A side-by-side map of six org design schools – and how they converge on three unit archetypes, at two levels of scale, with a contract grammar to apply them.
I was curious to read this article as only recently I learnt about TOSD. The comparison with TT is interesting since for me they are 2 opposite framework, the exact opposite, TOSD is negating the very central point of TT (teams). They both talk about time but they both get it wrong in my opinion as time is fundamentally incompatible with flow. You can't talk about time if you want to create the condition for flow and so there is not time constraints, nor "fast flow".
I was particularly interested in understanding where the comparison between the 3 "school of thoughts" was leading and once I finished reading I did not have much clarity. I think the article tries to say that they are all saying the same thing in different words, I don't think that is true. I think they are very different in their fundamentals. What really attracted my attention though was the video and the interview with Niels Pflaeging attached to this article.
He was presented as having helped many organisations, but there seem to be few public, independently documented case studies showing BetaCodex transformations with before/after data, failures, trade-offs, and replication evidence compared to say TT, especially in the software industry.
From the video I understand and agree that many organisations can be over-bureaucratic, too centralised, and too far removed from real customer value. Isn't this the problem with the European Union, but was brexit the right response? Revolutionary and bold in the proclamation, a great flop in the realisation and implementation. Ok, pushing more decision-making towards the people closest to the work make sense, to some degree, it is a reasonable idea but negating structure or shifting left everything is not the solution. By comparison take again referendums, which are not democracy per se but only one tool, few rare moments of a shift left practice in a a democracy, more on democracy later....
In my opinion in the video Neils confuses "value creation" with "structure" or "formal structure". This is very confusing: value creation is the goal of an any organisation assuming a structure. It is very hard to believe that an organisation does not want to achieve value creation. How can it be? That's the goal, not the structure itself supporting the goal achievement.
A structure, in fact, is very helpful if it explain roles, decision rights, accountabilities, funding, interfaces, and conflict resolutions precisely to achieve value creation and keep the flow of work going. Why would you call that bureaucracy and remove it?
Also, you can get rid of hierarchy without renouncing at a formal structures. Formal does not necessarily mean hierarchical, this is a very important distinction. A cooperative, federation, or democratic association can be highly formal and somehow bureaucratic by design (see the EU again), without being necessarily command-and-control. Is that the best formal structure, probably not, it is way too slow but asserting that the alternative is value creation is not adding any actual value to the conversation or how an organisation should be organised in my opinion: value creation was always the goal. Removing hierarchy, which might be a good thing in many cases, does not remove the need for rules, governance, safeguards and formalisation of the way of working. Command-and-control is just one form of leadership failure, not the definition of leadership or a formal/structured way of working.
The alternative presented risks becoming just too tribal and opinionated. Neils criticises bureaucracy, but then leans heavily on mastery as the solution, and peer recognition and reputation. Talking about reputation is dangerous. These can amplify heroes, insiders, dominant personalities, and existing privilege. For minorities, newcomers, dissenters, or people doing invisible work, this can be even less fair and insidious than formal hierarchy. The problem is not solved for sure, it's shifted and tribalised again.
It seems to me that throughout the interview the centre/periphery model is asserted more than proven. The example of central cells renting equipment to peripheral cells raises a serious contradiction. If the centre owns key assets and the periphery "pays" to use them, then the centre still controls scarce resources. How that is empowerment? It can become a transfer-pricing mechanism where the periphery carries cost, risk, and cognitive load while central asset owners retain power: often the case with "false" devops team in the form of formal Infrastructure centralised teams. This resembles a common failure pattern in digital organisations: “shift left” is presented as empowerment, but in practice infrastructure teams push complexity and operational burden onto product teams without truly making platforms easier to consume. It is obvious that customer facing teams should have more power and room for action. But again a polarising argument takes over pretty soon again: central functions are not automatically wasteful can all be essential to value creation. The question is not whether the centre should disappear - maybe, it really depends from the context - but how it should be governed and made accountable. Many committees are wasteful, political, or bureaucratic. But a committee is simply a coordination mechanism. Some are bad; some are essential.
Turns out that the cell model is still a structure and is not clear how it "creates value" (which is the goal). Peripheral cells, central cells, internal markets, rental relationships, and service relationships are all formal design choices. So the issue is not “structure versus no structure.” It is which structure, with what governance, incentives, and protections.
Finally, the political analogies are confused. The talk contrasts decentralisation with fascism, stalinism, and authoritarianism, and then uses democracy as an analogy for decentralised organising. But democracy is not decentralisation.
Democracy does indeed depends on rules, procedures, delegation, accountability, and limits on power, constitutions! Removing structure while relying on reputation and informal influence will create hidden authority rather than real democracy. A democratic or human-centred organisation will have a degree of "bureaucracy" and formality by design because it needs transparent criteria, fair process, support, retraining, appeal mechanisms, and protections against arbitrary exclusion.
No problem! Thanks for the reading. I enjoy going through and reason about this stuff. I don’t know that much about org topology and I v seen an interview was added now, so I will deep dive into that too when I can, but I wanted to share my view especially on the comparison between beta and tt and what was said in the interview. I recognise my comment is a bit too long but I couldn’t find a shorter way.
