What is flat management? What is its definition, connotation and extension?

Flat management is a management mode implemented by enterprises to solve the problems faced by hierarchical organization in modern environment. When the scale of an enterprise expands, the original effective way is to increase the management level, and now the effective way is to increase the management scope. When the management level decreases and the management scope increases, the pyramid-shaped organizational form is "compressed" into a flat organizational form.

Connotation of flat management

"Flat management" is relative to the traditional hierarchical management model. The traditional organization is characterized by hierarchical structure, that is, in 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. Flat organization refers to changing the original practice of increasing management level and increasing management scope when the scale of an enterprise expands. When the management level decreases and the management scope increases, the pyramid-shaped organizational form is "compressed" into a flat organizational form.

Flat management is a pyramid management aimed at the traditional organizational structure. Pyramid organizational structure is compatible with centralized management system. In the organizational structure of modern enterprises, pyramid and flattening coexist.

The reason why "flattening" has become the key word of modern organizational change is that the traditional organizational form is difficult to adapt to the rapidly changing market environment, resulting in long decision-making chain and slow response. In order not to be eliminated, we must choose those departments that are highly related to the market, decentralize management, and make enterprise groups tend to be "flat" while expanding their scale. Especially with the development of modern information technology and the application of computer management information system, the strict vertical management of multi-level and reporting layer by layer is no longer effective, which accelerates the "flattening" trend of enterprise organization on the other hand.

If you really want to understand the concept of flat management, you must understand several other related basic concepts:

A.spanofcontrol: refers to the number of subordinates or departments under the jurisdiction of the manager. The scope of human management is limited, and the effective management scope depends on various influencing factors. When the scope of management increases in arithmetic series, the possible relationship between managers and subordinates increases in geometric series. Managers and subordinates will complicate the management work, while personal working ability is limited, so it is necessary to determine a reasonable and effective management scope, which is an important content of enterprise organizational structure design.

B. Management level: it is the level divided by the vertical management system within the organization. The organizational hierarchy within an enterprise is actually a vertical organizational division of labor, and departmentalization is not the only organizational division of labor within an enterprise. Division of labor between departments and levels belong to two different aspects of organizational division of labor in enterprises. The division of labor at the organizational level focuses on the process of exercising power, utilizing resources and clarifying management functions from top to bottom within a certain limit. All levels in the organization bear certain management functions.

C-level model: also known as "pagoda-shaped" structure, it refers to a typical organizational structure with more management levels and smaller management scope.

D flatmodel: corresponding to the hierarchical structure, it refers to the organizational structure with fewer management levels and larger management scope.

In these related concepts, A and B are negatively correlated, that is, the smaller and narrower the management scope, the more management levels; The larger and wider the management scope, the fewer the management levels. C and D are two opposite concepts, representing the increase or decrease of A and B in quantification respectively.

Implementing flat management refers to shortening the channels and paths of management, expanding the width and scope of management, and then improving the efficiency and market competitiveness of management. Specifically, it generally refers to the enterprise where the secondary branch is located, and there is no office management mode between the secondary branch and the outlet. Choosing this mode in urban areas can reduce management levels and intermediate links, shorten management radius and increase the direct intensive operation of secondary branches of enterprises.

The first person to put the concept of "flat management" into practice was General Electric Company. 198 1 year, when Welch became CEO of General Electric Company, the management of General Electric Company was as many as 24 ~ 26 floors from the chairman to the site administrator. After Welch took office, he resisted the pressure and adopted management measures such as "borderless action" and "zero management", which greatly reduced the company's management level to 5-6, completely disintegrated the deep-rooted organizational bureaucracy system since the 1960s, not only saved a lot of money, but also greatly improved the management efficiency and economic benefits of enterprises.

With the development of the world economy, more and more signs show that with the adjustment of the world economic structure, the progress of science and technology and the intensification of competition, the scale of enterprises will no longer be the decisive force to determine the ultimate fate of enterprises, and flexibility and adaptability will become the key to determine the success or failure of enterprises participating in market competition. Especially with the development of information technology, the emergence of e-commerce and the arrival of knowledge economy era, the economic environment of today's enterprises has undergone earth-shaking changes. With the strong support of modern high-tech means such as multimedia technology, network transmission technology, satellite communication technology and security encryption technology, and relying on powerful application software such as office software and marketing management software, it is easy to realize the centralized and rapid processing of a large amount of data and information, and deliver all high-value information of the enterprise to high-level decision makers, suppliers, distributors and partners in the first time, so as to realize "catch the whole thing".

