A leitmotif in Henry Ford’s My Life and Work and Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg is their similar views on the perils of excessive organizational hierarchy — both of which resonated with my thinking.
I was recently reading Henry Ford’s autobiography, where in the chapter “Machines and Men,” Ford touches up how “genius for organization” ruins it. He says usual way of finding a genius manner to bring a large group of people to work with each other involves establishing authority. It begins with drawing up a great big chart showing, similar to a family tree, how authority ramifies. Every berry on the tree is a (wo)man with a title and duties strictly limited to the boundaries of his berry.
If a super super super boss sitting pretty top in the aforementioned berry tree has to say something to a superintendent languishing at the bottom left corner of the berry chart, he surmises — by the time it passes by the super super boss, super boss, boss, heir to the boss, not-yet-boss, kind of boss, and many such boss sorts and reaches the requisite superintendent (remember that gal or girl supposed to be on the other end of the super super super boss’ note) — the talk itself would be history.
The message’s return journey from this low hanging superintendent to the super super super boss is much more arduous. Every boss in between, real and imagined, strongly feels that it is their duty to add their share of criticisms, suggestions, and comments to the superintendent’s response.
In my experience with a similar inept management, the buck — which could be this message or any decisions to be made — passes to and fro among these bosses who, under the pretext of adding value, are only satisfying their inflated and fragile egos.
In the book “How Google Works,” the authors add another dimension – the traditional model of information flow Vs how it should be in the internet era. In the conventional world, they state, “information is hoarded as a means of control and power.”
Imagine you are in a twenty story building, each floor occupied by bosses and workers based on their place in the organization hierarchy. The mid-level boss on the tenth floor is standing on the balcony enjoying the view when a few documents fall on their heads. They look up and see their boss on the eleventh floor has shouted something and thrown the files at them. They take these files and eagerly devour them, all the while copying [what they assume relevant] sections from the file and copying them on a new file.
Now they get back outside and are delighted to see their ninth floor reportee enjoying a cup of coffee on their balcony. They repeat the shouting and throwing business, and the ninth floor boss repeats the parsing, shouting, and throwing ritual. The bits and pieces that reach the poor soul at the ground floor might have all but lost its essence. By now, the eleventh floor manager would have started another parsing and sharing match. Consequently, it takes longer and perhaps multiple back and forth conversations to understand what needs to be done, and at times, the actual work itself would have become obsolete. Imagine what would happen if this tapering trail of data sharing starts at level 20, where the super boss is. Will the information even reach the ground level worker? Now imagine if there were 100s or 1000s of floors in this organizational hierarchy!
The authors reason that in the pre-internet ages, the cost of experimenting and making mistakes was too high for any company to give free reins with information to its employees. It was prudent that one person absorb all the data and make an informed decision. Hence, the data flow was constricted — the super super super boss has to know everything and decide everything, the super super boss below knows a little less but gets to decide nothing (or something), and so on. As a result, when the superintendent at the bottom of the hierarchy, who cannot make any decisions on their own as they are data constipated, passes on a message to the super super super boss, it becomes necessary for other bosses in between to chip in to add context, to clarify or correct some of the points. But, in the current era, when experimentation and failure costs are minuscule compared to the past, restricting the information flow would be counterproductive. It can slow down innovation and make the company lose its competitive edge, ultimately casting it into oblivion.
Another problem I have seen — having too many managerial titles with no clearly defined and distinctive duties can lead to confusion among the people down in the hierarchy. Imagine there is a super boss hidden behind three separate bosses, but each boss is just a boss with a similar sounding and feeling role – if you had to get your super boss to approve your proposal for the task they have asked for, who would you approach? Jump over the heads of the three bosses and get directly to the super boss? After all, the super boss is the ultimate authority. Nah, you would be banished for insubordination, while your act might bruise and shatter the big, fragile egos of the three bosses. So, go to Boss No. 1, show them your proposal, listen to their value adds, update your bid, and approach your super boss under the auspices of Boss 1. Or go to Boss 1, show proposal, update proposal, and then march to Boss 2, show proposal, update proposal, and later go to Boss 3, show proposal, update proposal, and then… wait! should I now go back to Boss 1 and 2 or go to super boss or should I just go home because my head is spinning!
Often, we end up going with the third option, where we evaluate every detail with several bosses, some even assumed ones, before our proposal reaches the decision maker’s table. Imagine, after all these hustles and haggles with other bosses, you find out that what your super boss wanted was entirely different! Oh, the irony!
Imagine the loss of productive time — wasted on traversing meaningless hierarchies where there is no clear definition of who is who. And the horror of having to repeat the process because of the grand revelation that the boss’s ask was something else altogether. Sometimes, we are even stuck at an earlier step — in which order do I approach the three bosses, Boss 1, 2, and 3 or Boss 2, 3, and 1 or Boss 3, 1, 2… I will just go home!
Both books insist on having a nimble organization with fewer titles and, hence, less bureaucracy and even less red tape. I would also argue that with these titles, there should also be a clear definition of duties. Clearly setting out who’s who in the organizational hierarchy along with who’s what in the organization ladder is critical for the right paced growth of any team and, by extension, the organization.
A few lines came to my neo-poetic mind –
A leader, leader, do you call
Someone who has a position tall
Leadership is about action
And is not just a position
Inspire and not order
And turn into our strong supporter
Not a rapturous applause do they seek
Uplift everyone, both bold and meek
That’s the leader who I call
Not a person who has a position tall
– Deepa (Yours’ truly)
Serene Times 