Ways of Working: 5 improvements for leaders

Most ways of working still rely on functional hierarchy, where managers make decisions and workers do the work. Managers know they can’t change this work structure, but they can transform its effectiveness without asking for permission and without needing a budget. Before exploring the changes that transform the way people work, we need to recognise why hierarchy works and why successful digital-age organisations disregard it. <h1>Hierarchy enables growth</h1> For 150 years or so, growth and long-term profitability have been the purpose of many firms. Bankers such as JP Morgan financed industrial schemes that built railways and generated electricity. They also created corporations that relied on investment bankers, who needed the corporations to keep investing in growth. The industrial model has been hugely successful and widely adopted. Leaders could predict what the market wanted in 2–3 years’ time, engineers would then design machines to make those products, workers were paid to operate the machines, marketing people to sell the products, and managers in each department made sure everything ran like clockwork. Whilst R&D is separate from Production, having department Heads that make local decisions about resource allocation, both Heads would sit on the same leadership team. They heard information cascaded from the CEO, whom they were able to update on the status of their own departments. The heads of R&D and Production continue to serve as single points of control to the leadership team. When the firm opened a new office or bought another company, they only needed to add one more Head to that team to preserve control. <a href="https://medium.com/@ConsultStorm/ways-of-working-5-improvements-for-leaders-61ba1ca91cef">Website</a>