The events of 2020 catalysed considerable thinking around making organisations “future-ready”. In the context of certain inevitable trends around increased connectivity, unprecedented automation and perhaps most important, transitioning generations and societal shifts, the realm of opportunity has shifted. Different career aspirations have emerged that demand different things – one such perceived dinosaur is the shackle of organisation hierarchy.
Reminds me of an experience close to 50 years go at my boarding school. Our house master, quite the maverick, decided that rather than choosing the usual Alpha male to be the house captain, he rather dismantle the stereo type. He appointed three people as “A-D-C”, to lead three verticals, Academic, Discipline and Campus. The perceived Alpha male boy headed the “D” but was forced to share the “power” of captaincy with the two others – who though extremely competent would never have made it to the captaincy position based on traditional criteria. Below these boys, all of us got some responsibility or the other. Take my case. I was given the task as “Letter-writing in-charge” under the “D” vertical. My job was to ensure that the boys wrote letters home every week as was encouraged. Even in a role as trivial as I had, I felt empowered to be able to contribute to something. Otherwise, I would have been just another pawn in the hierarchy!
The moral of the story that I imbibed was the sense of empowerment and inclusion – now, 50 years later in hindsight I see the merit in the fantastic experiment but then it did not work. The idea was before its time. The shackles of established norms held back the boys from creating the precedent of change. The following year, we were back to the single house captain hierarchy. I now feel the pain of our futuristic teacher!
However, to completely rubbish the hierarchy concept is perhaps not warranted. In certain circumstances and organisations perhaps only a structured hierarchy works. In the military for example, consensus building, and decentralised decision making could be a recipe for disaster in the battlefield. In my view the focus should be on continuously moving towards a flat system. To be fitter and faster, we must be flatter. However, there is no one size fits all and the flattening of the pyramid differs from organisation to another. Being adaptive and flexible is key.
Take Menlo Innovations for example. Employees hire, fire, and appraise each other together. Menlo CEO and co-founder, Richard Sheridan says that to lead such an organisation, is to share a delight of a team “united by vision, untouched by fear”. Richard Sheridan does admit that this culture evolved, and it does not suit everyone. Therefore, the caution that I place is that a standard prescription to flatten the hierarchy may just be a “flavour of the season” statement and may not work for everybody, so nothing wrong with having a hierarchy. However, it must be to optimise the critical growth factors for the organisation as a whole – for better customer service, encouragement to innovation – whatever may be the priority. It is equally true that the experience of the hierarchy as seen by people within and clients/customers outside determines what the culture of the organisation truly is. Several leaders I know, bury their heads in the sand not wanting to look at the culture that they want to establish. Several others use it to divide and rule – indeed fight power battles. All this ultimately is at the cost of the organisation, its people, and its clients.
The fact is that some form of hierarchy is inevitable. If it is not positional hierarchy, as in the military, it is experiential hierarchy as in Menlo Innovations. In the latter, though there is no hierarchy to speak of there is a Richard Sheridan who is the CEO of the company. I am quite sure that in the minds of Menlo Innovation employees, they would consider Richard as more experienced and accomplished that them – that is the kind of experiential hierarchy that humankind just cannot do without. This starts from our childhood. Parents are higher on a scale when children are young. Thereafter, the family evolves into either breaking the hierarchy shackles or continuing with it. Even under law, some communities recognise the concept of “Karta”, the head of the family, and a hierarchy that follows. Many families today choose not to imbibe that culture!
So, what does one do to experiment with unshackling a hierarchy when that becomes a cart driving the horse! One way is to the leave the pyramid and form a circular structure. It is simple. A look at a circle demonstrates two extremely insightful outcomes. The first is the fact that a circle or a sphere has no vertical levels. It therefore encourages people to bind with each other in any direction that the sphere may move. A pyramid is necessarily a diagonal down to an upward movement and as you move up it just must get narrower.
The second, and to my mind the more important aspect, is the “inside-out” approach. A circular organisation allows the thought process to flow from the inside until it permeates into everyone. If the vibe is not accepted, it returns to the sender, seeping through the circular sponge. A circular structure can therefore facilitate a culture that is inclusive, open sourced and permeable. It is equally true that to have a culture of this kind, the onus is not just upon the leaders alone. It is incumbent upon each employee to feel accountable. Once empowered, everyone must introspect and ask themselves the question – “what more can I do?”
Transitioning from a pyramid to a circular structure is probably easy. The lines can be maintained until the leaders are able to grow a culture that helps lines to slowly disappear. Even as I write, I am conscious that this is more difficult than what it seems, but it is a start. The visual influences the thinking. The thinking can slowly but surely influence behaviours. At the end of the day behaviours manifests itself into the culture!
At the end of the day, hierarchy is a reality of the mind. I believe that everyone can “feel” hierarchy. Change happens when you stop to “think” hierarchy!
