Better, stronger, faster, and flatter?

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a company-wide email in March 2023 in which he claimed, "It's well understood that every layer of a hierarchy adds latency and risk aversion in information flow and decision-making."  While that makes some intuitive sense, is there data to back-up Zuckerberg's statement?  Eric Anicich, Michael Lee, and Juan Pablo Sánchez Celi attempt to answer that question in their article published this past March in Harvard Business Review ("The Challenges of Becoming a Less Hierarchical Company").  Importantly, they highlight the results of a meta-analysis of 54 published studies involving over 13,000 teams that showed that hierarchical structures negatively impact team effectiveness, which only gets worse when there is the inevitable intra-group conflict.

An article ("Fitter, flatter, faster: How unstructuring your organization can unlock massive value") by Sarah Kleinman, Patrick Simon, and Kirsten Weerda for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company suggested that leaders can take five actions to position an organization for success in the future:

1. Radically flatten the structure to minimize layers and increase speed: 

Particularly in today's digital work environment, the old rules about the most effective ratio for spans and layers no longer apply.  Rigid hierarchies with multiple layers create inefficiency and delays.  Kleinman, Simon, and Weerda suggest that even the largest organizations shouldn't have more than six layers, and the organizations that are most agile typically only have three!

2. Build a flexible, dynamic network of teams to tackle rapidly evolving problems:

In today's VUCAT environment, agility and flexibility are essential to organizational success.  If you haven't read General Stanley McChrystal's fabulous book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, you should!  He discusses the network of teams structure that he developed for the U.S. military's special forces during the Iraq War.  

3. Provide a stable home base for employees to ensure long-term career development:

Here, Kleinman, Simon, and Weerda reference McKinsey's helical model, which is in essence, a hybrid of a matrixed organization built around a network of teams concept.  Here, the typical management structure is split into two arms, a capability line organized based upon skill-sets where managers are responsible for the professional growth and development of employees and a value creation line, where the managers work with employees on day-to-day operations.  

4. Empower the "edges" to ensure leaders have access to the best information and rapid innovation:

While not explicitly mentioned by Kleinman, Simon, and Weerda, the concept of psychological safety is an important one here.  Individuals who are closest to the action (whether the action involves a product, a customer, or something else) should be free to speak up and take action (see the next point below).

5. Delegate clear decision rights to lowest possible levels:

Here is yet another great recommendation to incorporate the High Reliability Organization principle of "Deference to Expertise" into an organization.  Kleinman, Simon, and Weerda state, "The flattened structure can accelerate decision making by minimizing unnecessary management layers; ensuring people are clear about their roles, responsibilities, and decision rights; and empowering the front lines to make decisions with guardrails (Where have I heard that before?).

Importantly, there are some additional points that need to be made regarding some of the challenges to a flatter hierarchy.  I'll save that discussion for a future post.