Fight the Hierarchy
Collective ownership drives collective prosperity
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“Traditional hierarchy, you are killing progress.” Christopher Flores
A few years ago, I heard an episode of WorkLife with Adam Grant that has stuck with me ever since. In the episode (here),
visited Trevor Noah on the set of The Daily Show and noticed something surprising: when Noah entered the writers' room, nothing changed.Nothing.
Nobody sat up straighter. Nobody filtered their ideas. Nobody suddenly became more careful or deferential. The creative energy in the room remained exactly the same.
At first, this might not seem remarkable.
But think about it.👇
Noah was both the boss and the on-air star, the person everyone in the room was technically working for. In most workplaces, the presence of a leader shifts the dynamic. People start performing instead of contributing. They begin to self-edit, offering safe ideas instead of bold ones.
But in this room, ideas flowed seamlessly. It wasn’t about authority. It was about creativity moving at full speed.
This was the first time I heard the term burstiness, a concept in social science that describes the fast, dynamic, and non-hierarchical exchange of ideas. It happens in jazz improvisation, high-energy brainstorming sessions, and great comedy rooms. It is the "yes, and" mindset, where ideas don’t just exist in isolation but build on each other, creating something unexpected and better than what any one person could produce alone.
And here’s the key: burstiness is about the collective.
It’s collective creativity, collective ownership. It’s collective prosperity. It’s about the power of creating spaces that flatten the hierarchy.
They don’t just say they have distributed leadership. They do.