Valve Software. DotA, Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Steam… these names may or may not ring a bell to you, depending on if your hobbies include online gaming. If not, do not fret. The focus of this article, is the company structure. Not the structure of the games.

Asides from massive market share that this company holds in electronic gaming sales, there’s another special thing about this company.

There are no bosses!

No one supervises you. You are assigned to work on a project, and you’re responsible for it, along with other people. A structure like this truly promotes the essence of gaming: creativity and imagination.

But there are problems with decentralization. First off, a bad hire can end up in very bad mistakes until this person is fired. Second, mistakes in general go unchecked until the very end. It is often inefficient, but Valve believes that by hiring the right people, this kind of structure can work.

Maybe their great growth is a proof of this, because this flat organization has been raking in sales despite their irregularities. Fans love them: they listen to their customers, they tweak things according to need, and they adapt.

This isn’t a strategy that works for every company though, but it seems to be working for a video-game developing company like Valve.

source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-27/why-there-are-no-bosses-at-valve