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yes, exactly. the whole point of layers of management is to insulate upper managers from the decisions they make, particularly those that slight the customer or

yes, exactly. the whole point of layers of management is to insulate upper managers from the decisions they make, particularly those that slight the customer or the front-line worker. a more generous phrasing would be that insolation allows managers to take emotions out of a situation to make the most rational decisions for the business (and its shareholders). in any case, direct relationships are a big deal for social creatures like humans, from how you treat people to who gets the benefit of the doubt to who gets the juiciest resources, like the best jobs. we employ the ideal of the meritocracy as the polar counterweight to that tendency, to varying success.

musingsole 7y ago
> that isolation allows managers to take emotions out of a situation to make the most rational decisions for the business I know you're playing devil's advocate, but to be on the side of angels: that isolation doesn't promote more rational decisions, only decisions absent a perspective of the company. To the extent that low-level employees don't have valuable information for the business' success, the isolation does promote more rational thinking (where that extent is most often 0). I've never seen a situation where low-level employee wisdom was rightly quashed by boardroom decisions.
darkerside 7y ago
I think that's a side effect, not the primary reason for introducing layers of management. The real reason is, you just can't scale am organization without it. Managers are there for enforcing accountability. If directors have few enough reports to enforce accountability on their own, there is no need for a manager.
- clairity 7y ago
  adding management layers is just one way to solve the coordination problem caused by scaling (which you do because you think the business can become more profitable). you can also scale a business horizontally rather than vertically, but that doesn't have the property of shielding executives from their decisions, nor of centrally controlling information (which allows them to capture more of the value produced by the firm). vertical scaling is preferred by managers for these properties, not because it's how you must scale.
  - darkerside 7y ago
    You always scale horizontally first. At some point, having 15 managers, each with 10 direct reports, all reporting up to one director, is just not going to work. At least, not in any way I can see, but I'm interested to hear your ideas.
tbrownaw 7y ago
the whole point of layers of management is to insulate upper managers from the decisions they make When I've had layers of management inserted above the team I'm on, it's been because someone had too many direct reports and needed to add another someone to delegate part of their work to.

musingsole 7y ago

> that isolation allows managers to take emotions out of a situation to make the most rational decisions for the business I know you're playing devil's advocate, but to be on the side of angels: that isolation doesn't promote more rational decisions, only decisions absent a perspective of the company. To the extent that low-level employees don't have valuable information for the business' success, the isolation does promote more rational thinking (where that extent is most often 0). I've never seen a situation where low-level employee wisdom was rightly quashed by boardroom decisions.

darkerside 7y ago

I think that's a side effect, not the primary reason for introducing layers of management. The real reason is, you just can't scale am organization without it. Managers are there for enforcing accountability. If directors have few enough reports to enforce accountability on their own, there is no need for a manager.

clairity 7y ago
adding management layers is just one way to solve the coordination problem caused by scaling (which you do because you think the business can become more profitable). you can also scale a business horizontally rather than vertically, but that doesn't have the property of shielding executives from their decisions, nor of centrally controlling information (which allows them to capture more of the value produced by the firm). vertical scaling is preferred by managers for these properties, not because it's how you must scale.
- darkerside 7y ago
  You always scale horizontally first. At some point, having 15 managers, each with 10 direct reports, all reporting up to one director, is just not going to work. At least, not in any way I can see, but I'm interested to hear your ideas.

tbrownaw 7y ago

the whole point of layers of management is to insulate upper managers from the decisions they make When I've had layers of management inserted above the team I'm on, it's been because someone had too many direct reports and needed to add another someone to delegate part of their work to.