On fiction vs. reality

This week, a client of mine asked me for a meeting. He wanted to know whether an agile organization still has managers or whether managers would become obsolete i.e. the organization would be completely flat... whatever that means.

Being a fan of the socratic method, I answer a question with a question... and sometimes with two or three questions ;-)

So what were the questions that I asked back:

1. What is the definition of an "agile organization"?
2. What does "manager" mean to you?
3. What is a "flat organization"?

Initially his response to all of these questions was "I don't know". So we started to explore them together.

What is the definition of an "agile organization"?

I told him that there is not one single source of thruth here. I have not heard yet of a clear definition what an "agile organization" is and what it looks like. What I do see is that many people refer to companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Tesla, Spotify, SpaceX, and other highly innovative companies as "agile" organizations.

If we stick to these case studies, they all have one thing in common: Each of them has several "layers" of management and titles such CEO, CFO, Vice President, Head of, Director, etc.

If you don't believe me, just check a few of their org charts here:

In 2002, Google actually experimented with a completely flat organization i.e. without any engineering managers. Despite being much smaller back then compared to now, that experiment failed. And after a few months, Larry Page and Sergey Brin rolled back, and reinstated managers at Google.

What they did though, was having managers with a higher number of direct reports than most organizations do i.e. 30 vs. 7-10 which results in managers not being able to micromanage, as there is simply no time for that.

Harvard Business School professor David Garvin published an excellent article titled: "How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management". You can read the full article here: https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management .

2. What does "manager" mean to you?

Similar to not having this one definition of an "agile organization", there is not this one definition of a "manager". Most of us have had great and not so great managers in our careers. This means, that these managers had interpreted their own role differently.

I have had managers who screamed at me for no reason what so ever. I have had managers who did everything in their power to help me succeed - even after I left the organization they were in.

So if we see all of the highly innovative organizations having managers - defined by rank - the question is less about whether an agile organization has managers, and much more about what these managers do on a daily basis.

Again, looking at science and research done by various organizations - among them Google - we can identify several key characteristics of great managers.

Some organizations look for very similar characteristics in their managers and they do this via assessment centers. Yet, most organizations I see, completely neglect the importance of professional development (coaching) being done by the manager.

In the characteristics from the Google research, number 1, 2, 6, and 8 are directly connected to helping the people managers are trusted with to improve, to grow, and to succeed.

In order to be able to deliver on these 10 characteristics, a manager needs to have some expertise in the domain they are managing, they need to have competence in creating a strategy, and they need to be passionate about developing people and teams.

This is not the regular "administrator" that many organizations put into a management position. This is a highly competent and passionate leader.

As Marty Cagan writes in his book Empowered... the best organizations do not have less leadership, they have better leadership. And becoming that "better leader" is not easy... it takes a ton of work.

3. What is a "flat organization"?

Now, as we have resolved the first two questions. The third one could be a quick and easy answer: Agile organizations are not flat. At least, when we define "flat" as being no hierarchies, no titles, or no managers.

But, most of these organizations have one thing in common: They try to be much more meritocratic than many traditional organizaitons are.

The late Steve Jobs describes it very well in his interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher :

"If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions,?you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don't stay."

So despite not being "flat" from a hiearchy perspective, these organizations manage to engage their employees by being flatter and creating an environment where the best ideas can flourish - no matter where they come from.

Conclusion

We need to move from fiction to reality... we need to look at the true case studies out there. We cannot refer to Apple, Amazon, etc. as great agile companies and then propagate the idea of a no manager organization.

There might be cases of organizations such as Buurtzorg that have almost no management. But these organizations don't build anything that would require coordination of thousands of teams.

Can organizations - especially the large ones - be flatter than many of them are today? Sure... and I would actually support that. I believe the more self-management capabilities teams develop, the less administrators we need.

But I do not see a realistic scenario for the vast majority of organizations to become manager-free. I'd rather ask the question: What is it that managers need to be capable of doing to help their teams flourish and their organizations change as fast as change itself?

It is easy to say "let's get rid off all management"... but seldom is the easy answer the right answer. I believe that in order to change an organization we need to change its people - I do not mean replace.

Change almost always starts with education and enablement.

Helping managers develop new skills, showing them how to apply these skills, and achieving success will help them, their teams, and their organization to build the "agile organization".

As always, #FromNothingComesNothing