It may be an offshoot of my own personal resistance to authority in the workplace, but I have never really subscribed to an especially hierarchical structure in our company. In my pre-C.E.O. days, I was always trying to position myself as independently as possible, making my own hours, avoiding time slots where I would be subjected to a lot of management meetings, even talking myself into a pretty comfortable “work-from-home” schedule at one point. This may sound incredibly clever and lazy, but in truth, I just wasn’t a big fan of hierarchies that were designed to squeeze as many productive hours out of its employees as possible, with the assumption I, the employee, needed that structure to be productive. At the end of the day, despite my little rebellions, I was able to get all of my work done–possibly more than I would have otherwise.
So when I found my way into entrepreneurship, I wasn’t especially surprised when the schedule and flexibility suited me very well. Now that I am the big boss lady of course I adhere to the 9-5 + schedule, because honestly if I didn’t I’d never catch up. Outside of my being the overarching “boss” however, I try to avoid burdening our staff with unnecessary bureaucracy within the company itself.
At a recent meeting with prospective clients, I was asked about our company structure. While we have members of the team who I would call “key players” namely due to their experience and long-term knowledge of the company, we are each masters of our domain in many respects, which is precisely how I answered the question. Our “hierarchy” is based on knowledge of what we do, and together, those who know more or less about a particular subject do not represent a stereotypical “ladder.” At least in our cozy Salem office, our varied skills and expertise represent degrees of knowledge in many fields of this industry.
In fact holding the keys to specialized knowledge on the team, while it may make the company especially reliant on that one person, doesn’t always make for the best quality of working life. If you’re the only one who can install Facebook Connect on a social network, guess what? Every time we need that to happen (which is often), it falls on your lap! In fact when team members start exhibiting burn-out or verbalize their desire to work on different types of projects, which I fully understand, I often encourage them to share their know-how with others in office to lighten the load. If you teach three other people how to perform the task, then next time it needs to be done, there’s only a 25% (versus 100%) chance that I’ll assign it to you.
This general understanding cultivates an office mindset centered around mentorship and teamwork, that again, just doesn’t gel very well with answering to higher level managers who may or may not actually know “more” about an area of development than you do. We learn from each other, brainstorm and plan projects as a team, and together represent a motley crew of pretty knowledgeable, talented and friendly humans who enjoy geeking it out on social network software every day. Within our small company, this works.
There’s not much answering to or appealing to “the man.” Even I am willing to admit when I may not know the best course of action on a particular subject and will look to the other experts on the team for advice and their professional two cents. This round table method fosters respects for everyone under the umbrella of the company, without any preconceptions of where their position falls on the totem pole. Go team!
