The Company Without Managers
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most companies around the world exist with some form of hierarchy. Usually it is a vertical structure, with executive above management, which is in turn above the workforce. But there is another form, a “flat” hierarchy. Long promulgated by tech companies and start-ups in particular, flat or horizontally-structured companies operate on the principle of “Be your own boss.” Everyone chooses their agenda, their pace and in principle there is no boss to upbraid you if you make a mistake. So does it work? David Heinemeier Hansson is a founder and partner at the web services company Basecamp, a company with a “flat as possible” structure. He gives his thoughts on being the boss of people when they are their own boss. We also hear from Drew Dudley, author of This is Day One and André Spicer, professor of organisational behaviour at Cass Business School, on the potential pitfalls of flat hierarchies.
Image: Silhouetted faces in a boardroom (Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Manuel Zaragoza. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Coming up, the company without a boss. I mean, who wants to be a boss anyway? |
| 0:11.0 | Have you seen a more miserable person that Mark Zuckerberg lately? I think that Mark Zuckerberg is probably one of the most |
| 0:21.4 | unhappy people in tech right now. |
| 0:28.3 | In this edition, why flat hierarchy companies where everyone is their own boss are back in |
| 0:34.5 | vogue. But does all this egalitarianism come at a price and how sustainable |
| 0:40.1 | is a flat corporate hierarchy anyway? Even with the best intentions, hierarchies begin to arise |
| 0:46.9 | within any kind of workplace. That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:56.1 | Not too long ago, the Global Consultancy Deloitte published its annual survey of millennials, |
| 1:02.1 | those born between 1982 and 1994. |
| 1:05.6 | Millennials, it found, are particular about the sort of companies they want to work for. |
| 1:10.5 | They want jobs that allow them |
| 1:11.7 | to be creative and they want jobs that give them a degree of leadership, which may go some way |
| 1:17.0 | towards explaining the popularity of flat hierarchies at companies. In other words, firms that do away |
| 1:23.0 | with many levels of job titles and bureaucracy and instead treat everyone as equal. Well, the US software |
| 1:29.6 | development firm Basecamp describes itself as a company with a flat hierarchy. It's been around for 20 |
| 1:34.8 | years and it's doing very well. David Heinemeyer Hansen is one of Basecamp's founders. I asked him, |
| 1:41.4 | how exactly does flat management work? It means that there's no one who just |
| 1:46.3 | sits around all day thinking about what other people should do or telling other people what to do. |
| 1:50.7 | So even for Jason and I, Jason's the CEO, I'm the CTO, we have a lot of managerial responsibilities, |
| 1:56.0 | but they're sort of a part-time job. I spent the bulk of my time either writing, doing marketing |
| 2:00.7 | for the company, |
| 2:01.7 | or doing programming. My favorite things to do. There are teams that have designated team leads, |
... |
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