Hierarchy Isn’t the Problem We Think It Is

What We're Actually Complaining About When We Complain About Hierarchy

I meet a lot of people who complain about hierarchy — and argue that removing it is the answer.

Every few years a new wave of thinking arrives, promising flatter organisations, fewer managers, and freedom from layers. It sounds progressive. Even humane. And it often attracts people who have experienced genuinely bad management — which is a real thing, and a real problem.

But I am always left with the same question: what problem are we actually trying to solve?

Because "no hierarchy" has become a meme — a fashionable position adopted without much examination — rather than a thoughtful response to how organisations actually work.

What we're actually complaining about when we complain about hierarchy

Most complaints about hierarchy are not really about structure at all.

They are about poor decisions made by people who should know better. Weak leadership that avoids difficult conversations and lets problems fester. Unclear expectations that leave people guessing about what is actually wanted. Avoidance of accountability dressed up as autonomy. Bureaucracy that exists to protect the people who created it rather than to serve any useful organisational purpose.

None of these are hierarchy problems. They are behaviour problems. And removing the hierarchy does not fix them.

When management layers disappear without the capability to replace them, decision-making becomes diffuse. Responsibility blurs across teams who were not prepared for it. Stress increases as people try to carry weight they were never supported to handle. The people who thrived in the old structure — who had clear remits and appropriate responsibility for their level of experience — often struggle most.

I know someone who removed the layers of hierarchy in his own business, convinced it was the progressive move. People took on strategic and financial decisions that they had no context for — not because they were incapable, but because they lacked the experience, the information, and frankly, the desire to make those calls. It nearly cost him the business. Millions spent learning a lesson that a more careful question upfront might have avoided: what problem are we actually trying to solve?

What hierarchy is actually for

No one wants needless bureaucracy. Endless approval loops, opaque decision-making, and layers of management that exist only to justify their own existence are genuine problems — and they are one of the main reasons ideas fail to move toward value in organisations.

But hierarchy itself exists for reasons that are worth taking seriously.

Some decisions carry significant weight — financial, legal, reputational, human. Someone has to hold responsibility for budgets and risk. Someone has to navigate markets, regulation, and governance. Someone has to make decisions that affect livelihoods, not just tasks — and carry the accountability when those decisions turn out to be wrong.

Not everyone wants that responsibility. Not everyone should have it. And a functioning hierarchy — a well-designed one — is not about control. It is about ensuring that responsibility sits at the level where it can be held properly, with the experience, context, and authority to handle it.

It is also, when it works well, a development mechanism. A good hierarchy allows delegation to happen — which grows the people being delegated to. It creates succession — a visible path through which people develop their capability, take on more, and progress.

It provides different levels of perspective on the business, so that someone at the operational level is not also required to carry the strategic view, and vice versa. Different parts of the system become visible at different levels, and that distribution of attention is often genuinely useful rather than merely hierarchical.

Good hierarchy protects people from being forced into decisions they are not yet equipped — or willing — to make. It gives them room to get excellent at the level they are at before taking on more.

Behaviour before org charts

If an organisation feels suffocating or slow, the answer is rarely to redraw the org chart first.

A better starting point is always behaviour.

How are decisions made — and by whom, and with what information? How is responsibility held, and what happens when someone fails to hold it? Where does capability need to grow for the current structure to work properly? What conversations are being avoided, and why?

When the answers to those questions improve, many so-called hierarchy problems quietly dissolve. The approval loop that frustrated everyone turns out to have existed because nobody trusted the judgement of the person below — which is a capability or relationship problem, not a structural one. The layers that felt unnecessary turn out to have been doing real work that nobody noticed until they were gone.

Fix the behaviour first. Then, if a structural change still seems warranted, make it with clear eyes about what the structure was doing and what will replace it.

A more useful frame

Hierarchy is not inherently good or bad. It is a tool.

Used well, it creates clarity about who holds what responsibility, supports development through delegation, enables succession, and provides resilience — the organisation can absorb the departure of key people without collapsing because capability has been grown at multiple levels.

Used badly, it becomes bureaucracy and power hoarding — a way for people at the top to control rather than enable, and for those in the middle to protect their position rather than develop their people.

The real work is not removing structure. It is designing responsibility carefully, developing people so they can carry increasing amounts of it over time, and building the management capability that makes the structure worth having.

That is considerably harder than flattening an org chart. But it is also far more humane, and far more effective.

The problem is almost never hierarchy.
It is what people do inside it.