Valve software - hierarchy is for the military

Valve Software:

When he looked into the history of the organization, he found that hierarchical management had been invented for military purposes, where it was perfectly suited to getting 1,000 men to march over a hill to get shot at. When the Industrial Revolution came along, hierarchical management was again a good fit, since the objective was to treat each person as a component, doing exactly the same thing over and over.

…

So Valve was designed as a company that would attract the sort of people capable of taking the initial creative step, leave them free to do creative work, and make them want to stay. Consequently, Valve has no formal management or hierarchy at all.

This is definitely the Conscious Startups way.

I have this model:

When everyone’s working towards a shared vision, you unlock their innate creative powers and you don’t need (or want) the hierarchy.

Via Kottke.