I’m really surprised by Twitter’s new org structure.
Some of you may have read that Twitter Co-Founder, Jack Dorsey, stepped down from the CEO role less than 2 weeks ago. He appointed Twitter veteran, Parag Agrawal, as his replacement.
Agrawal moved quickly. Within 8 days, he had reorganised the company into 3 divisions: Consumer, Revenue, and Core Tech; with a General Manager responsible for each one.
This is counter to the functional structure used by most technology companies, where there are functional organisations (e.g., product, engineering, design, research, etc.) and then the product teams are “matrixed” into the them.
People in functional structures report to someone outside their day-to-day product team. This means there is no manager responsible for “making the decisions”, resulting in team members having to use logic and data to convince each other when making decisions.
I personally love this approach to building products. I think it brings a richness of thought and debate to a team, and removes the risk that a manager stifles diversity of thought and opinion.
Which is also why I’m really surprised with Twitter’s restructuring. Agrawal’s bet is that by giving General Managers massive clarity of scope and responsibility, it will help the company move faster. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, or that it won’t work, but definitely keen to follow how things unfold.