Product Sense Pushup 1: Three Ways to Organize a Company

Spotify organizes teams in squads, which are small, fully autonomous groups with a certain focus. Squads with related tasks are associated with a tribe, enabling coordination between aligned squads. Rather than a traditional PM, Spotify has a chapter lead and tribe lead who support people working in the same role within a tribe and squads within a tribe, respectively. These roles focus on facilitation rather than control. Airbnb uses cross-functional teams, having reduced their management mass in recent years. Product managers oversee and lead these teams. Zappos uses a holacratic model to organize their product teams, with “circles” instead of departments. Similar to Spotify, a particular circle has an associated function and contains employees with distinct roles. Rather than having a PM lead, authority is spread throughout the group. I would be interested to work in a holacratic model, mostly to see how it compares to the more classic manager hierarchy. I personally feel I have benefitted from having a manager to guide me and help with decision-making, so a holacracy would be an interesting contrast.