Think Bridges, Not Towers.
June 27, 2021
Get Flat, Not Fat…Organizational Models Need to Be Structurally Sound and Sustainable.
A tower has a high center of gravity.
It can fall or can be made unstable.
A bridge, on the other hand, is low, flat, and can bear weight with the properly designed span; it can support lots of traffic.
It’s much easier to cross a bridge than to climb a tower.
Think about a lean organization as a bridge; think about an overly layered bureaucratic organization as a tower.
Your company can’t generate profit when it is carrying unnecessary layers of staff, a large executive team, and simply can’t sustain layers of people who fall into the SG&A category (sales, general, admin — bottom half of the income statement); this is overhead, and not revenue-generating direct or indirect costs (top half of the income statement, before gross margin).
It’s like playing Jenga with your P&L and Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash Flows. The exceedingly layered structure, or worse, the upside down pyramid, is very hard to support and balance.
Get flat, not fat.
Think bridge, not tower.
Understand your span of control, and match the resources in your organization with the customer needs and generation of revenue.
Your customers won’t reward you for the size of your company or be thrilled with the fact that your SVP or EVP has a VP has an AVP who supervises a Director who supervises a Manager who oversees a clerk and an admin. Those days are gone.
And, if you are operating with that kind of structure, well, friend, you’re in trouble. You just don’t know it yet.
Your customers will reward you for being the low cost provider (while maintaining acceptable and consistent quality of course) of what they need.
Customers and clients don’t want or need to subsidize inefficiency.
Ensure your organization is lean, responsive, strong, and is built around the needs and wants of external stakeholders and customers, not the inward focus of kingdom building and layered bureacracy.
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