Maybe shadow hierarchy are still more productive than official ones? Looks like something that wouldn't have that many meetings.

I worked briefly in a “holacracy” type of company. Absolutely hated it. There was a hierarchy, you just didn’t know about it unless you’d been there a while.

The company acted high and mighty like they have principles, the most successful project that was bringing most of the revenue in got a lot of leeway to bypass all ethical review processes so that it could keep feeding the rest of the company’s more ethical but not very profitable projects.

I hated working there and left after a couple months only. Incidentally, that was my last job ever and the straw that broke the camel’s back: I’ve worked freelance ever since.