Hierarchical structure of flat management

To understand flattening, we must start with a word "hierarchical structure" corresponding to flattening.

The traditional organization is characterized by hierarchical structure. An enterprise, its top, middle and grass-roots managers form a pyramid structure. The chairman and president are at the top of the pyramid, and their instructions are finally conveyed to the executors through the first-level management; The information at the grass-roots level goes through layers of screening, and finally reaches the hands of the highest decision makers.

The organization form of traditional hierarchical structure originates from the theory of "management scope" in classical management theory. According to the theory of management scope, due to the limitation of energy, knowledge, ability and experience, the number of subordinates that a manager can manage is limited. With the increase of the number of subordinates, the number of possible interpersonal relationships will increase exponentially, and the amount of information and management difficulty will also increase. When the number of subordinates increases to a certain extent, it is beyond the scope that managers can effectively manage. And the higher the level, the fewer subordinates a manager can effectively manage. Under normal circumstances, the number of subordinates that grass-roots managers can effectively manage is 15 to 20, the number of subordinates that middle managers can effectively manage is not more than 10, and the number of subordinates that senior managers can effectively manage is not more than 7.

When the number of people in an organization is determined, due to the limitation of effective management scope, it is necessary to increase the management level, which is inversely proportional to the management scope.

Under the traditional management mode, when the scale of the organization expands and the management scope has its limit, the management level will gradually improve. The number of employees in those large multinational companies can reach hundreds of thousands, and the management level is even more. It is said that IBM's management is as high as 18 layers at most.