Structure without a boss

“These organizations manage to operate at very large scales — some have thousands or tens of thousands of employees — entirely without the pyramid, entirely without anyone being the boss of anyone else. And I know that sounds extraordinary — it sounds like a recipe for chaos. I mean, how could you run a large organization without hierarchy? It doesn’t make any sense. I wasn’t expecting this when I started the research. [But] what I found out the truth is: yes, you need structure, but no, you don’t need a boss. This is really a place where we need to upgrade our thinking.”

-Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations
(excerpt from his talk)