We've long seen hierarchy criticized for being slow, rigid, mechanical and alienating. These days, the arrow is pointing towards liberation, de-bureaucratization, flexibility and inclusion. As a result, many are looking towards new and flatter forms of organization for answers on how to promote agile collaboration, distribute leadership more widely and empower more people.
Organization has been synonymous with hierarchy for so long that it seems almost a law of nature, but it is (of course) possible to organize differently. The potential is huge, and it's hard not to get excited about the bliss that flatter organizations can potentially bring to well-being, development and performance. The pitfalls, on the other hand, are more subtle and difficult to spot. However, no organization is perfect, so challenges will inevitably arise. If you're curious to know more, you can read our other articles: New organizational forms with overlooked potential in the fight against unhappiness or Pitfalls to avoid when hierarchy flattens out.
However, this does not mean that we should stay away from the new forms of organization. Even if the reassuring bonds of hierarchy can be difficult to break. In this article, we look at what you should consider to start with if you want to flatten the hierarchy. The focus is on qualifying your choice of organizational form and implementation approach. We do this by looking at the balance between structure, culture, behavior and mindset.
"Such a thing-trap"
The first consideration is obvious, yet often overlooked. Start by carefully considering: "Why should we organize differently at all?". It's often said that it takes a lot of courage to embark on new ways of organizing. This is because you will encounter many bumps in the road (Hutchins & Storm, 2023). In addition, we would argue that it also requires a great deal of honesty. Do you want to be more agile, fast and efficient? Then agile organizing could be the way forward (Denning, 2022). Do you want to create a more humanistic organization where involvement, responsibility and autonomy are a lever for well-being and better collaboration? Then you might want to take a look at Humanocracy (Hamel & Zanini, 2020). If the organization's purpose and sustainability are important, then the Organization of the Future (Laloux, 2014) or Regenerative Leadership (Hutchins & Storm, 2023) might be good suggestions for inspiration.
There can be many reasons to organize differently. You often want it all, but the reality is that this is rarely possible. There is not yet an organizational form that can accommodate all the potentials simultaneously. Often people just jump into something new because others are doing the same thing - and it may not fit the organization. You don't want to be the ones who seem reactionary or stagnant. We saw this when many large private organizations rolled out agile organizational forms in predominantly hierarchical and project-driven organizations a few years ago (Brosseau et al., 2019). What a bang it caused in many places. And in many places, the dust has yet to settle. The aim was to become faster, more efficient and more agile. But flattening the hierarchy, unleashing self-organized teams and distributing leadership to more people was immediately worse and more difficult. You wanted all the potential, but all the hassle and uncertainty came with it. It's part of the deal and impossible to escape.
It's hard not to be dazzled by the potential that always appears crystal clear on a PowerPoint slide or in a well-written management book. The real path is often (in fact, always) more convoluted and winding. It can be a good guiding star along the way that you have carefully and honestly considered why you have embarked on this heroic journey. And how a flatter organizational structure can potentially promote the organization's purpose, strategy and goals better than the hierarchical organizational structure. It requires both opting in and opting out. We have seen hierarchy work both well and poorly, although much current management literature makes it sound like hierarchy is unambiguously bad (Hamel & Zanini, 2020). All organizational forms have their strengths and limitations. This also applies to flatter forms of organization. Get off to a good start by considering why a flatter organization is the answer to your organization's needs and challenges. It takes courage and honesty, but it's the first step to avoid falling into the "So ein ding trap".
Context and culture always cloud a good organizational theory
The Spotify model and the Buurtzorg model. Two forms of organization that have been gaining ground over the past 10 years. Nuuday and Danske Bank were inspired by the famous Spotify model, where all or parts of the organization were suddenly flattened to promote agility and efficiency. The Buurtzorg model has been implemented or tested by various Danish municipalities, where home care in particular has been organized significantly differently. The focus is on holistic care and self-governing teams that make decisions about care together with the citizens. Both organizational forms work both on paper and in practice. They made both organizations famous and successful. No doubt about it.
However, the film often breaks when organizational models are taken out of their original context and applied uncritically in a different context or culture. Buurtzorg is a private company that is difficult to compare to the Danish municipal home care, where bureaucracy, new public management and political winds affect the framework, conditions and opportunities to act both holistically and autonomously. Spotify started as a fast-growing digital start-up, which is very different from the established and clear hierarchies seen in the telecom industry or the financial sector. The point here is that you need to be aware of the context in which the organization emerged, because it shapes the possibilities of applying it successfully in other contexts and organizational cultures.
