Lynne Waldera: Of course, there is an alternative to middle management: intranet technology. Some of the best companies we looked at are using their intranets to funnel information to employees, enabling those staff members to make decisions. The companies that have the strongest intranets have the flattest organizations. In response to that observation, somebody said to me, That's obvious, because middle managers suck at delivering information. They just aren't good at it. They've never done it before. Why should we think that we can train them and get them to do it now? Why not channel all of this information into the flow of employees' daily lives so that they can access it?
That's not to diminish the value of strong, heroic leadership from the top. It's not an accident that Larry Ellison and John Chambers have the kind of leadership styles that they do. It takes a visionary leader to set the direction and turn the organization on a dime.
Mark Goldstein: You may have the vision, but as the CEO of a company, your responsibility is to be out of the office at least two days each week. You should be selling, strategizing, and speaking. That's why the most valuable people we have in our organization right now -- although admittedly, we're an organization of just 150 people at this point -- are the managers. This is especially true in the Valley, where our talent is young. The average employee age in our companies is about 27.
People look for leadership, but they can't always look to the CEO, because the CEO has other responsibilities. The vision needs to come from the CEO, but the in-the-trenches management needs to come from the managers. The thinning out of startups will allow us to hire some of these managers who may have been VPs and CEOs of other companies. They can help take us from 1,000 people to 2,500 people more easily.
George Anders (ganders@fastcompany.com) and Polly LaBarre (plabarre@fastcompany.com) are Fast Company senior editors.
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