What is "Structureless"?
Regardless of whether we are talking about organizational design, work, server or data management, there are a lot of misunderstandings around the term "Structureless". Is "structureless" really chaos? Let us explore the topic using a team as an example.
Direct Structure
The structure is explicit and clear. If Jim can't complete a task, he knows very well who can complete it and he can provide the information whom to address. A direct structure is very effective from an organizational point of view, but slightly inconvenient to the customer. It is the most common form of organization we see.
Indirect Structure
The structure is explicit, but not transparent. When Jim can't complete a task, he only knows who can point into the right direction, but doesn't know what that would be. An indirect structure is the first thing you'll need when organizing chaos. From a customer perspective, it is extremely frustrating. For example - have you ever called to a service hotline only to receive another number to call? One of the main concerns for indirect structures is consistency, as the cookie crumbles when any link is broken.
Unstructured
There is no structure to follow. If Jim can't complete a task, he doesn't know what to do, hopefully someone else will pick it up. Nobody has really put any thought into the idea how team members interact and everyone is just "winging it". As a customer, your best bet is to find someone who knows what they are talking about.
Structureless
There is a structure, but it's implicit and usually invisible. It may even be difficult to determine what this structure is as "it just works". There are no organizational diagrams - the knowledge is internalized. A customer dealing with a structureless organization receives the best possible outcome regardless of where they begin their interaction. There may not even be obvious departments, only functions - and even those may be transient and subject to need.
To the outsider, "Structureless" may look like magic, to someone stuck in a "Structure" mindset looking for a structure, it will look like "Unstructured".
How to understand this?
It's extremely harmful to efficiency, effectiveness and outcome alike to attempt transforming a structureless organization towards a "Structured" approach. In fact, a mature structured organization should strive to become structureless, leaving the problem of organization to those at the core of the work to be done.
The following chart visualizes the relationship between maturity and outcome:
Conclusion
The idea that there must be a kind of express structure is a limiting belief. There is no battle between structured and unstructured that somehow has to be won by structure.
If you're a manager, coach or consultant, don't try to build structure before understanding where you are coming from and where you are heading.
Tips
- Be clear that "structureless" is not a problem!
- Learn to discriminate the difference between "structureless" and "unstructured"
- Understand the ups and downs of whatever structure is in place.
Enterprise Agile Coach @ HCLTech
4 年Unstructured and structureless are the same. Its the attitude of the associate who is helping that determines. The same can be extrapolated to a team, team of teams or an organization
so can we safely say that structureless is "self-organising" in the more popular sense.? If Jim can't help the customer then they would go and find out from whoever can?
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7 年Structureless is a good way of seeing things, so when you do have a functional organisation - like almost 99% of organsiations, individuals can act towards the customer and towards each other, along a workflow that is in-front of them. In your example above, that workflow is the customer asking for the price of an item.
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7 年The first thing which comes to my mind when I see unstructured and structured (both directly and indirectly) models is a (quite frustrating) collection of silos, whereas the structureless concept seems to me successfully related to employee autonomy, customer satisfaction, common sense and efficiency. Thank you for sharing, Michael Küsters!