Group Of Business People Having Board Meeting Around Glass Table.
The last 18 months have turned many traditional ideas about how work should be structured on its head. From days in the office to working hours of the day, to finding new ways to collaborate and make decisions — employers and employees quickly pivoted. Now, the divisive topic of conversation is around those companies who are happy keeping a distributed workforce (such as Facebook), and those who are demanding their people return to the office as soon as it is safe – such as Apple.
A notable difference between those two stances is the associated leadership model. A distributed workforce could lead to distributed networks of power. Onsite, it could be easier to reinforce traditional hierarchy structures. Noted journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell spoke at this year’s Adobe Summit to provide a balanced take on both traditional hierarchies and flat distributed networks. Business leaders should consider the pros and cons of both when deciding what model works best for their people.
Hierarchy versus networks in the workplace
Hierarchies are closed systems, where power rests with a few. In contrast, networks are decentralized and often lack visible leadership or figureheads. A hierarchy provides a sense of order and also shows us a clear path for advancement — two key drivers of engagement. They can also be vital to getting things done in certain situations, such as emergencies.
Matthew Syed Consulting (MSC) lent their thoughts on the matter and articulated the downside to hierarchies in our modern working world. “[Hierarchies] can be ineffective because they shut down communication. In sectors like healthcare and aviation, lives have been lost where more junior members of a team felt unable to speak openly or to challenge the person in charge. For businesses and other organizations, a command and control style of leadership suppresses innovation because people tend to say what they think the leader wants to hear rather than contribute an alternative view, or they go along with the ideas of the most senior person even if they don’t necessarily agree.”
Why networks at work aren’t all they are cracked up to be
It is alluring to think of work utopias where there are no bosses with a thriving and happy workforce. But is this world of no bosses and no hierarchy effective? Several companies have experimented with this, most notably Zappos. Their philosophy was “no job titles, no managers, and no hierarchies,” and it received a lot of attention at the time. People were interested to see if this “holacratic” decentralized operating style that relies on self-management and self-organization would work.
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It did — at first. Yet, several years into the experiment, Zappos began to back away from holacracy. Key problems that arose were lack of stability, lack of clarity, difficulties benchmarking pay, duplication of work, and a hidden layer of power/bullies that emerged. No formal checks or balances on power existed. Zappos lost approximately one-third of its employees over the course of one year.
“Zappos illustrates the disorder and inaction that can result when no-one is in charge or when informal hierarchies develop but have no checks and balances in place,” says MSC.
Can networks get things done?
Gladwell used two examples of social revolutions to illustrate the impact of each model. The first example was how Martin Luther King organized the 1963 Birmingham riot. King had several pinnacles of behavior change in place — a well-formed strategy, one ideology, and one compelling messenger. In contrast, let’s evaluate the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. There was no strategy, no leader, and competing ideologies. While the lasting impact of MLK’s legacy is clear and recognizable, sustained change from Black Lives Matter remains to be seen.
Another challenge with networks is maintaining a completely flat structure. “Some companies that have tried to implement radically flat structures have found that informal power structures have re-emerged over time,” says MSC.
As a company grows beyond the size of an optimal tribe, which much of anthropological literature claims is 50 to 70 people, it will become increasingly clear that some formal layers of leadership are necessary, especially around key areas of the business such as sales and human resources.
What working model is next?
Predictions about the future of work are hard to make. But will we still need a boss? MSC thinks that’s perhaps the wrong question to be asking. “This doesn’t mean that we need bosses telling people what to do, though this can be important in certain contexts. Instead, it’s about effective leadership that creates the vision and common purpose that can inspire deep commitment and high levels of productivity.”
What we can do is be open to blending organizational models to create the leadership structure that works best for a company’s particular culture. After all, leaders shape a company’s culture — and can choose to create a culture of empowerment. MSC says, “Moving towards a more distributed workforce has the potential to support more egalitarian ways of working, such as giving employees more autonomy.”
