To flatten or not to flatten, that is the question!

Photo: My two book references*

To flatten or not to flatten, that is the question!

Flatten the organizational structure, that is. ??

Could Teal Organization and/or Holacracy help answer to the question?

Four co-founders (also the only four employees for the near future) of a company that has just been just incorporated are figuring out how best to structure the organization.

Co-founder 1 was the candidate Chief Executive Officer but has given way to co-founder 4 to take up the position. This is because co-founder 1 wants to focus on marketing and business development (Chief Marketing Officer position) and also design and delivery of their services offerings.?

Co-founder 1 thinks this the best way of him using his forte for the company. He thinks?the CEOship of co-founder 4 can be “groomed” (his word) by especially co-founder 1, and co-founder 2 (who takes up the Chief Financial Officer position because his forte is finance). They are the “groomers” because they are more seasoned business people than co-founder 4.

This is the first thinking.?

Therein lies the issue. Structured traditionally as hierarchical, it is strange to have the CEO being groomed by the CMO and CFO. What if the CEO pulls rank? Also, grooming someone to be a CEO who is already given a CEO title is another strange concept!

Perhaps co-founder 1 should have used the word mentoring instead of grooming, but it’s still strange that a mentor is at a lower level than the mentee.

Co-founder 1 thinks that a documented and signed agreement, or understanding, or job description, or standard operating procedures, or code of conduct, or constitution could help address the issue.

But then, implemented as a hierarchical structure based on functions, such a lean organization will have the people do cross-functional tasks, anyway.

Flatten the structure?

What if they “flatten” the structure from the hierarchy and authority-based usual model to a more self-managing approach? Here come approaches like the Teal Organization and Holacracy as possible solutions.

The authority would come from the roles and accountabilities instead of rank or position in a hierarchy.

There would be no rank to pull, avoiding the conflict that co-founder 1 wants to avoid.

Even the organizational chart depiction would reflect so.?

Image credit: https://fourweekmba.com/holacracy

Without getting deeper into Teal and Holacracy, co-founder 1 would need to work out in his overall team of four to identify the roles, represented as circles within the overall company’s circle.?

My discussion with co-founder 1 included such tentative role name examples as Marketing and Business Development, Services Design and Delivery, Finance and Operations, Branding Spokesman, and whatever else, all using their own words and phrases (even self-invented ones) of roles they initially see fit for their company.

For each role they would need to start documenting a few (a few only) sub-roles and for each sub-role craft the one or a few accountabilities, perhaps outcome-based versus task-based as in usual job descriptions.?

All four co-founders would have multiple roles and accountabilities, in the different circles.

Co-founder 1’s initial thought of a code of conduct would be like a Holacracy constitution.?

His concern about conflict from hierarchy suddenly becomes slightly alleviated!

Again, without delving into the intricacies of Teal and Holacracy, co-founder 1 now will figure out how to get buy-in from the other co-founders.?

The company is still small. There have been companies that have implemented light versions of Holacracy, so this company could explore ideas from these examples.?

*Books:

Reinventing organizations: A guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux, 2014

- Kindle version gifted to me by Jing Pei Goh-Asmala (this book describes the Teal Organization)

Holacracy: The New Management System That Redefines Management by Brian J. Robertson, 2015

- I had gifted a hard copy version to Jing Pei Goh-Asmala