Management is the greatest inefficiency in any organisation.
Six years ago Gary Hamel wrote a hugely influential piece called First, Let’s Fire All the Managers.
It outlined the huge inefficiency tax that management layers over an organisation:
As an organisation grows you need more managers, so the costs of management rise in both absolute and relative terms.
Unchecked hierarchy increases the risk of large, calamitous decisions. As decisions get bigger, the ranks of those able to challenge the decision maker get smaller.
A multitiered management structure means more approval layers and slower response.
As you narrow an individual’s scope of authority, you shrink the incentive to dream, imagine, and contribute.
The power to kill or modify a new idea is often vested in a single person, whose parochial interests may skew decisions.
Read more: https://paulitaylor.com/2017/06/25/why-do-we-still-need-managers/