The N Squared Coordination Law

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The N squared rule says if you have N people and they all have to communicate with each of the other people, then the amount of communication has to happen. In practice it is even richer than people give it credit for because there's lots of things that people feel like "I probably shouldn't bring this up" The more broadly the sort of surface area of the entire organizations, like strategic things they might plausibly be doing seems to increase the rate of how often this happens.

Read the full transcript here.

Why do organizations get slower as they grow? What can organizations learn from slime molds? What are the advantages of top-down organization versus bottom-up organization, and vice versa? How can organizations encourage serendipity? What use are doorbells in jungles? Why is it so hard for organizations to set a "north star" that is at once plausible, coherent, and good?

Alex Komoroske has over a decade of experience in the tech industry as a product manager focusing on platform- and ecosystem-shaped problems. While at Google, he worked on Chrome's Web Platform PM team, Augmented Reality in Google Maps, and Ambient Computing. He's fascinated by how to navigate the emergent complexity within organizations to achieve great results. You can find some of his public writing at komoroske.com.

Staff