Flat Mentorship

It is common throughout Asia to hear leaders say they want a flat organization, whether they really do or not, because it is the trendy thing to say these days. It is true that it can be useful to flatten out your firm’s hierarchy, with fewer levels of oversight between the worker bees and the CEO, and fewer stovepipes that limit collaboration. But you need to consider all the likely effects before you do it.

There are a lot of benefits to a flat organizational structure for your employees. It allows for more independence and initiative, allowing them to exercise the skills you hired them for. It makes things move faster, with less review and fewer meetings, so work can get done without a lot of holdups. It cuts your overhead costs, so you can focus your time and resources on your value-creating employees and not on layers of oversight.

But one downside to this is that with fewer leaders and managers in a firm, you have fewer people available for mentoring. And if your firm is full of employees who can really benefit from mentoring, or who are looking for strong career development, that is going to be a problem.

We know that mentoring is an important part of leadership. But if we are also trying to create a more efficient firm by having a leaner structure, that does not leave a lot of people in formal leadership positions who can take on protégés. One architectural firm told us they went from having 1 leader for every 8 people to 1 for every 20. While that brought about some good changes for the firm, it also led the CEO to say in a meeting, “we are not a schoolhouse.”

There are ways you can continue mentoring. First, figure out what kind of mentoring you need to do. Helping a protégé develop their creative skills is time consuming; helping them map out a career path is less so. Your mentorship objectives need to be realistic in light of your manpower.

Remember, too, that mentors do not need to be in formal leadership positions over their protégés. In many cases, it is actually better if they are not, because it is tough to counsel someone about a problem with their leader if you are their leader. So consider making mentorship a part of senior employees’ job descriptions, not just a function for leaders. As people gain seniority and earn more, there is a reasonable expectation that they should be assuming more responsibility. Plus, it helps prepare them for leadership positions someday. Do not just rely on current leaders, or you are likely to not have enough people.

Of course, there are limits to how much mentoring you can do, so you also need to think about who you are hiring and how much guidance they will need. Going back to the architectural executive’s views on training and schooling, you need to think about hiring the right people to fit into a flat organization. Since you want independent people with a high degree of skill, you need to look into hiring experienced people rather than those just out of school. If you are hiring people new to your field, they will need more advice and guidance, but honestly, they will need more supervision, too, and that does not fit the concept of a flat organization.

So, while having fewer leaders may limit your ability to mentor, the people you hire into such a firm should require less anyway.

The architectural firm mentioned earlier has not really taken that approach. As they have gotten flatter, they have not revamped their hiring strategy, so they are likely to be hiring the wrong people. The result is requests for mentorship, with no one to provide it. Something has got to change, or the conflict between needs and resources is only going to create more problems.