16 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW FALL 2019 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU
structure. In practice, this means that they
put much more effort into coordinating
how people work together than other
companies. They formalize role descrip-
tions and onboarding better, and they’re
more intentional and specific in their re-
cruiting and hiring. For example, they’ll
do interviews through Slack to test inde-
pendence and communication virtually.
They say this makes them better at navi-
gating the people side of business largely
because the remote workforce is utterly
intentional about the way interactions are
structured.
But even though the workers are account-
able to someone, they can still retain
decision control in their areas of expertise
because the company has clear values that
guide how to make decisions. That’s the
thing: Hierarchy can go hand in hand
with autonomy. It doesn’t have to be one
or the other.
What does your recent research say about
how hierarchy works or doesn’t work in an
office environment?
GREER: Research has generally historically
focused on the benefits of hierarchy. The
core assumption, drawn from animal be-
havior, was that hierarchy was a natural
way to organize people, that if one person
was dominant, others would be more sub-
missive. The research assumes that people
find hierarchy comfortable and seek it out
in times of crisis. My research challenges
the view that hierarchy is always good by
showing that it can lead to inequities and
conflicts within teams. One of the prob-
lems is that the structure it provides isn’t
always the right one, in both the form of
structure and the context in which it is
applied. For example, people aren’t always
happy about how they’re ranked, and
there can be power struggles and turmoil
around roles. In some contexts, like cre-
ative brainstorming, hierarchy just gets
in the way and fosters competition rather
than collaboration.
How does that kind of conflict affect team
performance?
GREER: In the 2018 paper in the Journal of
Applied Psychology, my coauthors and I
showed that on average, hierarchy causes
power struggles and personal conflicts and
can thereby undermine team performance.
In other research, we found that 70% of the
time peer disputes turned into personal
conflicts and power struggles.^2 This was
really bad for the teams’ productivity as
well as for the employees’ happiness.Given the potential problems, what can
companies do?
GREER: Managers need to be smarter about
how they use hierarchy. Good leaders know
how to flex — to use hierarchy to get things
done but also to flatten the organization
when they want workers to be creative. The
Navy SEALs have an excellent approach:
When they’re on the ground, there’s a clear
chain of command. If their commander
says, “Get out now,” there’s no playingdevil’s advocate — no one argues. You
listen and you fall into rank.
But once they go back to the base to
debrief, Navy SEALs literally take their
stripes off at the door. When they sit down,
everybody’s equal and has a voice. This is
important because one person on the team
might have noticed something really critical
that nobody else saw, which could inform
their plans for the next assignment. So they
flatten out; they share ideas. Then they go
back outside, put on their stripes and uni-
forms, and literally fall into rank again.
I spent the last half year or so studying
startups to see if there were companies that
had effective ways of flexing as well. These
were early-stage tech companies, represent-
ing both B2B and B2C business models.
Many of them just accepted hierarchy,
while others were resigned to being flat and
chaotic. But some of the best-managed
companies were able to flex the hierarchy
fluidly. Day to day and meeting to meeting,
I saw managers who could make the team
hierarchical but also flatten it when they
needed to. I think realizing how to manage
that duality — and allow for autonomy —
is at the heart of this. At the end of the day
there needs to be a leader, but it doesn’t
mean every interaction is hierarchical.Are there special skills managers need to
learn?
GREER: Companies are realizing that to do
hierarchy well, they really need to invest in
leadership development. Even startups re-
alize that leadership is a set of behavioral
tools that can be learned.
A lot of the companies are also experi-
menting with different types of structures,
where project teams are flatter but report reg-
ularly to a panel of internal company advisers
(as opposed to leaders). The trouble is that a
lot of these experiments are not data driven.
They don’t collect large-scale data to see
whether the infrastructure actually works.
One experiment that has received a fair
amount of exposure is known as holacracy.Why Teams Still Need Leaders (Continued from page 15)
“ The Navy SEALs have
an excellent approach:
On the ground,
there’s a clear chain
of command. ... But
when they sit down
to debrief, everybody’s
equal and has a voice.”
— LINDY GREERFRONTIERS