Look at the typical organizational chart. It’s a pyramid. A hierarchy.
The “lowest levels” in this hierarchy-pyramid are the workers who serve the customers, make the products, deliver the services, and so on. Nobel prizewinner Herbert Simon calls these workers operatives. They are the hands-on workers who build the value that justifies the organization’s existence.
The “highest levels” in this hierarchy-pyramid are the workers who support and coordinate the efforts of the “lowest level” workers. Simon says these workers are all part of the organization’s non-operative staff. Non-operatives don’t actually do the direct work that delivers product and service to the customer. They support and coordinate that work. The only reason a non-operative employee has a job is because they support and/or coordinate the efforts of the operative staffer. Nevertheless, in the hiearchy, they are “higher,” which conveys a sense of increased importance.
The problem with the hierarchy idea is it forces us to think high-low. In so doing, it diminishes the value of the operative workers in the organization. The word hierarchy originated in Medieval Latin and means “ranked division of angels.” Hier-archy comes from the words heiros , meaning “sacred,” and arkhein , meaning “to rule.” So the word “hierarchy” conveys the idea of a ranked order of sacred rulers.
Some company execs have tried to change this by inverting the pyramid, putting the managers under the workers. The inverted hierarchy is a good way to show that the direct workers are valuable, but it still carries the high-low idea. It compares one rank with another, instead of showing how all the parts work together to deliver value to a customer.
It’s time to scrap low-high thinking for in-out thinking. Instead of hierarchy, innerarchy. In an innerarchy, the operatives aren’t low and the non-operatives high. The operatives are the outside of the organization, and the non-operatives are the inside of the organization, like a nectarine’s sweet is on the outside and the pit is in the middle. I explain this idea in more detail in a recent post titled Nectarines and Organizations.
