Navigating Career Growth in Flat Organizations: Is Promotion Still Key?

More organizations nowadays are becoming less hierarchical. To be more competitive and easier to manage employees, organization structures are becoming flatter. There is not much opportunity for promotion or progress to the higher ranking.

How do you think careers should be developed in this type of environment? Do you still believe that promotion is the only way to advance in a career?

Thanks... :?

Hello,

Flat organization is something we ape from the West. No, there is nothing wrong about it, if it is relevant to your industry/country culture. Notwithstanding the fact that many free countries also continue to copy the West, especially as far as Management Practices are concerned. (I am aware of the Japanese management techniques that are being followed to great advantage by many countries.)

Flat organizations rest on the premise of maturity and competence, where "extracting work performance" is NOT as difficult as in the Orient. Whether it is a question of political governance or corporate governance, the third world (or shall we say developing) countries find "command and obedience" form to be most effective. This form works best in elaborate hierarchies and not in flat hierarchies. But that is another matter really.

For working persons, regardless of the kind of organization he/she works for, growth has perhaps two dimensions (at least in this context): Money or Knowledge, Competence, Professional growth. This is an individual specific choice. If Money is your aim, the kind of hierarchy does not matter much, but if your aim is Knowledge, Competence, and professional growth, then perhaps the flat hierarchy is more suited as it focuses on your skills to ensure performance without much support from the hierarchy.

The core thrust in your question, to me, was what kind of growth should one aim at and for myself, I answer it as Professional growth. Growth along a hierarchy is limited to that one organization and may not be universal to all organizations, but professional growth facilitates permanency of acceptance across the spectrum of industry/organizations.

Maybe we should take this discussion further!

Regards,

Samvedan

July 9, 2007

Even in flatter organizations, there are a lot of departments/groups, each specializing in some particular aspect of the organization's value-add. What is important is to learn the various specialties before one can jump to the next level - if we mean that by the career growth! However, each horizontal shift is a career growth in disguise.

The money/salary continues to increase these days due to a lack of talent supply, not because everyone is performing extremely well. To ensure that one continues to add value and is kept on the rolls, organizations encourage multitasking at lower levels. The basic idea is that the individual develops a good feel for the various aspects of work done by the organization and is then expected to become a good supervisor, handling multiple groups required for a flat organization. Such individuals are respected by the staff for their knowledge and understanding.

I have worked in flat as well as bureaucratic multi-tier organizations. The hierarchy of the bureaucratic organizations leads to too many supervisors (egos) doing the work!

VK