"Flatten the hierarchy" is one of the most repeated lines in management, and one of the least understood. People hear it and picture a company with no managers, no structure and no one deciding anything. That is not what works, and it is not what most people want.
What people actually want
Ask a group what they want from their leaders and you rarely hear no managers. You hear:
- to be asked before a decision, not told after
- to see that their input counted
- to know who decides, and why
That is a flatter way of listening, not a flatter org chart. The structure stays. The difference is that more voices reach the people who decide.
What the research says
Our founder made this argument in a 2015 HuffPost article, What the King of France and a Fortune 500 CEO Have in Common. The article draws on a few points worth knowing:
- Since the early 2000s, research has found that groups such as road maintenance crews and airline cabin crews perform better when leadership is shared.
- A joint 2011 study by the University of Iowa and Texas A&M University found that self-managed teams outperformed hierarchical ones, provided there were adequate incentives.
- Going all the way is hard. When Zappos moved to holacracy, a system with no traditional managers, about 14 percent of its employees took a severance offer made beforehand.
- The "wisdom of the crowd" effect is stronger when group members are diverse and do not meet face to face.
- In one earlier Vision Lab project, 47 percent of the ideas contributed by employees scored above zero, compared with 33 percent of the ideas contributed by management. That was a single project, so treat it as a prompt to ask your own people, not as proof.
The lesson is the one in the article's own conclusion: a rigid hierarchy is harmful, but some defined leadership still helps people share information and get things done.
Why the usual routes fall short
Most organisations have routes for people to speak up, and most of them filter heavily.
- The manager chain. An idea goes up one level at a time, and each level decides whether to pass it on. By the top, much has dropped out.
- The loud voices. In a meeting, the most confident people set the direction.
- The suggestion box. Ideas go in, and nothing visible comes back.
None of these is wrong. They are just narrow.
A third route
A vote adds a route that does not replace the others. You ask one question to the whole group. People choose between ideas two at a time, and add their own. The ideas the group backs most rise to the top, and nobody's job title changes how much their vote counts.
Then the managers do what managers are for. They look at the ranked list, apply what they know about budget, timing and risk, and decide. The vote shows what people back. The decision stays with the people accountable for it.
Where it helps most
- Before a big change, when you want to know what your people think would work.
- When a team has outgrown its meetings, and the same voices dominate.
- Across sites or time zones, where a conversation cannot include everyone.
Keeping the structure
Three habits keep this from turning into chaos:
- Say who decides before you ask. People accept "we will take your ideas and I will decide" far better than a promise that the vote will decide.
- Show your reasoning when you decide, especially when you pick something other than the top idea.
- Report back, so people see what happened to what they said.
A fair view
Flat does not mean better in every case. Some decisions need one person, quickly. Some groups are small enough that a conversation is fine. The point is to have a way for many voices to reach decisions that affect many people, without dismantling the roles that make decisions happen.
If you lead a team, try one question to the whole group before your next change. You will learn what people think, and they will learn you were listening.