As one professor bluntly argued at a research conference on new forms of organization:
"Mission Command (organizational structure that promotes empowerment of local decision-making in military law) is the only flatter organizational form that has proven its worth and effectiveness over the last 150 years. The other new organizational forms are still anecdotal and untested across contexts and cultures"
We are not arguing that you cannot test or implement flatter forms of organization because there is (still) insufficient research knowledge about it. You just need to be very aware that in many places you are treading on new and untouched ground. Research, knowledge and practical experience in this area is not huge. It calls for a good dose of pragmatism. And a firm focus on context and culture as important reference points when you get started.
"One size does not fit all". It's a hackneyed phrase, but it's still relevant. Many of the flatter organizational forms are difficult to translate, translate and scale to organizations that have a significantly different context or culture. It's hard to transform an old and established hierarchical organization into a fluid organism where self-governing teams freely work towards an evolutionary purpose. This transformation seems easier and more appetizing for an already flat, smaller and relatively new care business (Laloux, 2014). Uncritically trying out a generic organizational model that seeks to flatten hierarchy can create a host of friction, tensions and frustrations. If you're curious to know more, read the article: Pitfalls to avoid when flattening the hierarchy.
From research and practice, we see a tendency to focus a lot on structure when organizing differently. It's important, but often you'll find yourself constantly tweaking, tapping and adjusting the structure. Not just when you start, but all the time. It takes a learning organization to be able to do that. And then there's culture, behavior and mindset. Culture can hit like a sledgehammer. Zero defect culture. Caregiver culture. Safety culture. The concepts are many. Combine that with regulation, political awareness, compliance, GDPR and IT security. Suddenly you have a dangerous cocktail that makes it difficult to try new things. And this is where courage comes in again. We must dare to create space for the new, promote a growth mindset, create psychological safetydare to make mistakes and continue to learn and develop ourselves and the organization we are a part of. Often, the energy is used up when the new organizational form is drawn. However, it's only then that the work really begins. It takes time to change a culture, behavior or mindset. Just as it does to distribute leadership to more people and have a learning approach. But when you succeed, it's worth the effort.
In short. Don't copy other people's good ideas one-to-one. Borrow with arms and legs. There's a lot of good stuff out there, but don't underestimate your own context and culture when flattening the hierarchy. Take this into account when designing the structure and exploring the culture, behaviors and mindset needed to succeed with new organizational forms. Keep in mind that in many places, new organizational forms will turn understandings of leadership, organization and behavior upside down. It might be a good idea to conduct a cultural analysis before embarking on a new organizational form. That way, you can uncover strengths, challenges and concerns as you roll out a new organization. If you're curious to know more about identifying organizational culture, read this article: How to uncover the culture of your organization. And speaking of implementation. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of getting started with everything new.
Implementation as a big bang or a ripple?
Implementation is a learning process that affects and is affected by an infinite number of internal and external factors. Again, we are dealing with context, structure, behavior, leadership and mindset. Therefore, implementation cannot be reduced to a communication task where managers dictate the changes while employees try to keep up as best they can. Especially not when we're talking about new forms of organization where the whole idea is to flatten the hierarchy and distribute leadership and responsibility to many more people. A top-down 'just-do-it implementation' quickly falls short here. Meaningful implementation of less hierarchical organization inherently requires the involvement of employees to be close to the implementation and do it together. To learn more about implementation, read this article: Implementation is never straightforward.
Of course, someone has to be responsible for getting off to a good start. And more importantly, to support the long haul. This often requires strong backing from the management system. Implementing new ways of organizing is complex and should be seen as a continuous learning process that constantly creates new meaning and opportunities for action. It's about facilitating and mobilizing change, not dictating it (Bruskin, 2023). Implementation requires us to continuously reflect on what works and what needs to be adjusted to succeed with ambitions and intentions. So far, so good. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of three different implementation styles you can use when rolling out a flatter organization.
The three implementation approaches
The Spark approach
Spark can sound negative here. It just burns out. Think of it more like a spark that can ignite a huge fire. And spreads to other parts of the organization. This is an implementation where you choose a department or team to try out a new and flatter way of organizing. It can be the whole package, but it can also be introducing or testing self-organized teams. It can also be working purposefully and exclusively on tasks that benefit people, society or the world. You have to start somewhere. So it's a small, pragmatic and targeted implementation where you create space to practice and learn.
