The sled-dog analogy
A lesson in load-balancing and decentralising command
Why I’ve ranted before as to why I feel that conventional pyramidal hierarchies are suboptimal, is that they are typically top-heavy with management and leave too much “doing work” to an under-skilled and often under-paid workforce. This can work well, with the right management in the right places doing the right things — but not always. Human nature is too varied, and while unicorn formations may succeed from time to time, it’s too difficult to replicate their success at a blueprint level.
When not done right, organisational structures can cause devastating effects, and more often than not, management efforts start to dwindle. Corporate ghosting is an activity I’ve witnessed in horror first hand, and seeing how it proliferates throughout a company has truly been a sight to behold — and deal with. Subordinates are left without adequate direction, training or support and often this results in an inefficient and low-quality output which ultimately always results in a poor customer-experience and a worse off product execution.
In the book “Extreme Ownership”, written by ex navy seals Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, the authors describe that the most effective SWAT teams are those that were kept to a manageable size, not exceeding 6 members. In covert operations, where time is of the essence, and the team must execute swiftly to achieve their objective, reducing the size of the team improves the facilitation of effective communication along the chain of command. This is referred to as a decentralised command. While the senior officers have a clear overview of the mission and objective — the details of the execution is left to the very capable hands of the highly trained individuals in the task force who are very aware of their responsibilities and have a clear idea of what is expected of them.
The notion of decentralised command also describes how it is important for an organisation, or team, to work top-down as effectively as it works bottom-up. In “Reinventing Organizations”, Frédéric Laloux describes effective teams as being those that are able to master the art of two way communication and collaboration. Empowering the people at the very bottom to bear weight, grants a level of ownership and genuine commitment from team mates in a way that promotes trust and breeds positive habit-building across a team.
Introducing The Sled-dog structure, which presents a similar architecture and way of working as a decentralised team. Imagine your outfit as a sled. The sled is the organisational structure. The cargo on the sled is the product that you’re delivering, or aiming to deliver, to your customers. The destination is your customer base. You are the sled-driver and the wolf pack is your team.
In dog sledding, canines are arranged in rows of two (sometimes more in certain competitive events). One typically finds the most experienced hounds book-ending the pack — leading the front and stabilising the back, where the less experienced dogs form the output capacity in the middle. There is still a team lead, being driven by vision — the leader knows the general direction of travel and is further steered and directed by the musher.
What is important to realise in this structure, is that although there can be a variety of strength and experience across the pack, each dog carries the same amount of weight regardless. It is this formation and structure that ends up being extremely forgiving to team formations where there may be individuals who aren’t as top performing as others. Output is normalised, and optimal efficiency is achieved through cross distribution while giving all team members an equal opportunity to gain more experience hours as well as strength and stamina training. The team is thus as strong as the combined effect of the individuals in the pack — challenging the saying that “you are only as strong as your weakest link”. Having a team arranged in series to begin with is an inherent risk, arranging in parallel yields many more beneficial advantages. The weakest link analogy also leads teams to foster a toxic culture of “be the best or be gone”. Which is completely fine in some cases — when you need to hit an aggressive target with no margin for error, that makes sense. But when you’re looking to achieve an infinitely maintainable pace, at scale — you need balance, consistency and pace.
Don’t get me wrong, it is still important for each dog to pull as much weight as the others, maintain pace through stamina, but there is less cognitive overload on needing to account for direction and other nuances of leading the pack — therefore the pack can concentrate resources just on power output, trusting in the direction they are running in being lead.
As mentioned earlier on an optimal team size, this formation should still conform to that limitation. Too many dogs and, well, you have a dog show— the team will lack the discipline, cohesion, communication and focus to pull their weight and follow course.
What’s further rewarding about this structure is that the team crosses the finish line together. The reward is bountiful and equally benefits the pack equally. Conventional structures reward the people at tip of the ice-berg. The people who present or hand-over the solution to client or deliver the product to market. The face of the team — leads and directors. Sled dogs aren’t just paws and muscle, they are the inevitable success of the team, they are the system as much as they are the solution in and of themselves.
You can scale this model infinitely, maintaining the rules that each pod remains focused on one vision, does not cross the threshold of six members, and has clearly defined roles of who is directing and who is leading the team.
Mush! Mush!
