Business Insider has published a small article about Valve a 16-year old company that has no corporate hierarchy whatsoever.
Valve’s basic approach to “managing without managers” is:
- hire only incredibly self-motivated people
- give them full autonomy to decide what project to work on
- teach them to spot valuable projects, and to understand what value they can add to those projects
- allow team structure to happen organically – teams self-select, leaders are chosen by their peers
- encourage people to acknowledge and learn from mistakes quickly to move forward
- make everyone responsible together for the success or failure of projects
and finally (and most critically):
- determine the value and compensation of each employee by peer review