Cultural Flatness vs. Structural Flatness

One of the saddest consultations I've had in the last few weeks was about organizational structure. The founder of the initiative wanted to gather a team, to establish a very horizontal structure, but at the same time to make everything there work only the way he wanted. And I'm pretty sure there's no way to do it.

I see that it is not so popular opinion, especially when you ask activists, but horizontal structures are not always the best and definitely not a universal solution — especially in their absolute. And here is important to distinguish two different types of "horizontality":

📐Structural flatness is about the distribution of roles and responsibilities in the team, subordination and accountability of employees, control and responsibility. In horizontal organizations, there is usually poor distribution, problems with subordination and lack of accountability; control and responsibility are distributed holistically: whoever takes what is responsible for it. I haven't seen a single fully horizontal initiative that has grown over time. Standing still — maybe. Gradually fading away — maybe. But I haven't seen any evolving for a long time.

👥 Cultural flatness is about communication norms that are accepted in the organization. The big advantage of horizontality is fast and easy communication between people and branches. This makes work efficient and pleasant for everyone. In vertical structures, on the other hand, there is often an absolutely insurmountable gap between employees at different levels: it's not that you can't drop a meme to your manager. Sometimes you can't talk to your manager at all. And that leads to slowing down of work, problems with motivation, understanding the purpose of the work, and burnout.

So here it is:

🔴Structural horizontality is a curse for the organization

🟢 Cultural horizontality is something you should try to develop

This means that there should be a clear distribution of roles and responsibilities in the organization, but there should not be an abyss between people at different levels. If you want to understand how to build such a system, write to me and we'll try to figure out how it can work in your case.