"I was all for de-layering and flattening organizations. Today I'd flatten them even more. Some companies are still too hierarchical.
Being lean means a lot more than simply allocating resoureces in a highly efficient manner, although it definitely includes that.
As Welch talks about here, lean is also connected to the layers in an organization. The reason why layers can be enemies of any business are because they obstruct the flow of information that is crucial to success in today's business climate.
It's the holding of and hoarding of information that can cause the failure of a company. Many insecure people do it in management for the very reason that they feel threatened by sharing of information that they think will undermine their position. (If everybody knows it what use am I?)
What businesses can do to combat this is reward the behavior of sharing. Whenever significant things are communicated in a timely manner among our people, it should be somehow trumpeted across the organization as a heroic thing that was done. People love recognition almost more than anything else. If you reward important communication, our people will respond by sharing even more.
Our people need to know any and all information that concerns the company and expectations of them. Anything that will help and improve performance should never be considered for what would be considered the special or elite. We want all our people to be special or elite.
There's nothing more disempowering, discouraging and frustrating then for our people to find out that some within our organization were communicated to about important matters that they were left out of the loop on. Lack of communication can speak louder than the actual communication itself. We need to continually work on improving our communication across our organizations as a key part of our business strategies. Welch was a master at this and it is one of the key reasons what he wanted was embedded within General Electric (GE) far beyond the time he was no longer there.
Other Jack Welch Resources:
Jack Welch's advice to MIT Sloan students
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