Or was it British Telecom?
Removing layer upon layer of management to reduce costs and, over and above that, increase productivity.
The experience of the vanguard suggests it should be possible to double the ratio of employees to managers and administrators, from 4.7:1 to 10:1. Doing so would free up 12.5 million individuals for other work that is more creative and productive.
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Excess Management Is Costing the U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year
Spotter, Arthur the Cat.
I’m fascinated by the Handelsbanken example. Most organisations centralise power as they grow, removing autonomy from workers, and adding layer upon layer of rules and regulations. This is generally considered a good thing, like Henry Ford’s assembly line. I do wonder if the Swedish habit of honesty is a factor here. Would the same model work in Nigeria?
It certainly was for British Airways, which on the merger of BEA & BOAC had more managers than planes.
@JohnB..
Bloody amateurs! The Royal Navy has far more Admirals than ships.
“Doing so would free up 12.5 million individuals for other work that is more creative and productive.”
Surely being managers is proof they are incapable of creative and productive activities. If they were, they wouldn’t be managers in the first place.
It certainly applied at BP. On bureaucrat who crossed the line from Whitehall to Brittanic House (now Citypoint) in Moorgate said that the thing he loved about BP (before privatisation in 1979) was “BP did things in quintuplicate” and had layer-upon-layer of management to match.
Post privatisation those layers got whittled down, but a lot of work was simply sub-contracted to external companies, so the management layer remained far denser than it needed to be.
We still had far too many chiefs and far too few Indians when I worked there during the Lord Browne era, but there have been massive clearouts and redundancies since then.
@jgh – I suspect the unspoken caveat is that the 12.5 million individuals would be free…to work at other organisations where preferred stultifying bureaucracy, like Whitehall and it’s spidery network of QUANGO’s and fake charities.
Depends what you’re doing – I used to manage the day-to-day for 30 direct reports in the Navy which is pretty standard.
“In the organization of 12,000 associates, there are only three levels.” Compare with the Roman Catholic Church: under the semi-divine Pope (he’s infallible, you know) there are archbishops, bishops, and priests. (I don’t know how cardinals fit in – are they super-archbishops?)
Anyway, compared to armies, navies, civil services, and almost all companies of any size, it’s rather light in layers of management.
Or compare to the Kirk. Under the entirely divine Head – i.e. God – there are essentially only ministers and elders. That IS light. Its webpage declares “Church of Scotland government is organised on the basis of courts …
At a local level – the parish – the court is a kirk session. Kirk sessions … consist of elders presided over by a minister.
At district level, the court is a presbytery … consist[ing] of all the ministers in the district and an equal number of elders … There are 41 presbyteries across Scotland, England, Jerusalem, and International.
At national level, the court is the highest court of the Kirk, the General Assembly … consist[ing] of around 400 ministers, 400 elders … all representing the presbyteries.”
dearieme: Yep. The presbyteries in particular seem to be a total waste of space. My local church used to file letters from “121” (George Street, the Kirk’s head office) in the bin. (I’m told at one Session meeting, the minister solemnly read out a particularly petty bureacratic pronouncement from Edinburgh, paused for a moment, then concluded, “Now. How are we going to ignore that?”)
Unfortunately, that generation has died off, and the bureacrats’ word is now law. Let’s just say it’s not going well…
dearieme: not in my sect. Nae priests, nae bishops, nae hierarchy!
Surely this is a reverse Parkinson!