In his Medium article on Zappos’ organizational redesign, Elmar Hackmann notes that “experimenting with [organizational] structure is as important as experimenting with strategy or product.” The following three organizations certainly illustrate his point.
AirBnB follows the most traditional structure in my eyes, but with a clear “design-first” mission. Historically, Airbnb had multiple subdivisions, each with its own roadmap and PMs running them. However, Brian Chesky responded to the complexity of the organization by centralizing decision-making, making Design more central, and consolidating Product Management and Marketing into a smaller, single function.
Zappos self-management structure was the most shocking. With no job titles or formal org chart, Zappos radically re-imagined work hierarchies by forming recursive job groups, or “circles within circles.” Management wasn’t necessarily done away with, but this also meant roles like product management became less well-defined. Apparently, decision-making slowed down as employees became less empowered to act and interestingly, almost 18% of employees ended up leaving after this new shift.
Despite Zappos’ undeniable shock factor, Spotify’s structure struck me as the most unique. ProductSchool describes squads as “mini-startups.” Rather than relying on slow, cross-departmental efforts and waiting on messages from higher-ups, squads are largely self-organizing, with product owners helping teammates understand their tasks. Squads also appear to be a part of certain families, known as tribes, and can operate across different chapters in tribes.
I admire Spotify’s structure, which provides structure for both an employee’s work and their potential passions. Team members can build “communities of interest” through Guilds, which sounds like an interesting and structured way to pursue passions outside of your immediate role and tasks. As an entry level PM, I would want a close-knit team like the startup-style squads, while still knowing there’s a network existing that we can turn to for help and resources.
References:
- https://medium.com/@elmarhackmann/a-company-with-no-job-titles-how-zappos-holacracy-experiment-reimagined-organizational-design-f9530bfdb4b7
- https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/spotify
- https://productschool.com/blog/product-fundamentals/spotify-model-scaling-agile
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330125812_Zappos_An_Experiment_in_Holacracy
- https://medium.com/@markus_brinsa/hierarchy-on-steroids-ten-years-after-zappos-went-holacratic-37a62b976ec4
- https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/brian-chemskys-change-to-product-management-at-airbnb-4dee7d768aa7
