Design for Humanity, Not the Organogram
Small teams plus human briefs beat large teams plus metrics — reciprocity does not scale.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 89%
Sutherland argues that the pursuit of leanness and quantification has produced what he calls Soviet-style capitalism: metric-driven, autonomy-free work that is gamed, resented, or both. The alternative is to build the organisation around human instincts — teams of roughly ten, where obligation and reciprocity actually fire, briefed with human standards rather than numeric targets.
Origin
Sutherland draws on multi-level selection in evolution and Robin Dunbar's number (150), plus three company cases: Octopus Energy's autonomous cells, Shopify's ten-person support teams (modelled on sports team sizes by Toby Shannon, whom Sutherland describes as its COO), AO's grandmother brief, and Zappos' refusal to measure call length.
Core principles
- 01Human instincts of reciprocation and obligation do not scale — they fire in a team of ten and vanish in a group of a hundred.
- 02Team size appears to have a natural human scale: sports teams cluster in the low double digits; social groups cluster around Dunbar's 150.
- 03Metrics either get gamed to the individual's advantage, or get obeyed by people who find them stupid — both destroy judgement.
- 04The loss of autonomy that comes from chasing a few metrics is deeply demotivating.
- 05A human brief ('treat the customer like your grandmother') travels further and is harder to game than a numeric target.
- 06People go to work partly to exercise their humanity — including ethics and fairness — and relentless cost-cutting has stripped that out.
How to run it
- 1
Resize teams to roughly ten
Restructure large managed groups into autonomous units of about ten to twenty people, accepting that this is a less lean structure on paper than one manager to a hundred.
Pro tip Shopify's Toby Shannon reasoned from sports: rugby fifteen, soccer eleven, cricket eleven — teams cluster in double digits for a reason.
Watch out You will have to fight for this internally, because the org chart maths looks worse.
- 2
Make the objective very clear, then hand over autonomy
State what the company is trying to achieve unambiguously, then let each small team choose how to achieve it — the Octopus Energy 'multicellular' model of many small autonomous teams under one very clear brief.
- 3
Replace numeric targets with human briefs
Swap efficiency metrics for standards everyone can interpret: treat the customer like you would treat your grandmother; pass the shave test; would your mother be proud of what you did today.
Pro tip Everyone has a different grandmother, and everybody still knows exactly what the brief means. That is the point — it transfers judgement, not compliance.
Watch out The brief must replace the metric, not sit on top of it. Otherwise staff optimise the number and recite the brief.
- 4
Kill the metrics that corrupt the job
Identify measures whose pursuit actively destroys the outcome they proxy for — call-handling time being the canonical case — and remove them outright.
Pro tip Zappos' rule: the call is as long as it needs to be to solve the problem. One call reportedly ran about seven hours.
Watch out Imagine working in a call centre incentivised to get the customer off the phone as fast as possible: the loss of autonomy and judgement is deeply demotivating.
- 5
Let peer obligation do the management
In a ten-person team, pulling an unjustified sick day makes eight or nine teammates work harder, and people feel it. Let that natural reciprocity replace a layer of supervision.
Pro tip Sutherland reports Shopify's small support teams were extraordinarily happy and kept each other motivated.
In the wild
Where a normal call centre has one person managing a hundred, Shopify (per Sutherland, on Toby Shannon's design) grouped customer service into teams of ten, modelled on sports team sizes. The structure was less lean and had to be fought for.
→ The people were extraordinarily happy and extraordinarily motivated, and kept each other motivated, because the team was small enough for debts of obligation between teammates to be real.
A senior Zappos executive refused to make speed a measure in the call centre, holding as a point of principle that the call lasts as long as it takes to solve the problem. One outlier call ran roughly seven hours, involving bathroom breaks on both sides.
→ The absence of a speed metric preserved the agent's judgement and autonomy, which Sutherland treats as the actual source of good service.
The British online appliance retailer AO briefs staff not on delivery counts or speed but on human standards: treat the customer like you treat your grandmother; the shave test; would your mum be proud of what you have done today.
→ A brief nobody can game, that every employee can interpret without a manual, and that leaves judgement in the hands of the person doing the job.
Common mistakes
Optimising the org chart instead of the humans
One manager to a hundred people looks lean and kills reciprocity. Designing for the organogram rather than for humanity buys a spreadsheet saving and pays for it in motivation.
Believing metrics measure what they proxy
Metrics either get gamed to the individual's advantage, or get obeyed by people who think them stupid, and in both cases they distort behaviour away from the actual goal.
Running on quarterly targets
Sutherland's jibe: at least the Soviet Union had a five-year plan. Quarterly obsession plus persistent cost-cutting removes all discretion and dehumanises the workplace.
Is it for you?
Best for
Operations and support leaders running large metric-managed teams (call centres, service orgs) where motivation and quality are both eroding.
Not ideal for
Genuinely mechanical, high-volume throughput work with no judgement content, where speed metrics do measure the actual goal.
From the transcript
“Shopify where their customer service teams are in groups of 10 and Toby Shannon who was the chief operating officer of uh Shopify modeled this…”
“there's the dunar number famously of 150 people which is the size of sort of military units and Oxbridge colleges”
“that's a way of Designing for Humanity rather than designing for the organogram”
“the metrics often actually get gained or they lead to a complete Distortion of behavior”
“think that he he refused to make speed a measure in the call center he said the call is as long as it needs to…”
From the episode
What most people miss about marketing
Rory Sutherland (Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, author)