Rethinking Hierarchy in the Workplace (2017)

"Flat" does not mean "structureless". It means that there is no power hierarchy. Leadership does not equate to wielding power. There is such a thing as a leader who helps organize equals with out wielding power. And there's research that suggests that the sort of leaders who approach their work as organizing equals achieve better outcomes than those who approach it as commanding subordinates - with or with out hierarchies.

Many people - and you can see it in the comments here - associate flat structures with politics and with invisible power structures. And that does happen to flat structures. That also happens to hierarchies.

Here's the thing - we are not taught how to function in egalitarian organizing contexts. The vast majority of the human organizations in our lives are layed out as some sort of authoritarian power hierarchy, so we get very little practice in flat structures. Most families are an authoritarian hierarchy - parents at the top, kids at the bottom, often with layers of hierarchy based on age. Schools are authoritarian hierarchies - administrators at the top, then teachers, and then the students. The vast majority of businesses are authoritarian hierarchies.

So we never get to practice the skills or become familiar with the mindset necessary to operate in an egalitarian organization. Many of us have to unlearn a lot of bad habits picked up from authoritarian structures before we can really function well in an egalitarian structure.

Which explains so many of the comments here. It's hard to imagine something you've never really experienced. And it's not surprising that folks would have experienced attempts that have gone wrong in one way or another (just as plenty of hierarchical organizations go wrong in one way or another).

All of that said, there is a growing body of sociological evidence though that suggests well done egalitarian organizing structures (IE those done with an awareness of the potential pitfalls) are just as effective, or possibly more effective, then authoritarian hierarchies. And there is proof in the many worker cooperatives that have been successful. We would do well to not simply write that off.

A hierarchy based on clear definition of roles where people playing these roles are matched in skills and level of commitment makes sense.

Hierarchies become toxic when people who have more high-commitment roles start using power to dominate and entrench their power. Usually this results in a cascading effect where people with skills can't fully manifest them because they are needing to defend their position rather than contributing from a place of empowerment.

A hierarchy can be power-with vs. power-over if it has ways to limit dominance and to encourage evidence-based decision-making and more autonomy within the system. In other words, structure to avoid making individual personalities or identities the driver of influence and power but instead develop role-based structures with clear. responsibilities and boundaries.

Maybe it's more of a holarchy model at that point, where the goal is for each part of the organization to be important, and to fully contribute no matter what their role is, which doesn't mean everyone has the same level of commitment or decision-influence.

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

I wonder how many successful businesses this guy founded, created a culture of success, and handed it off to other people to see the company continue to grow.

I am guessing the number is pretty darn close to "0".

Because that is the only sort of "wisdom" I care about in this context; Success in making businesses.

Every business is different. Size matters. Bureaucracies don't scale.

Thinking that some self-reported information from a Dutch insurance firm is going to provide guidance to a auto manufacturer, Waffle House, or flooring manufacturer is like believing that all you need to do to make a sqlite database scale is by increasing the cpu count for your server linearly with database sizes.

Works fast with 1 core and 100MB database? Then it'll work exactly the same with a 32 core server and 3200MB database.

This sounds ideal, but I wonder what their secret is to pulling it off in practice.

In my experience, when companies try to create a meeting to encourage "open discussion" where everyone has an equal voice, the hierarchies are still plainly obvious even if we pretend they are not. Egos, company politics, etc. are definitely not left at the door.

The solution isn't easy but it starts with managers understanding how to work WITH their employees rather than how to direct them.

I have noticed a lot of managers treating their team as manager's personal resource to offload work to. The manager is the one attending all important meetings, discussing solutions with others. The manager thinks he is smart because he is the only person that understands the big picture when in fact he is responsible for this situation by restricting the flow of information to their team and by degrading their motivation so they aren't even trying.

People getting lazy does not mean they don't have potential -- they just might not be motivated to do better. Actually, in my experience, most people want to do good work and are capable to do so as long as they have been hired into right position. But they might not be getting rewarded for what they think is good work (even with something as simple as a kind word). Or they might not know what good work is (because nobody put effort into explaining it). Or they might not be getting work that sufficiently challenges them. Or they might feel they are not being trusted by their team, boss or the rest of organisation (which happens very easily when everything needs to be approved by their boss).

