Flat-Out Innovation

  Decision Making   Innovation   Leadership   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

Flat management systems are producing benefits for a growing number of organizations that thrive on innovation and rapid change. By reducing their management hierarchies, they have democratized decision-making, spurred creative problem-solving and fostered greater trust in the workplace. Here’s how and why it works.

Command and control structures of management, where a clearly defined hierarchy delegates tasks to specific divisions, are commonplace. In fact, it may be difficult to imagine working for an organization that doesn’t have a clearly defined hierarchy of managers and managers-of-managers. That is, unless you’re working for one of the growing number of companies that are eschewing business hierarchy altogether and finding some surprising success.

Although this movement is occurring in all types of industries, the companies are united in their belief of flat management, or a system which democratizes decision making among a greater number of employees. The goal is to reduce the layers of management, and empower individual workers.

This trend stems from a combination of factors. First, organizations are increasingly interested in harnessing internal innovation. Giving a greater number of employees decision making power opens the floodgates for creative problem solving.

Second, employers are responding to the preferences of millennials and…

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