Remind me again, what was so bad about hierarchies?
 

Here’s a question for you. What is the fundamental type of management structure which has been invented independently on many occasions in human history, all over the world?

As clues, I can tell you it has been continually refined through a process of trial and error up to modern times. The Egyptian Civil Service and the Roman Army organized themselves this way. It also seems to respond to something deep in the human psyche, which needs order and structure if it is to work effectively.

I’m talking about hierarchies of course. For an idea that seems so natural, and has been independently discovered so often, it’s surprising that the idea is in such disfavour now. “Hierarchical” is almost a swearword, unless we are speaking of databases.

What’s the problem?

Leaving aside the obvious point that any form of organization can be well or badly run, there’s a basic misperception about hierarchical organizations; one that has been encouraged by those who write about them without ever having worked in one. They assume that hierarchies are rigid structures in which every idea and every initiative has to go through endless, multiple layers before anything is decided. In most people’s minds, hierarchies are linked with Max Weber’s descriptions of bureaucracies, which even those who have never heard of Weber have absorbed by osmosis. (If you’re interested, Weber was describing an “ideal type” of organization, not something that actually existed).

In realty, a well-organized hierarchy is a sophisticated device for ensuring that work gets done at the most appropriate level. In most organization, work—sales inquiries, letters from the public, requests for assistance—comes in at or near the bottom. In a properly constructed hierarchy, issues which are entirely routine are dealt with at the lowest feasible level. Those which require more thought are passed up to the next level, and so on. In that way, only the most important and difficult issues ever get to the top of the organization. Conversely, those at the top can ask questions in the knowledge that somewhere below them is an expert, whom they may not even know, who will have an answer.

However, a hierarchy only works properly if two conditions are fulfilled:

• It has to be based on promotion by merit. Those above must have the confidence of those below, and should ideally have done the same or similar jobs earlier in their career.
• It has to be based on a long-serving workforce, capable of developing a common culture, and tackling problems in much the same way. These concepts, pioneered by the British Civil Service in the 19th century, were deliberately based on the way the Chinese ran things several millennia before.

Why are hierarchies out of favor?

Partly, it’s a confused idea that they are inappropriate to what we like to think of as a ‘democratic’ era. (Ask yourself how ‘democratic’ the average flat management structure is.) Partly they’re a victim of populist folklore about inefficient bureaucrats and the benefits of unleashing entrepreneurial independence . . . or something like that. There are other and more worrying reasons too:

1. If it ain’t broke, there’s no money to be made in fixing it. The Maoist permanent revolution required by the consultancy industry generates profits by developing expensive new structures which then fail, so they have to be replaced by even more expensive alternatives. Much of the money spent on organizational consultancy these days is to repair the damage caused by earlier reorganizations. Systems that people design for themselves generally work well and last a long time.
2. Hierarchies are an easy target for cost-savings. How often have you heard about “stripping out unnecessary layers of management”? Have you wondered why these layers of management were ever introduced in the first place, if they weren’t necessary? Have you ever tried to fight your way through a flat, non-hierarchic organization in search of someone who knew what they were doing and had the authority to decide something? Or have you ever been a manager in a flat structure overwhelmed with queries from subordinates? (If in doubt, human beings always refer problems upwards.)
3. Most importantly, attacks on hierarchies are a way of avoiding responsibility. If you are the leader of a twelve-person team, you’re responsible for their welfare and development—with power comes responsibility. But if you are one of several reporting points for matrix-managed, ad hoc ‘tiger teams’, you can afford to forget about that and concentrate on your career. Most organizations long ago stopped promoting people because they were good at managing others. The attack on hierarchies makes the promotion of the ruthless and the ambitious much easier and more acceptable.

Trying to abolish hierarchies is pointless: people will simply re-establish them unofficially. Every time you ask a more experienced colleague for advice, you’re creating a virtual hierarchy. If organizations realized this, and spent some of the effort that goes into destroying hierarchies to make them work better, organizations wouldn’t be in the mess they are.

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