Much better model I have is that of gardener -- be vigilant about what your employees are doing, make sure they have everything they need to be productive, make sure you understand how they are staying motivated, take a close look and try to understand when something isn't working well but otherwise do not position yourself in the flow of work and let people grow and do their thing.

You can't build the above without trust. Trust is the first thing you need to work on.

You also probably need to hire people for their values rather than their knowledge. It is hard or impossible to build trust when people have different value systems.

There is a point to hierarchy. There is great value to knowing who is more knowledgable and experienced, and who isn't expected to be. And it is nice to have a promotional process to aspire to and push you to become better at your job.

This suits organizations, who can save costly management levels and puts a lot of stress on the remaining managers. Those have gained a lot more people with all their needs and wants (and lost secretarial help along the way too). A manager visiting the office in the other town can easily spend a day with pastoral care.

Organizations also appreciate that Business Analysts, Scrum Masters and the like wrestle through the complexity without putting too many tough (technical) decisions on the bosses' desks. Let them figure it out and let's just check the KPIs and budgets.

The new generation coming into the workplace hasn't even experienced that much hierarchy yet. In my youth we still kind of lived as second class citizens under a general adult rule and have known a lot of formal leadership outside of our parents. Is the intern willing to do the kind-of-boring but necessary work along with me, because I carefully suggest it? Often, not really.

So, get ready for less and less hierarchy. Learn to deal with invisible power structures. Hire people who already have the skills and will work self-driven. And consider that the team you're in may not actually share that "common fate".

No supervisor should have more than 8 people who need active supervision - you can have much larger teams than that, but it works out to a bunch of independently operating contributors and then "point people" who have responsibility for defined tasks. The number of point people is what is constrained by rule of 8.

Neoliberals think that anything can be reduced to management, finance, that's not the case. As States can't be treated like companies so companies can't be treated like society/democracy.

The society have a purpose: exists, living enjoying life keeping improving a generation after another. A company have a purpose: making money offering something in return. People in a society are part of it, workers in a company are just individuals here to earning their needed income. They are not "part of the family" as some hope to munge more work from them...

Of course, when the boss does it, well then it's ok.

And yes, profit-oriented organizations do want to maximize their capacity. That means growing their market share.

I have recently wondered if the word "system" necessarily presupposes that there will be hierarchy at least in some tiny amount somewhere. After all what would an actual Communist or entirely flat type "system" look like once formalized? All living systems, most technology and even meaning have asymmetric characteristics. Can anyone name an existing thing or system that the Communist utopia would be analogous too?

I would speculate that extreme inequality and hierarchy have to do with difference between additive and multiplicative dynamics in feedback. That is, if we all lived in isolated primitive groups the difference in value creation between each tribe would be like flipping coins where each flip is entirely independent of the next. In such an environment we wouldn't have as much differentiation (specialization) and grouping (organizations). The increased reach of our social and logistical networks of interactions and trade have had a multiplicative effect on an individual's ability to generate value. In recent times these networks are becoming huge and very stratified. It is like globalization (speaking very generally) is leading towards the globe becoming a literal fractal and thus power law distributions are now showing up where they were not before.

If the human superorganism is following a trend similar to Per Bak's sand pile model ("Self-organized criticality") then perhaps the end of history will be the opposite of flat.

>An organization that doesn’t face external threat...should function perfectly well with a bureaucratic and hierarchical structure. In a highly competitive market, though, egalitarian tendencies may support employee cooperation and, consequently, performance.

Interesting, let's take a look at a meaningful example...

>Navy SEALS exemplify this idea. Strict hierarchy dominates out in the field: When a leader says go left, they go left. But when the team returns for debrief, “they literally leave their stripes at the door,” says Greer. The hierarchy disappears; nobody is a leader, nobody a follower.

Heh, ok then. So when everyone has skin in a real game of existential threats, hierarchy prevails and leaders lead with direct commands and followers follow. When they come home and the threat is gone, more relaxed egalitarian structures take over.

It's weird to use the military as some prototypical example of flatness over hierarchy, when it is the epitome throughout history of hierarchical structure, rank, clear leadership etc.

This whole discussion sounds to me like advice for leaders in a hierarchy, with responsibility and authority, how to best use that authority to run their organization successfully which will inevitably include delegation, taking advice from lower levels, having open debate and critique etc. Not to flatten everything into egalitarian chaos and mass "Bystander effect" where no one is accountable and decisions don't get made when needed.