This fundamentally shakes the theoretical basis of the "management scope" theory in the classic management theory, making many middle managers who only played the role of "information transfer station" completely redundant, and objectively prompting many enterprises to reach a * * * understanding on the implementation of "flat management": that is, when enterprises expand their scale, the original idea of strengthening management is to increase management levels, but now the idea is to increase management scope.

Based on the above analysis, we can see that there are three main reasons why "flat management" can be popular all over the world:

First, "flat management" has become technically possible, which is the premise of "flat management" of enterprises;

Second, "flat management" reflects the objective needs of modern enterprises to respond quickly to market changes;

Third, "flat management" has indeed brought management efficiency with twice the effort for many enterprises.

Application conditions of flat management

Not all enterprises can solve their own management problems through flat management. In order to make flat management play a role in enterprises, the following conditions should be met.

1, which can break through the shackles of traditional management concepts and culture and form a systematic management concept.

Influenced by the 5,000-year feudal hierarchy, people in China have formed a traditional management culture of "wisdom and stupidity" and a highly strict hierarchy and tower management model. In this system, many levels of middle managers can bear relatively few responsibilities and risks, and the implementation of flat management that greatly reduces middle management will certainly be resisted by their thoughts and actions; The long-term pursuit of management scope theory will also affect the implementation of flat management. Flat management aims to break the original intermediate management level and quickly adapt to market changes with optimized system structure, so it is necessary to cultivate system concept.

One of the five disciplines put forward by Peter Shengji, the founder of learning organization, is "systematic thinking". Thinking from the viewpoint of system theory, enterprise organizations will not narrowly form isolated islands in which information and resources between departments and subsidiaries are not connected. Von Bertalanffy, an expert and founder of system theory, believes that managers can clearly define the objectives of organizing systems and determine the standards for evaluating system performance by applying the method of system theory, so as to better connect enterprises with various surrounding environments, systematically consider problems and solve them optimally. Therefore, the acceptance of system theory at all levels of enterprise management will directly affect the implementation effect of flat management.

2. The management process can realize flat design.

Drucker, an American management scientist, used an example of a symphony orchestra earlier to illustrate the "flattening" characteristics of the organization. He pointed out that hundreds of musicians can play with their CEO because everyone uses the same music score. This music score is a process, and all musicians will know when to do what when they get it. The flat management of enterprises also requires each post to get a "total score" of management process. No matter who gets the flow chart, they will know what they should do.

We can understand the important role of flattening management process by looking at the expressway incident in Santa Monica, USA. 1994 65438+1October 17, a bridge on the expressway in Santa Monica collapsed in the Los Angeles earthquake, forcing millions of motorists to change careers. The traffic in Los Angeles caused a massive traffic jam. Officials of California Department of Transportation preliminarily predicted that it would take 12 to 18 months to repair expressway. Considering the serious consequences caused by traffic jams, the California Department of Transportation said that it would hand over the contract to the contractor who could complete the road repair project within six months, and would concentrate on completing the project as soon as possible at all costs. The repair work finally took only 66 days. This miracle was realized by changing the previous audit process: the staff of California Transportation Bureau flew to negotiate with the contractors with the construction plan and instructions, so that five contractors obtained the same information at the same time; The examination and approval of the tender price and the signing of the contract are completed on the same day. The design team will send the construction drawing to the contractor within 6 days, which usually takes about 9 months. It turns out that the bridge construction plan is generally reviewed by the California Department of Transportation (this process takes weeks or even months); Then review by the same department (spend more time); The final review plan shall be submitted to the contractor for bidding. This time, it was approved by the transportation department, and the contractor got the construction plan and was ready. Peer review should be carried out simultaneously with the start of the project; In order to prevent accidents and uncertainties, the specialized engineers and government supervisors of California Transportation Bureau were subsequently sent to the highway construction site to take charge of the whole construction process, which greatly reduced the time for work approval.

