism, NOT a pyramid

This week I've been inside a small room creating keynote slides. Basically compiling my knowledge into training others can use to grow their business This is always an excruciating process. To go from being a "doer" to a "teacher". When you're doing, you're in flow, you don't think, you just do instinctively and intuitively. Coming out of that zone, reverse engineering your flow, turning it into step by step instructions, assigning words to things, making it understandable — this is an excruciating process. You have to enter another world. Anyway, I'm not here to tell you about that... I'm here to share some of the training I've been working on: "How to Hire and Manage a Team". One of my key insights on this topic is the importance of org structure. Most people structure their companies like pyramids, you want to structure your company like an organism.  Here's an illustration: ·         Structure — Is extremely important, it gives emergence to behavior.    ·         Adaptation — A pyramid is built vertically, it can’t change its structure, it can’t adapt to change, it is what it is and cannot change. An organism’s unique ability is “self-organization”, it adapts/evolves by changing its structure. A cybernetic autonomous control system. ·         Pyramid — This is the typical “command and control” hierarchy. It’s extremely slow,  breeds politics, authority, communication issues, bureaucracy, bad products, manipulation of truth, bad talent, death. ·         Organism — This is the non-typical “self-organizing” distributed team. It’s extremely fast, breeds results, innovation, organic communication, meritocracy, great products, respect of truth, top talent, adaptable to change, sustainability. If you're trying to grow a business, hire a team, structure teams, their interconnections, and deal with communication chaos — Don't build a pyramid. Build an organism. -Sam