Flat Organizations

4/16/2012

For several years and increasingly so, educational association speakers and many academics advocate for flat organizations – “away with the hierarchies of the past, they say.  Flat is the future of corporate America and if we want to be successful, we must adapt,” according to some.  I concur that we should strip out the hierarchical layering of management (for economic reasons and more), but hierarchy will remain (and necessarily so) even if it doesn’t show up on the organizational chart.  Someone is still in charge; someone else is number two, and so forth.  At least, it better be that way.  If not, every important decision will be a compromise (sub-optimal is a good description for compromise) and, you know what that means.