The advantage of this approach is that it comes with less risk. It doesn't have a high cost to try it out. You can quickly extinguish sparks that do not create value. In addition, it will often originate from bottom-up initiatives that contain significant motivation and commitment. There's also a good chance that others in the organization will be inspired, which can ignite the fire that flattens the hierarchy. The disadvantages can be that it is difficult to isolate a department from the surrounding hierarchical organization. The 'spark' burns out because it lacks backing and support from the established management system. Cross-contamination will quickly occur if you're not careful. Hierarchy and especially bureaucracy will quickly eat away at good intentions. In addition, the spark approach is often more pragmatic. You can end up with an eclecticpick-and-choose approachthat overlooks the systemic and holistic backdrop that is the foundation of many newer forms of organization. And that, in turn, can make it difficult to create space to get off to a good start with the flatter organizational form.
The 'rings in the water' approach
You drop a stone in the water. And then you see how the rings spread harmoniously in the water. That's not how it looks in an organization, as a new way of organizing can cause considerable ripples, bumps and sometimes waves. In this approach, management selects an area in an organization where they actively and intentionally choose to implement a flatter organizational form. In this implementation approach, you go more purely into the organizational form itself. This often means reorganizing the entire area, defining new management roles and workflows. Then you create the space, room and resources to support the new organization. You spend time (in an ideal world) learning, adapting and getting smarter as you go. In this way, you optimize and adapt the organizational form to the culture of the area. This happens at the same time as you learn how it can possibly spread to other relevant parts of the organization. The main difference between the 'spark approach' and the 'ripple approach' is that the latter is actively strategically intended and initiated by (top) management, while the former grows more organically in the organization.
The benefits of the 'ripple effect' approach is that by actively and consciously initiating it, you hopefully cause a big enough ripple for the organizational form to develop and find its place. If you do it well, it spreads in a good way because there is awareness, resources and need for the change. On the downside, a major reorganization can conflict with other areas of the organization that are either pressured or frustrated because the two organizational forms can seem incompatible in terms of leadership, workflow and culture. This requires close attention to interfaces, collaboration spaces and the polarizations between different organizational forms. In addition, a new organizational form can quickly be positioned as good, while the previous organizational forms are positioned as more old-fashioned. And this can create "them-and-us" issues as well as separation and distance instead of synergy and collaboration. All organizational forms have both strengths and challenges. The biggest and most complex implementation task here is to connect the organizational forms meaningfully so that there is room for both. And then see where the flatter hierarchy goes from there.
Big bang implementation
A big bang. A new organizational structure is rolled out across all or most of the organization. That's a lot of changes at the same time. Over a long period of time. It's not often that we see such 'big bang' implementations, but they do happen. Oticon and their world-renowned spaghetti organization is probably the clearest Danish example. Nuuday also did it with their enterprise agile organization. Most of the organization is redrawn, areas are split up and leadership roles are transformed. Often this is combined with significant changes in workflows, strategy and purpose.
The benefits of this approach are that you really get a fresh start. You shake up the old by creating completely new structures that can hopefully change culture, mindset and behavior, potentially creating better conditions for the organization. Many of the theories on flatter organizational forms postulate that a radical and total change of the organization is the only way forward if you want to succeed. The old must be pulled up by the roots (Laloux, 2014; Robertson, 2018). The downside is that it's expensive, cumbersome and with a significant risk of making mistakes that were overlooked. There's less room to learn, adapt and evolve because it all happens simultaneously. To learn more about this area, read our article: Why agile transformations fail. You start with the structure. Naturally enough. But it can quickly become an empty shell if you don't know how to lead, who is responsible or how to collaborate. It takes time to fill it in. And time is often a scarce factor. The final disadvantage is that you have designed and structured a new and flatter organization that may not fit the purpose, context or deliverables. It's a long way from what you expected and hoped for. And then you've suddenly gone all in.
Flatter organizational forms have great potential to create more agile, efficient and sustainable organizations. However, just because you choose a new way of organizing doesn't mean you're out of luck. Be careful not to go for the new and shiny because others are doing it. It calls for an honest reflection on why you want to organize differently. And what you want to get out of it. Then it requires a brave and persistent effort to continuously change and adapt so that the organizational form fits the context and culture. Get off to a good start by choosing the right implementation approach. You can either start locally, select an area or flatten the entire organization at once. All approaches have strengths and pitfalls. Just like the different forms of organization. Have fun flattening the hierarchy and organizing differently.
Brosseau, D., Ebrahim, S. & Handscomb, C. (2019)
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Denning, S. (2022). The Age of Agile. How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done. Harper Collins Focus. 1st Edition.
Hamel, G., & Zanini, M. (2021).Humanocracy - fight bureaucracy and empower employees. Djøf Forlag. 1st edition. 1. Edition.
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