What are the costs of hierarchy?
What are the weaknesses of hierarchy?
Well, many of you experience this on a daily basis, but
let me just highlight four of them.
First of all, we assume that the boss knows best.
And of course sometimes the boss does know best,
sometimes the boss does not know best.
And it's very often the case,
particularly in a fast moving business context the person on
the front line actually understands what has to be done better than the boss.
So one of the weaknesses is,
is, is a boss always assuming that they actually have the right to,
to overrule, when in fact the smart decision might lie on the frontline.
Secondly, information often does not throw, flow freely enough between layers.
Whilst we can be very efficient at disseminating a decision through our
hierarchy, the reality is that the quality of communication in
many organizations is a little bit less than it should be.
And as a result over many, many layers of an organization, a particular story and
a particular piece of information will,
will get attenuated, will actually get lost.
The third point kind of relates to the second point, which is that
many managers actually fail to, shall we say, add value to their subordinates.
Some managers think their job is just about providing information flow.
Well, of course, nothing could be further from the truth,
because in today's world as technology allows us to
share information much rapidly and, and, and without regard to hierarchy,
quite clearly the manager cannot expect to simply be a conduit for information.
So managers do not add enough value.
That's one of the reasons, in fact,
why we should be flattening organizations to get fewer layers of hierarchy.
Not zero hierarchy, but fewer layers of hierarchy.
And then the final point I would make in terms of the weaknesses of hierarchy is
that, of course, it makes employees at the lower level feel a little bit disengaged.
Now we made the same point.
If you think about it, back around the story about bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy and hierarchy are actually kind of related in that respect, because
both of those systems end up, shall we say, substituting individual freedom and
right to make decisions for rule and systems that are governed from above.
So those are the four clear weakness to hierarchy.
In the next segment we are going to
talk a little bit about the alternative to hierarchy, which is collective wisdom.