Monogamy is overrated (at work)

👋 We’ve returned with another Medium Newsletter
Issue #177: letters to the editor and nothing is as urgent as you think
By Harris Sockel

Jessica Zwaan, an HR expert on Medium, published a story this summer that got me thinking differently about the way I work. It’s called “What Tech failed to learn from Hollywood,” and the thesis goes something like this: The best teams operate like film crews. They come together for a brief period of time to do something specific, and then disband.

“Hollywood doesn’t marry its teams,” Zwaan writes. “They have beautiful, intense project-based affairs.” No one is monogamous (work-wise).

In tech and pretty much every other industry, work works differently. Teams endure for years, often past the point of being relevant. Inertia determines a lot of what we do. We build cozy, long-term relationships that can be super fulfilling, but sometimes unproductive.

To get around this, Medium experimented with holacracy in its early days. The Greek word holon means “whole,” and a “holacracy” (as opposed to a democracy or an autocracy) is made up of autonomous units that operate both independently and in concert with each other.

It’s a freewheeling org structure that’s sorrrrt of Hollywood-esque: When Medium tried it, there were no durable hierarchies or pyramid-shaped org charts. People came together to do specific things. Teams formed and dissolved like clouds. It was a little weird (no bosses, really! or titles!). We abandoned it because it was chaos, but the ideals and principles stuck around. They were so influential that they’re cited in an O’Reilly book about building great teams:

1. Individuals can always instigate change.

2. Authority is distributed, though not evenly or permanently.

3. Ownership is accountability, not control.

4. Good decision-making implies alignment, not consensus.

I think those are good principles for working with people anywhere. And I like this quote, from our reflection on why we tried holacracy: “Classic org charts are often linear and inflexible; in reality, people have the talent to play multiple roles in a company.”

I’m curious: Have you ever been part of a team that felt unstoppable? A team that came together for a brief moment in time to do something great? What did that feel like, what motivated you, and what did you make?

One more story: on editing

Brand designer and professor David Langton published a “letter to the editor” in The New Yorker last year about Milton Glaser’s legendary I❤NY logo. He was surprised by how detailed (and astute) the magazine’s edits were. Here’s Langton’s original letter with The New Yorker’s first round of edits in red:

The New Yorker’s second round went even further (editing some of these edits!). Nothing starts out great, Langton reminds us, not even paragraph-long letters to the editor.

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

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