Navigating with Earnest
“I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Earnest.” — Jack Worthing
I have worked most of my career (so far) unintentionally accepting and conforming to hierarchies both defined and imagined. Many companies claim to have a “flat organizational structure” though this often means simply “we have not taken the time to formally document our structure.”
In a loosely-defined structure such as this, it is up to the individual employee to figure out through social means how to navigate the hierarchy that develops through distributions of job titles and company “politics.” At some level, there is some person or persons at the top to which all defer the ultimate decisions as to which direction to steer the ship, and messages will pass through the structures that they define explicitly or otherwise.
Shortly after joining Spatial Networks (SNI) I began to question my assumptions as to how exactly business hierarchies work. I will not dive into our actual organizational chart, but you can infer a decent amount of information from job titles on our team page, but we do have one and it is clearly defined.
“Okay, Scooter,” you might be saying to yourself, “this seems like business as usual.” Stay with me here, I promise there are interesting things down this path.
As I started to get down to work at SNI, I came to realize that a defined structure does not necessarily mean that there are specific paths through which one must navigate. If you’ve spent any amount of time hiking on well-traveled trails you have come across unofficial routes, often called “social trails,” that are not on the map. These are created by the feet of many hikers taking their own path; some become truly official while others are generally accepted, becoming “unofficially official.”
Note: While an apt analogy for what I am trying to communicate in this post, I DO NOT advocate nor condone the creation nor use of social trails while hiking as they may have unforeseen negative impacts on local ecosystems.
Getting back to my intended point: At SNI the organizational chart is more or less a map for how to find a given person and a guide for how one might make a connection if you already know someone that is more closely connected to that person. I started to question my assumptions when I quickly realized that social trails were not only allowed, but encouraged at SNI. While we have a defined hierarchy, all points and levels on this hierarchy are of equal importance because SNI realizes that great ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. We are in the business of connecting dots in order to find and develop information, and to operate our company in such a fashion that would make the connection of personal dots difficult would be antithetical to our mission and would likely have negative consequences for our business. We build spatial networks to connect information.
All of this is not to say that we operate in a completely flat, egalitarian environment. There are necessary decision makers and stakeholders who manage parts of our day to day work. Without such people to take ownership of decisions and processes, it would prove difficult to get things done. The real power of the SNI way is that if you need to discuss something with someone in a different department, no matter where they are “on the totem pole,” you are free — and encouraged — to do so. People are in their positions to act as guides for their section of the trail, not as barriers to your passage.
For a system such as this to work, it requires a commitment from all employees to making themselves accessible and engaging in open, honest communication. During periods of intense concentration and focused work it is acceptable to put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign, but in general everyone, at all levels, has to abide by an open-door policy and a willingness to engage in earnest conversations with anyone and everyone.
This system works well for a company of our size (just under 60 of the best and brightest at the time of this writing), even with about 1/3 of our workforce working remotely. However, our system may prove difficult to implement company-wide in a very large company. In larger companies, individual departments operate much like smaller companies and can benefit from “social trails” within their own trail systems. A good map and a system that allows for creative navigation within and between departments will pay dividends in large organizations as well, but the management of it may require a bit more work.
Want to work with a company that practices what they preach with great benefits and even greater people? We are hiring! Check out our open positions.
