I still remember the bright autumn day in 2014 when I turned off of the main road in Exton, Pennsylvania onto a remote path. I was going to meet Brian J. Robertson, the creator of a hot new “flat” management approach called Holacracy. I was skeptical, because it seemed to be a cumbersome way to go about governance, but I was open to learning about it.
Many companies, most famously Zappos, were enthusiastically adopting it and there was no shortage of hype among the punditry about abolishing hierarchies. Brian, for his part, was gracious and patient with me, explaining how and why everything worked. Still, I had my doubts and remained unconvinced.
Recently, Stanford’s Bob Sutton pointed to Ronnie Lee’s research that confirmed my (and his) suspicions. While flatter structures can promote creativity, we need hierarchies to execute well. The truth is that hierarchies form naturally and, rather than trying to ignore that basic fact, we need to design enterprises with hierarchical networks in mind.
Evolution, Religion and Leadership
It’s become common today for many, especially in the academic world, to dismiss religion as the product of ancient superstition. Yet in The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes a powerful case that it plays an important evolutionary role. “There is now a great deal of evidence that religions do in fact help groups to cohere, solve free rider problems and win the competition for group-level survival,” he wrote.