The Hammer Of Hierarchy

We talk a lot about workplaces rooted in “belonging” and “vulnerability” and “empathy.” Most are rooted in brute force task assignment.

If you’ve ever worked in any type of company hierarchy, you probably inherently understand some of the issues. There are dozens. Some of the classic examples of “company hierarchy sucks” would include “New ideas are instantly swatted down under the guise of someone else knowing best” and/or “Because I make more money than you, I can tell you that your look isn’t professional enough.”

In reality, most of this stuff is complete bullshit. It’s essentially designed to keep people in specific boxes and reward like-minded individuals with increasing perks. That is how most “enterprise” level companies work, and company hierarchy is really just in place to make sure that’s constantly being underscored.

However, there are two important things to remember here.

The first is that company hierarchy isn’t going anywhere. We think it might because of the rise of the millennials, but that’s not true. There are dozens of reasons why this is a flawed assumption, but let me give you a couple here:

• Holacracy, which was all the rage for a bit a few years back, makes an average worker’s head explode…