When hiring, I try to do so in one of three ways. Ideally, I want to hire people with whom at least one member of the existing team has already worked and can vouch for. If that doesn’t work, then I’m looking for people vouched for my the networks of which the team are part. Failing that, I’m trying to find people who don’t wait for direction, but know how to get on with things that need doing.(source)
And the association between emotional intelligence and hierarchy:
Developing emotional intelligence is difficult and goodness knows I’m no expert. What I think we perhaps need to do is to remove our corporate dependency on hierarchy. In hierarchies, emotion and trust is removed as an impediment to action.(source)
Personally speaking I find I can be like a camel, where left to my own accord I will always find something that needs to be done and only really need to be checked on every so often. The problem I have is that I hit the ‘process’ wall, where something requires some sort of hierarchy or authority to progress things further.
What I have come to wonder is the place of process in a flat structure. Not having worked in a truly flat environment (I have had a few leaders and managers who encourage self-management, but that is it), is hierarchy replaced by clear and repeatable collectively agreed processes that people are able to use to guide them? That might be my submission for a microcast response.
Thanks Aaron, and I will get to that question in a microcast eventually! Let me answer briefly here, based on my incomplete knowledge and biased opinion of how the world works.
Broadly speaking, when I’ve worked in flatter structures, time is taken to ensure people are in alignment. You might characterise that as a “Ready, Aim, Fire!” approach. As opposed to, within strict hierarchies, it being a kind of “Ready, Fire, Aim!” approach.
It’s a tortoise and hare approach. If you’ve got enough time and enough invested, then doing the hard yards in a flat structure will usually result in the best outcome. If speed is all you need (it rarely is!) then the hierarchical approach gets traction quickly, but often devolves into unproductive ambiguity, politics, and scapegoating.