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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

I don't think the author is really super familiar with some of those other organizations he mentions so he's reflecting how he thinks they work rather than how they work. That said the observations are still pretty good.

> You need to delegate execution authority to small teams who are aligned to a shared goal

It's been a while since I read the slides but this is basically what the author is advocating for and what doesn't tend to happen in dysfunctional organizations.

> Complexity management in organizations follows the same patterns as in code. Single responsibility, don’t repeat yourself too much, encapsulation, etc.

There are a lot of parallels. But organizations have people so that's an extra factor. You can't just "refactor" them without thinking about people's egos, objectives and such. So a lot of thought is needed into how to build effective organizations and sadly not enough thought is given is most companies.

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> is advocating for and what doesn't tend to happen in dysfunctional organizations.

Agreed the observations are interesting, and that’s what is being advocated for, I just don’t think top-down vs bottom-up is the axis that impacts that as much as disturbed vs… I said “centralized” but probably “localized” is a better term.

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Managing complexity while scaling is a concept just keeps reappearing.

Funnily enough it’s extremely relevant to agents/subagents.

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I don't think it's "funny" . But AI has brought it up to the discussion. In human organizations the decision makers make it so it benefits them. But with AI it is possible to design the whole delegation-structure by anybody who designs agent-collaboration.

So its becoming more obvious that AI can actually help big corporations organize their command-structure with the help of AI to produce more profits. The boards should take notice. Does it really help produce more value if most of it goes to the CEO?

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Thanks for the thoughtful write-up. I’m currently working on a journal article about optimizing organizations from first principles, starting with optimized delegation. Would love your thoughts on the paper if you’re willing to take a look.

These are two public previews that we are building off of for the journal:

1. https://paragraph.com/@hq.spengrah/an-actionable-model-of-tr...

2. https://x.com/hatsprotocol/status/1986458735095517526

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Trust as delegation is an interesting angle; if you’ve not read Team Topologies I’d recommend it. These topics are treated pretty well.
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Will check it out, thanks!
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