Managing Without Managers: Building a Flexible Organization

Not a blueprint but a source of insight, this book reveals how the people behind Galois Inc. built a thriving company without managers, using principles over policies and trust-based collaboration, proving you can create successful organizations that reflect your deepest values.

This practical guide shares insights from 25 years of organizational experimentation, showing how to establish effective conversational practices, build collaborative workflows, implement distributed decision-making, and maintain alignment without traditional hierarchy. Through real examples of both successes and failures, you'll discover how to create workplaces where people genuinely want to contribute and how to transform principles into sustainable organizational systems. The book is unique in its effort to guide readers to create their organization on their terms, rather than encourage them to make an organization like Galois. This book is especially valuable for technical entrepreneurs, engineering leaders, and teams of scientists who recognize that building great technology isn't enough: the human systems matter just as much.

It's for founders and leaders who want to create organizations that reflect their values rather than simply copying "best practices," and for anyone interested in alternative approaches to organizational design that prioritize both effectiveness and human flourishing.

Jef Bell is the expert on all things Collaborative Web. He brings several decades of engineering leadership and project management experience, and is instrumental in the smooth running of the business.

Zoë Harrold has a decade of experience directing operations in a startup and a non-profit organization. She is adept at drawing out organizational knowledge and making it intelligible. Her guiding hand brings the lessons from Galois’ experience to life in this book.

John Launchbury is the founder of Galois. Prior to this, he taught as a Professor of Computer Science and is a household name within his field. John is a technology strategist who spent several years as a senior executive within DARPA, and now serves Galois as Chief Scientist.

Rob Wiltbank is the CEO of Galois and comes from a business background with expertise in venture investing and entrepreneurship, and has published several books on the topic. Rob is a former Professor of Strategic Management and sits on the board of several companies.