The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

A classic essay whose significance goes way beyond women or feminism. I've been part of a few "structureless" groups which spontaneously organized around an opportunity and were initially effective because of that structureless (e.g. somebody gets an idea, the whole group moves like a military unit, opponents had no idea something like that could happen) but succumbed to the dynamics in that article on a time scale of three weeks (arguably ended a public company in that time!) to three…

There are relatively few things I've read that I can definitively point to as having almost instantly changed my mind on something. This is one of them. Reading often offers a broader understanding or different perspective, but seldom a sudden flash on insight. Others short reads that have changed my mind in that way include: - "The Inner Ring" by CS Lewis (https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/) - "On Photography" by Susan Sontag (https://www.amazon.com/Photography-Susan-Sontag/dp/031242009...) - "Black Souls in…

My experience with this dynamic is that leaders and power structures emerge in “leaderless” organizations despite the best efforts of participants. This leads to a lack of accountability for the excercise of de facto authority because it supposedly does not exist, and rapidly creates toxic and exploitative environments with zero recourse for grievance.

Such a well written piece that articulates a lot of things I’ve talked about lately with friends, family and coworkers. I said just yesterday to someone that there are always politics, it’s only a question of how formalized they are. The less formalized, the more the workplace is probably being bent to the whims of the best manipulators. So when someone says there are no politics, they are either clueless or pulling the strings themselves. Same goes with the claim…