This is but one model developed within academia for an entirely anarchist organisation, there are dozens of others and they have been both studied for efficacy (they tend to work better than a more hierarchical structure), as well as put into practice in real life within certain organisations. To this date there are a number of non-profit organisations and coöperatives that use this governance system to improve the situation where they are locally and achieve their goals — whether that's "everyone working to improve the local community" or "make good products for a client".
The entire point of anarchism is that there isn't One Big Guy, it's that it's people, deciding on a system and working together on a small scale — this then translates to the big scale through cross-group meetings, information sharing, and resource sharing. There is a lot of evidence within the social sciences to back these methodologies up as being very efficacious compared to traditional methods of group organisation, as well as being more democratic than traditional alternatives.
This additionally tends to be how some kinds of open mic nights work, as well as some kinds of modern speakeasys.
It’s a bit antithetical to anarchy to start defining true and untrue configurations. It’s more accurate to say that while anarchy permits chaos, it also permits self-organization, one mode of which is hierarchy-free community governance. Most of us have experienced this among friends when e.g. deciding where to go to dinner.
Peaceful anarchy evaporates when bad actors arrive. I wish it wasn't so. A structured civil society is the nearest we've managed to get to being able to live in relative freedom almost all of the time. It's the least violent, least coerced option we've been able to find.
The other way would be to go live in a group by yourselves off the grid, and as long as every one of you is good and decent that will be fine, but the moment one of you goes bad, you either have to choose violence or they will do whatever they want to you.