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A good decentralized org would basically be an anti-Amazon in a good way. Flipping *bad* centralized hierarchy models is tempting but dumb. Tempting because most people turn to decentralized network structures out of frustration with bad centralized hierarchies.
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For eg: Good centralized orgs do centralized bureaucracy *well* and if you flip that you’ll think creatively about good decentralized bureaucracy. But if you knee jerk react to bad centralized bureaucracy, you’ll just create a big of anarchist un-process that doesn’t work
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Heard good things about the working backwards book, but haven’t yet read. And I guess now that it’s over, I can share that I did a 5-year gig with Amazon that just wrapped. One of the best gigs of my free-agent career. I’ve liberally applied managemebt ideas from there elsewhere.
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I’d say about 1/3 of everything I’ve learned about good management at bleeding edge scale in the last decade comes from Amazon. Another third comes from working with Jim Keller over the same period across 4 companies. Last third is everything else.
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My decentralized management expertise is far weaker but kinda hoping to build it up to similar level in the next decade.
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Will wrap and publish my art of gig book for consultants in the next week or two, but I feel I’m not yet ready to write the management book I eventually want to. Ambitions kinda along the lines of The Essential Drucker. But need to truly grok the decentralized side to same level
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2x2: small vs big, and centralized hierarchy vs decentralized network. I’m mostly on the “big” side. I’ve logged hours at the small scale but tbf there’s not a whole lot to say on small-scale *management* per se. It’s 90% about product, funding, and chemistry of 3-4 key people.
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Minimum scale at which my kind of management theorizing seems to be meaningful and useful is like 25 people, which is also my gating criterion. I almost never work with anything smaller unless there’s a product angle I understand particularly better than others (which is rare)
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