In the 1990s, the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Momderman pioneered a radical approach to urban design known as “Shared Space” or “Naked Streets”.
At its core was the idea that street furniture, from kerbstones to road markings to signs and traffic lights, stopped people using the space from communicating with one another. Remove them, and rather than relying on people feeling they’re in the right regardless, everyone has to look out for one another.
It’s not an approach you’d want to implement at a motorway intersection, but (with some concerns about the usability for people with disabilities) naked streets seem to work quite well. They are also massively counter-intuitive and sound like they will be a car crash. Literally.
I was reminded of this when reading Neil Mullarkey’s new book In the Moment over the weekend, and in particular this passage:
“(an organogram is)… a beautifully visualized work of fiction, which sums up a neat theory of who is supposed to work alongside/above/below whom but with little to say about what they really do or the messy bits that don’t fit readily into a box or even into two dimensions.”
As I enter into my second year at Equal Experts, it made me realise that our approach, where we have done away with line management structures and organograms, is pretty analogous to Naked Streets, a Naked Organisation if you will.
It’s accepted wisdom that organisations have an explicit hierarchy. So much so that when it doesn’t exist it is really quite disorienting. But as Neil notes, the organogram is at best just one view of the relationships that exist within an organisation, but probably the only one that is clearly articulated.
As a result, people can rely upon it as if it is fact, and absolute, rather than only one of the realities in play. This is why, for example, the naive often think people like PAs and receptionists are unimportant because they feature low down in the organisation.
Remove the explicit hierarchy and you force people to investigate, be curious, consult, negotiate and properly understand who needs to be involved in any particular path of action. Ways of working emerge that allow that to happen effectively. People engage in all directions, rather than tending upwards.
It can be unsettling. It can feel chaotic. But you get used to it over time.
And sure, like the urban equivalents, a naked organisation might be susceptible to exploitation by psychopaths. But sadly, as we too well know, so are traditional organisations and traditional streets.
mmitII 