Moving beyond Hierarchies

Being mother to school goings kids is great advantage, atleast in one way — you study yet again pretty much the whole curriculum that was never interesting, when you were in school. So, while studying history with my 12 year old is when I realized, the hierarchies and putting people in levels, is something that was created long back by certain category of people for their convenience and getting themselves more advantageous positions with respect to authority, power, and money. The system then created to give them advantage over others and somewhere over a period of time got accepted as the caste system in our country and in some format became part of our DNA and the way we were brought up. We bear its burden even today. 

Since it’s in our DNA, it’s bound to be an integral part of how we structure and run organizations. While the overall corporate ecosystem is undergoing a lot of changes with the concept of startups and MNC culture coming to India, a larger chunk of organizations still stick to very strong hierarchies which implicate into smaller things like size of workstation or cabin, category of laptop etc. to lot more critical ones like implying level of your competence and innovation. People in India are still so fascinated with designations that I think a lot of my HR colleagues actually spend a hell lot of time coming up these innovative tags which would help people feel better about themselves. Do they imply anything? In most of the cases, no. What should matter the most to an organization is how its people can be impactful, contributing every single day to the best of their capabilities without being withheld by any barriers and least of all hierarchy. If the person at the front-desk has an idea and somebody is ready to give it an ear, it speaks of the organization rather than how fancy designations sound. 

While it’s true that beyond a particular size it is imperative to create structures to have the modulated flow of work and processes; the lesser hierarchical an organization is the better is the accessibility and transparency in the organization, which magically translates into better engagement. Along with this flow, the levels have to have some meaning attached to them in terms of the significance each level has with respect to decision making, authority matrix, positive and negative scope. It’s important to understand the difference between the impact each of these levels have and be able to describe it to people in the simplest possible form. If there isn’t a difference in scope and impact then you don’t need those levels. Having minimalistic levels also drills down from the fact that the number of times a role can significantly change for a person vertically would typically not be more than 4 to 5 times depending the industry and size of operations of the organization. 

What should matter the most to an organization is how its people can be impactful, how they can contribute every single day to the best of their capabilities without being withheld by any barriers and least of all hierarchy

Finding the right number of levels or the perfect structure for any organization is a journey of self-discovery, which involves lot of detailed work around the width and depth of each unique role. Understanding the must-haves and good to haves of each role and how does one qualify to another level and all these need to be objectively identified and communicated in simplest possible language for people to make sense of it.