The Uncertainty Mindset 2019-2020

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#31: Alternative sociality

vaughn2nd January 2021 at 3:01pm

This issue is about amorphous organization, an example of which is the Yak Collective. Membership of an amorphous organization is continuous, not binary (as it would be in a conventional organization)—this has interesting implications for how the organization works and is designed, especially in terms of hiring.

Compared to conventional organizations, amorphous organizations are:

  1. More likely to be able to adapt when the business environment changes unpredictably,
  2. Less likely to be able to produce necessarily interdependent work across the entire organization,
  3. Less likely to be able to scale significantly and retain uniform participation,

My take: Amorphous organizations that survive long-term are likely to be inefficient but adaptable to uncertainty. They'll have a small, tight, highly committed, high-quality core of less-diverse participants surrounded by a large, diffuse cloud of uncertain-commitment, uncertain-quality, more-diverse participants.

You can find it here: #31: Alternative sociality