Hierarchical relationships are not bad per se and have advantages from an employee’s perspective. In this way, disagreements, conflicts and unpleasant decisions can generally be delegated to the manager. In a completely self-organized team, the individual team members must make all decisions themselves, even the unpleasant ones. Not everyone wants that.

Hierarchical relationships are usually clearly communicable and constant over time, which conveys security and stability. When employees criticize guidelines, this does not automatically address the existence of instructions. It could just as easily be a criticism of the content of the specification itself, but an instruction for action could very well be desirable – consciously or unconsciously.

There is a wide range of collaboration models between the two poles of hierarchy and self-organization. In any case, employees want authenticity. From our many years of experience in transformation projects, we know that employees have a strong “bullshit sensor” and that nothing is worse than incongruent messages between what is said and what is conveyed through daily actions.

Tip: Don’t delegate half-heartedly but pay particular attention to the strict implementation of newly established rules when changing patterns and increasing scope for action – for example as part of regular team retrospectives.

For (completely) self-organized teams, other forms of collaboration are necessary. Some borrow from Holacracy, Sociocracy 3.0 or similar, others cherry-pick or go their own way. All self-organized forms of organization share the characteristic of distributing decision-making authority, which would typically rest with a manager, among team members. Unlike the hierarchical model, this distribution is less concentrated and more fluid, involving different individuals rather than remaining with the same person(s).Therefore, for successful self-organization, an ongoing, efficient and transparent adaptation of the distribution of power must be an inherent part of the system.

Tip: Make decisions by consent instead of consensus: As long as team members do not have any serious objections, decisions made by individual team members are accepted.