I am always curious how self organizing teams scale when tackling huge problems that no single person or small team can fit in their head. How do you coordinate your efforts when no one has the whole picture?
I simplify it as "Kanban, but for problems". Instead of a person creating a list of tasks for a team to do, they identify and define problems important to the organization. Teams then self-create around those problems to solve them.
Before, one person would receive and coordinate work among the team - the tech lead. After, we had a rotating roster of people who were interested in solving problems that would act as a tech lead. This was in coordination with our Product org.
My instinct is that wouldn't scale. Self-organizing gets more complicated, and usually more political, inefficient, and disorganized, the greater the distance self-organization spans.
But I don't know any organizations that actually work that way, so have no data.
Individual initiatives and projects still have leaders. However, that's leader isn't necessarily a pre-defined role.