You Don’t Hate Hierarchy. You Hate Being Micro-Managed.
Companies love to talk about their lack of hierarchy. They talk about “flat” management structures and how much access their employees have to upper management or ownership. There are even companies who have built whole cultures around the idea that no one manages anyone else. Startups shy away from titles or chains of command, preferring that everyone contributes to the direction of the company without regard for job duties or tenure. The general trend, it seems, is to abolish management altogether, in favor of cooperation and free-form organizations.
And I’d like — politely, of course — to call BS on this. Structure is necessary. People need to know where they fit in an organization. Someone needs to captain the ship. An organization without any hierarchy at all, where everyone just reports to themselves, and no one has authority over anyone else, is chaos. And, because nature abhors a vacuum, in the absence of clearly defined structure, de facto structure ALWAYS develops. I mean, you’ve read Lord of the Flies, haven’t you? Without management structure, those with the loudest voices or the best political skills become “leaders,” and they aren’t necessarily the people you want running your company.
My theory on this obsession with “flat” management is that people confuse management with micro-management. The former is…
