Dev Randhawa discusses management.
If a recent article in Fast Company is to be believed, it appears that traditional management is facing some pretty stiff competition from new trends such as ‘distributed leadership’ and ‘holacracy’.
In the last few years, companies have increasingly looked to using these new, ‘flat’ organizational structures for their businesses. Companies like Zappos, Medium and Buffer (all online companies, I might add) have adopted such structures and have seen mixed results.
I’ve decided to look into these new flat styles and conclude on their use outside of the more ‘cutting-edge’ online sector.
Needs differ between sectors and industries.
Return of hierarchy
Unfortunately for Buffer, an online social media scheduling tool, the move to flat management didn’t properly work out and in 20154 the company made a return to hierarchy with the COO stating that:
“Hierarchy has once again become a central part of how we work again at Buffer.”
The Fast Company piece builds on this by making the point that if a hierarchy isn’t established, one might emerge anyways through less-experienced workers looking to their seasoned colleagues for guidance in times of need.
Thus, there is a necessity to share leadership between employees instead of simply delegating it to everyone and expecting them to be able to deal with such changes. The article highlights how combining workers with shared, but different experiences can lead to a more successful output overall.
Office politics
While this may sound positive, it’s also worth remembering that such strategies could open up for power struggles and conflicting egos – something the author mentions near the end of the article.
This can be offset, the author suggests, by sharing responsibilities between managers and delegating them to handle one function between each other instead of separate functions that can end up competing.
In summary, I can’t help but be a little sceptical of the wider uses of the methods suggested as well as the flat management styles also – they seem to be awfully start-up centric and popular among those who are ‘early adopters’ of trends. If these trends trickle into other industries, I’ll be more impressed.
About Dev Randhawa
Dev Randhawa is a CEO and an expert in natural resource exploration. He is also an active blogger.