Holonic (flow) systems .., but let’s keep rebranding old ideas with new terminology
I was curious to read this article as only recently I learnt about TOSD. The comparison with TT is interesting since for me they are 2 opposite framework, the exact opposite, TOSD is negating the very central point of TT (teams). They both talk about time but they both get it wrong in my opinion as time is fundamentally incompatible with flow. You can't talk about time if you want to create the condition for flow and so there is not time constraints, nor "fast flow".
I was particularly interested in understanding where the comparison between the 3 "school of thoughts" was leading and once I finished reading I did not have much clarity. I think the article tries to say that they are all saying the same thing in different words, I don't think that is true. I think they are very different in their fundamentals. What really attracted my attention though was the video and the interview with Niels Pflaeging attached to this article.
He was presented as having helped many organisations, but there seem to be few public, independently documented case studies showing BetaCodex transformations with before/after data, failures, trade-offs, and replication evidence compared to say TT, especially in the software industry.
From the video I understand and agree that many organisations can be over-bureaucratic, too centralised, and too far removed from real customer value. Isn't this the problem with the European Union, but was brexit the right response? Revolutionary and bold in the proclamation, a great flop in the realisation and implementation. Ok, pushing more decision-making towards the people closest to the work make sense, to some degree, it is a reasonable idea but negating structure or shifting left everything is not the solution. By comparison take again referendums, which are not democracy per se but only one tool, few rare moments of a shift left practice in a a democracy, more on democracy later....
In my opinion in the video Neils confuses "value creation" with "structure" or "formal structure". This is very confusing: value creation is the goal of an any organisation assuming a structure. It is very hard to believe that an organisation does not want to achieve value creation. How can it be? That's the goal, not the structure itself supporting the goal achievement.
A structure, in fact, is very helpful if it explain roles, decision rights, accountabilities, funding, interfaces, and conflict resolutions precisely to achieve value creation and keep the flow of work going. Why would you call that bureaucracy and remove it?
Also, you can get rid of hierarchy without renouncing at a formal structures. Formal does not necessarily mean hierarchical, this is a very important distinction. A cooperative, federation, or democratic association can be highly formal and somehow bureaucratic by design (see the EU again), without being necessarily command-and-control. Is that the best formal structure, probably not, it is way too slow but asserting that the alternative is value creation is not adding any actual value to the conversation or how an organisation should be organised in my opinion: value creation was always the goal. Removing hierarchy, which might be a good thing in many cases, does not remove the need for rules, governance, safeguards and formalisation of the way of working. Command-and-control is just one form of leadership failure, not the definition of leadership or a formal/structured way of working.
The alternative presented risks becoming just too tribal and opinionated. Neils criticises bureaucracy, but then leans heavily on mastery as the solution, and peer recognition and reputation. Talking about reputation is dangerous. These can amplify heroes, insiders, dominant personalities, and existing privilege. For minorities, newcomers, dissenters, or people doing invisible work, this can be even less fair and insidious than formal hierarchy. The problem is not solved for sure, it's shifted and tribalised again.
It seems to me that throughout the interview the centre/periphery model is asserted more than proven. The example of central cells renting equipment to peripheral cells raises a serious contradiction. If the centre owns key assets and the periphery "pays" to use them, then the centre still controls scarce resources. How that is empowerment? It can become a transfer-pricing mechanism where the periphery carries cost, risk, and cognitive load while central asset owners retain power: often the case with "false" devops team in the form of formal Infrastructure centralised teams. This resembles a common failure pattern in digital organisations: “shift left” is presented as empowerment, but in practice infrastructure teams push complexity and operational burden onto product teams without truly making platforms easier to consume. It is obvious that customer facing teams should have more power and room for action. But again a polarising argument takes over pretty soon again: central functions are not automatically wasteful can all be essential to value creation. The question is not whether the centre should disappear - maybe, it really depends from the context - but how it should be governed and made accountable. Many committees are wasteful, political, or bureaucratic. But a committee is simply a coordination mechanism. Some are bad; some are essential.
Turns out that the cell model is still a structure and is not clear how it "creates value" (which is the goal). Peripheral cells, central cells, internal markets, rental relationships, and service relationships are all formal design choices. So the issue is not “structure versus no structure.” It is which structure, with what governance, incentives, and protections.
Finally, the political analogies are confused. The talk contrasts decentralisation with fascism, stalinism, and authoritarianism, and then uses democracy as an analogy for decentralised organising. But democracy is not decentralisation.
Democracy does indeed depends on rules, procedures, delegation, accountability, and limits on power, constitutions! Removing structure while relying on reputation and informal influence will create hidden authority rather than real democracy. A democratic or human-centred organisation will have a degree of "bureaucracy" and formality by design because it needs transparent criteria, fair process, support, retraining, appeal mechanisms, and protections against arbitrary exclusion.
Thanks for the comment Dom!
No problem! Thanks for the reading. I enjoy going through and reason about this stuff. I don’t know that much about org topology and I v seen an interview was added now, so I will deep dive into that too when I can, but I wanted to share my view especially on the comparison between beta and tt and what was said in the interview. I recognise my comment is a bit too long but I couldn’t find a shorter way.