This is also necessary in the flat design of enterprise management process. Everything serves the simplification of the process, and the overall design of management business process is carried out according to the enterprise objectives, so that the overall business process can be optimized. This is the starting point of organizational design. According to the optimized management process, design as few management positions as possible. At this time, the functions of functional departments are assistants of top management and decision makers, and service providers of grass-roots business departments. They design the most concise operation process for each post, design and implement various tasks according to the optimal workflow, fix them with work specifications, and strengthen business supervision and risk control in the process.

3. Decentralization and centralization can be well integrated.

"Decentralization" became fashionable in the second half of the 20th century. The so-called decentralization means that enterprise managers delegate some decision-making power to functional departments, which can avoid many market opportunities lost due to decision-making delay. If we do not implement decentralized decision-making and management, and concentrate decision-making and management power on a few people, it will make decision-making and management inefficient and difficult to adapt to market competition. Flat management is a management based on decentralization, supplemented by centralization. Some people call it "controlled decentralization". Decentralization is to make the simplified management level obtain adaptive independent decision-making power and market-oriented management power; Encourage subordinates to share more responsibilities to achieve goals. Centralization can effectively monitor all decentralized departments and posts in real time, find things that are not implemented according to processes and decisions, correct them in time, observe the progress of the overall plan from time to time, and coordinate possible local phenomena that deviate from the goal. This simplifies the organizational structure of the enterprise and increases the corresponding authority of the business department. Senior leaders have enough time and energy to invest in strategic decision-making, and grass-roots supervisors can give full play to their initiative, enthusiasm and creativity, and everyone is responsible for their implementation.

4. Learning employees and management teams can exist in a good corporate culture background.

According to the theory of management scope, it is impossible for a conductor to conduct a band of several hundred people. However, as mentioned above, a score can solve this problem. Flat management not only needs a "score" as a corporate vision, but also needs to establish a fast network link between each employee; Everyone must be an expert in their respective fields. They have the same understanding of corporate vision, and hold the same rhythm work under the signal of superior managers.

In flat management, it is particularly important to select and employ people. Whether it is the manager or the managed, when the quality can not meet the requirements, the effect of flat management will be greatly reduced. Flat management requires high-quality and capable employees to work efficiently in a variety of changing teams and form an effective aggregation of talent resources. Select people who are loyal to the enterprise, have a sense of responsibility, have the ability of executive management and teamwork spirit to enter limited decision-making and management positions, and fully delegate power. At this time, in the face of higher and higher post work ability requirements, every employee will not think that the requirements of "learning, learning and re-learning" are outdated and old-fashioned, and "lifelong learning" and "learning at work and working in learning" will become the same requirements for employees and enterprises. In addition, under the framework of systems and processes, it is very important to fully trust employees. The corporate culture atmosphere of equality, trust and mutual assistance is also the pursuit of flat management. When inter-departmental teams and special task teams are formed in such an atmosphere, the running-in time between players will be shortened, and they will be integrated quickly, with strong resilience and cohesion.

5. Computer network technology can be widely used in enterprises.

The rapid changes in the market and fleeting opportunities force enterprises to respond quickly, while the traditional pyramid management model seriously restricts the rapid response ability of enterprises, and the traditional management means determine that the scope of management cannot be too large. If enterprises still maintain the traditional way of communication from top to bottom, not only the communication cost is high, but also the information transmission line is long, and it is easy to cause information leakage, misinformation and distortion. With the development of computer and Internet technology, these problems in traditional enterprise management can be solved easily. With the help of modern information technology, we can efficiently and orderly integrate internal resources of enterprises and analyze market changes, and correctly collect, store, sort out, process and transmit information from all aspects. The work instructions of an enterprise can be transmitted to employees at different levels almost at the same time, and senior managers may also directly and indirectly manage subordinates and supervise their work. In this way, the scope of management can be continuously increased, and a large number of middle management will be redundant and unnecessary, and flat management will become a trend and need. It can be seen that the popularization of network technology and modern management means in enterprises will also have a very important impact on the promotion of flat management in enterprises.