From What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management
Isn’t it better to have fewer managers and a flatter structure?
The answer, according to both Edmondson’s research and the experience of Southwest Airlines as described by Jody Hoffer Gittell, is it depends on what the managers do.
If they just give orders and assign blame if things go wrong, you’re probably better off with fewer of them.
But if leaders actually help people coordinate and learn, more are better.
Good point. He continues:
The problem with having fewer managers is actually quite simple: since people have been taken out of the organization, those that remain have more to do unless something has been done to decrease the total workload.
And there are fewer people in the organization to ensure coordination, reflection, and learning. In order for leaders to act as coaches, there must be enough leaders to do the coaching.
Just as coaches help their teams perform better by standing on the sidelines and providing perspective and information that players in the thick of things might otherwise miss, so in companies it is useful to have people whose job responsibility includes learning, coaching, teaching, and reflecting, or else those activities won’t occur.