From http://goo.gl/rpXdWQ
Imagine a boat sailing in the ocean full of sailors and no captain. Now imagine a business without a hierarchy system, including a CEO. This is Valve Corporation.
Valve is an influential video game company that created Steam, an innovative online game platform that includes popular games such as Counter Strike. The company runs a communist-like structure where individuals do not have to report to anyone and nobody reports to them. According to BBC, the “employees sit where they want, choose what to work on and decide each other’s pay.”
This structure of human resources is very risky. I am surprised by how successful Valve has been, despite a lack of leadership. Although their model avoids the negative effects of corporate hierarchies such as pressure, there is a reason why all Fortune 500 companies utilize a traditional chain of command structure. For businesses to be efficient, they need to have high-level executives providing direction and making important choices for the good of the company. In fact, lower-level employees need to be given specific duties; otherwise, anybody could do anything they want at any time. The case of Valve is an extremely rare case of a business succeeding without leadership.