Coordination Headwind - How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds

An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project. An engineer might get stuck waiting for a decision or a manager may think she doesn’t have authority to make a critical purchase. These small, seemingly minor hesitations ca

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Coordination Failures occur when a group of humans could achieve a desirable outcome by working together but fail to do so because they don't coordinate their decision-making

If you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from:

1. Decreased skin in the game, which reduces team alignment


2. N^2 communication, which creates need for managers and specialization, which reduces individual agency and breadth of learning


3. Reduced risk tolerance, which slows everything down

#1 and #2 are inevitable results of having more emplo... See more

As you scale, you realize, “Huh, I really need more of these.” And the danger is getting too process-y instead of outlining the objectives so people understand, “Okay, we’re doing this for this reason.” It’s almost like you want to provide more context versus trying to exert more control. Because maybe in a very autocratic, hierarchical, bureaucrat

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