Hard to be and to stay flat structured organisation

Many people, especially in flat structured organisations, say that they don’t need managers. Right, but from my point of view it’s getting possible only if everyone in the organisation is on the same page, can easily and openly communicate to each other, knows where their product is growing, everyone is highly motivated and nobody has high career ambitions.

The best example of flat structured organisation is a startup working in a small garage. Definitely they don’t need managers, they know what they are building, they can communicate to each other and they define their business strategy. Problems come with growing of the product where one day they will have to start hiring new people.

Staying flat structured means working hard together and make decisions together, not only technical decisions but strategic and managerial as well. More your company grow, more difficult it is to keep flat structure working well, more time it requires to convince others in chosen directions and business strategies. 

Many companies started from flat structure without managers but later switched to old fashion vertical or matrix/pyramidal organisational structure. It shows that managers are needed when your company becomes bigger, more mature and needs to make more commitments to its customers.

To be continued...

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