Jon Barnes’ Post

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Adaptive Organisations Consultant, CEO Mentor & Public Speaker at JonBarnes.me

Keep your business small, perform big. ~ When small companies become medium sized companies, let's say past 10 people, the first thing they do is... hire middle management. And in my experience this is often unnecessary and has many downsides including: 💰 EXPENSIVE: Middle managers cost a lot, and you're business is small (one department I worked with, has saved £50k every year by not replacing their manager. I only worked with them 3months so it's a huge ROI) 🦋 LOST PERSONAL GROWTH: Middle management can take away responsibility from people on the frontline, which prevents them from growing and therefore contributing more to your business. This is effectively taking away the most effective L&D function in the business. 🐌 REDUCED BANDWIDTH: An extra layer of hierarchy can add extra bureaucracy, more bottlenecks, reduce decision making / processing speed and bandwidth 🦠 WEAKENED RESILIENCE: Adding management adds points of failure. Because people needn't take responsibility for management tasks, they shrink and even shirk and their motivation drops. The system doesn't take shared responsibility. And many more potentially issues I could cut different ways. The alternative I've implemented is 'Autonomous Teams' (https://buff.ly/3JsgmOs). In the past couple of years I've helped one business grow from 8 to 25 people without hiring any managers. They've avoid big salaries and have instead focussed on growing from the inside. Like a football club that has an awesome academy. The personal growth has been impressive, the team cohesion has been lovely to see and the amount of initiative and responsibility has been wonderful. Rather than using middle management as a sticking plaster, they're treat root causes by having difficult conversations, building an adult <> adult culture, creating a feedback culture and putting in places processes so the system can self-regulate. If you're a small business growing, consider not jumping to the middle management route. I'm not saying it's never needed, but I am saying it can at the very least be postponed a long long time with many other benefits and nowhere near the cost. If you're interested to find out more, ask questions in the comments or even put 30mins directly in my calendar: https://buff.ly/3TUEAFu Best, Jon #autonomy #leadership #culture #management

30mins - Jon Barnes

30mins - Jon Barnes

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