In many companies, if a designer excels, there is a high chance of being promoted "up" to a mid-level manager. In 37signals, the "upward" enterprising spirit is also recognized, but this does not mean that he can get a promotion, but can delve into the business and expand his knowledge to make himself a better designer. 37signals, a Chicago-based tech company with only 35 employees, generates millions of dollars in annual profits and has a very low turnover rate.
37signals has programmers but no CTO; designers but no creative director; and it has a separate customer support department but no department manager. Even as the company grows in size, not a single employee is not doing real work.
Yes, 37signals doesn't have a "middle level", but in fact, they have tried to promote a few people to the manager level in the past, and Fred found that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. A self-managing structure is often more effective than a situation where one person runs the entire department.
Initially, when the customer support department had just reached 3 people, 37signals had hired a manager to manage the team. His role is to check everyone's orders, pay attention to everyone's tone of voice, make sure customers get timely and appropriate responses, communicate with developers, communicate customer requests, and measure the overall performance of the customer support department. The manager sometimes jumps out to deal with certain orders, certain aspects of the problem, but his main responsibility is still to step back and improve the department.
This attempt at "middle management" was unsuccessful, and CEO Fred believes that the problem lies in what appears to be a very common and mature organizational structure - such a middle-level role is unnecessary. In traditional businesses, the "workers vs managers" structure makes it difficult for either side to understand the way the other sees things—the very origin of many corporate conflicts. At 37signals, employees rotate management responsibilities on a weekly basis so that everyone can empathize and empathize with the situation others are in.
If a person is designated to be responsible for putting the porridge into the bowl, but he himself is the last person to take the porridge, that is to say, he does not know and has no right to choose which bowl of porridge he will get in the end. The way to distribute the porridge is the fairest. 37signals ensures fairness and efficiency through this rotational management approach, which further increases customer satisfaction.
37signals founder Fred has always kept the company's hierarchy to a minimum. He didn't want to compromise the long-term morale of the entire team with the promise of a "managerial position" in exchange for temporary success. Long-term morale should make employees feel that "this is his last job." Although the company's profits are not "small" these days, Fred likes to look to small "mom and pop shops" for inspiration. This kind of "small shop" that has been opened for decades or even longer has the foresight that most startups today lack.
The famous organizational change leader Tom Peters once said: the middle has no future. The reason is very simple. In the era of globalized operation of companies, the traditional bureaucratic structure will greatly hinder the flow of information, thereby reducing the efficiency of enterprise operations. Therefore, the goal of process change is to be flat! As flattening becomes an ideal form for enterprises to pursue high performance, reducing the number of layers in the middle will become one of the trends in future organizational transformation.