Dismantling Hierarchies: Challenges and Strategies

Rigid hierarchical team designs seem to have fallen out of favour with many contemporary organisations. But making the switch to a decentralised approach, where authority is more evenly distributed between team members instead of concentrated among a few senior leaders, is by no means easy.

In this podcast, Michael Y. Lee, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, explains the difficulties of dismantling organisational hierarchies. He unpacks the reasons why firms can fail in their bids to jettison hierarchies and suggests two key practices they can adopt to set themselves up for success.