Is your organisational struggling to adapt to a world in which constant change is the new norm?

Is your organizational change management approach aligned to rapid, continuous and iterative change?

No? It can be.

In traditional hierarchical organisations, titles are very important. They are a sign of past performance, power and prestige.

Some organisations that are genuinely flat have done away with roles and titles altogether!

At Morning Star everyone is known as a “Colleague”.

At W.L. Gore everyone is known as an “Associate”.

At Zappos everyone is known as a “Partner”.

But there are various degrees of de-labelling.

It was refreshing to read the 4 Change Management Trends in 2020 by Tim Creasey, Chief Innovation Officer at Prosci.

I wonder if you are seeing the same four trends that the 1,778 change practitioners told Prosci?

This post in the series “Kill the Hierarchy” I explore how flattening the organisational structure will increase a manager’s span of control but does not mean increased workload.  Adoption of self-management will avoid that and bring additional benefits.

Genuine flat structures have a workforce that is self-managing. Employees have delegated decision-making authority, autonomy, empowerment and red tape is eliminated.

Therefore, the ‘manager’ has less to do!

Well it was an early start for me today. Up at 4am to watch my Liverpool FC play Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League final from Kiev.

Despite the result not going our way, (Madrid 3 - Liverpool 1), just watching the behaviour of the manager, coaches and players and the supporters inspired me to continue my posts that have a soccer analogy associated with them.

Total Football could be described as ‘organized chaos.’ Any player can move into another’s position. A player who moves out of position is replaced by another team member. In this fluid and flexible system, no outfield player is fixed in a predetermined role. Anyone can successively play as an attacker, a midfielder or a defender. The only player that stays in position is the goalkeeper.

I believe there are parallels with the concept of Total Football and the resilient workforce we need today when change is constant, complex and unrelenting.

Active employee involvement increases productivity and profitability.

A flat organisational structure empowers employees. When employees take on a greater role within the organisation, they become more personally motivated to succeed and more active in the organisation.

Employee engagement means that employees have choices and work towards the success of the organisation. They are actively involved and enthusiastic about their work and the workplace.

A hierarchical structure can disempower employees. A flatter structure provides more opportunities for employees to be involved in decision-making processes and therefore they are increasingly motivated and engaged. Employees have more autonomy.

Earlier this week I delivered a Masterclass at Convergence 2018. Convergence Australia is Asia-Pacific’s only dedicated change management conference. 

I highly recommend it. It was a well spent 2 days.

My Masterclass was entitled ‘Game On!’ I explored the world of organisational change that we now live in which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). 

We looked at why the traditional linear approaches to organisational change management (OCM) no longer work in that world and how we have to make a fundamental change in those approaches and in our mindset.

Never has the need for innovation been more important than it is today.

Organisations with a flatter structure tend to be much more innovative. If innovation is strategically important to you, you need to be flat(ter).

The flat organisational model promotes employee involvement through decentralised decision-making. It elevates the level of responsibility of front-line employees and eliminates unnecessary layers of management, resulting in comments and feedback reaching all of the personnel involved in decision-making more quickly.

Albeit the title could infer that this is for people working on 'agile' projects, it is far from that. This book is for anyone that recognises that change is now constant and in everything that we do we must do with increased agility.

In February 21018, I hosted a breakfast seminar called 'Change is Broken'.

atch the 40 minute video of the breakfast seminar.

At the start of 2018, ITSM.tools asked its readers to vote for the IT service management (ITSM) topics that they felt would be the most important for the website to cover in 2018.

I didn’t see any major surprises in the results but was disappointed that there was no mention about increasing our understanding of how we are going to support our people in a world in which change is constant. With “people” topics taking a backseat to the process and technology.

In a hierarchy decisions can take a long time due to the layers through which information has to flow before a decision is made. When organisations need to respond quickly to changing priorities, opportunities, competition, threats etc. the ability to make decisions quickly will be essential for success. Therefore the hierarchy has to be flattened so that there are less decision-making hoops through which to jump.