The New York Times had a great article a few days ago with an interview with SunGard CEO on their flat organizational structure. A lot of the points really resonated with and reflected life at HubSpot. Though I may have not thought about this when looking for a job, I realize that the organizational structure - and seeking out a flat organization - can really impact my happiness level and personal growth. Some favorite snippits from the interview:
"Top-down organizations got started because the bosses either knew more or they had access to more information. None of that applies now. Everybody has access to identical amounts of information."
This typically gets reformulated at HubSpot in relation to the changing nature of learning and purchasing in the business world due to the Internet. Of course, the Internet puts information at everyone's fingertips. On top of that, it's the employees who are in the muck of things that really can understand the challenges of the business and their users and can come up with great solutions.
Conde discusses Yammer as their collaboration tool of choice, allowing them to distribute valuable information across the organization straight from users to every single employee.
At HubSpot, I see our wiki allowing for incredible conversations and a flattening of the organization. How better to participate in a conversation with our CEO or VP Engineering or Partner Program Manager if you work in Sales or Engineering or Customer Support? Our challenge now is getting all the new employees to embrace the wiki and feel comfortable enough to jump into these conversations.
"If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave. If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement."
Micromanagement stifles your top performers, and top performers will go where they can truly achieve. At HubSpot we talk about being cathedral builders - where everyone is contributing to this greater vision that is common to all of us. Not only does this make us excited and driven to achieve this goal, but also - in the absence of strict managers - we are all aligned towards the same, business-changing end goal. You open yourself up to creative solutions and new ideas to tackle your goals.
"My advice to young people is always, along the way, have a sales job."
I cringe at this at first, because I would hate to be in Sales. But I get the point here. At least in my interpretation, this is about being responsible for driving real business results and being able to articulate the value of what you're selling - whether it's a product or yourself - to a skeptic. Obviously the CEO of SunGard is likely to be a smart cookie, but he really does point out a lot of the truly important things to an organization - the people and their qualities that lead to success. Focusing on their intellectual curiosity and reasoning processes and writing ability, for example, shows that it's about getting the right ingredients as opposed to trying to reformulate a pre-packaged meal. It's very cool to see this coming out of such a huge organization from which you might expect something a little more traditional and up tight.
Read the full interview with SunGard CEO Cristobal Conde here.
