Flat hierarchies: Just another step in the wrong direction

Most managers and business leaders aim to make their organizations flatter. They try to reduce middle management, to skim the amount of hierarchical layers, or they scrap internal bureaucracy in order to achieve more efficiency, more effectiveness, and more enterprise agility. The problem with this is simple, but important: Organizations should actually not be flat, but decentralized. Why? Because flat means continuing to bark up the wrong tree: In flat, the steering from the top remains.

By Niels Pflaeging