Gary Hamel

While hierarchy will always be a feature of human organization, there’s a pressing need to limit the fallout from top-down authority structures. Typical problems include overweighting experience at the expense of new thinking, giving followers little or no influence in choosing their leaders, perpetuating disparities in power that can’t be justified by differences in competence, creating incentives for managers to hoard authority when it should be distributed, and undermining the self-worth of individuals who have little formal power. To overcome these failings, the traditional organizational pyramid must be replaced by a “natural” hierarchy, where status and influence correspond to contribution rather than position. Hierarchies need to be dynamic, so that power flows rapidly toward those who are adding value and away from those who aren’t. Finally, instead of a single hierarchy, there must be many hierarchies, each a barometer of expertise in some critical arena.

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