If you get a job at Punchkick Interactive—a digital agency that designs and builds software in Chicago—you won’t have a boss. You’ll not be shown an organizational chart of who reports to whom because such a chart doesn’t exist. You also will be asked to choose your own job title.
As cofounder Zak Dabbas explains, growing up with no curfew taught him “that you can treat those you work alongside with all the respect in the world and trust them to make incredibly smart decisions from a place of empathy, not an org chart.”56 Not having managers or a hierarchy worked well when there were about eight people in the company. Once the company grew to more than twenty employees, however, Punchkick’s founders realized that they needed to find ways to improve how people work together.
Punchkick rolled out an “advice channel,” which allows employees to share expertise.
So, if employees are experiencing a challenge with a client project, they can reach out to the entire company through the advice channel and ask who has encountered a similar problem before. The company also asked employees to be sure to “touch base”
with anyone who might be impacted by a decision they’re making. This is not the same as getting permission—it’s more about ensuring that communication has occurred before any challenges arise. Employees are evaluated by other employees via a feedback channel instead of being evaluated by only a manager.
Job titles sometimes emerge as part of using the advice channel. For instance, Abby Gartner was the “go-to” person for handling clients. She was the first person employees went to about how to address client needs. According to Dabbas, “Eventually, we said, ‘Abby, let’s face it; you’re our head of customer experience.’”
So far, Punchkick is prospering. They have been on the Inc. 5000 list of fastestgrowing privately held companies for five years in a row. Dabbas believes that having a flat organizational structure is a key ingredient to their success . . . and complementing that structure with transparency. “Everyone knows what our goals are every month and how we’re tracking toward them,” Dabbas explained.
Other companies without official bosses have experienced problems. Valve, a computer game development company in Seattle, officially had no bosses, but as one former employee stated, “There is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company . . . which made it feel a lot like high school.” Another exemployee at Valve explained, “To succeed at Valve you need to belong to the group that has more decisional power and, even when you succeed temporarily, be certain that you have an expiration date.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
11-1. How would you describe Punchkick Interactive in terms of the elements of organizational design?

11-2. What are the strengths and potential areas of concern illustrated by the example of Punchkick?
11-3. What do you think makes a flat, “no boss” structure like Punchkick’s work effectively? In what situations (e.g., industries, organizational sizes, employee characteristics) would this structure not work as well?
11-4. What advice would you give to Punchkick to ensure that they don’t experience the problems that Valve has had?