First we had skinny lattes, then skinny jeans now skinny organisations. It is no good just flattening the hierarchy you need to slim down and get rid of the middle management bulge. Taking out a whole tire of management may impress the board but what you really need to do is reduce the overall management head count. A new structure is a good start but the gains will be short lived if you don’t push ahead with tackling demarcations and removing duplication and of course streamlining processes.In reality this means voluntary redundancies and early retirements for the over 55’s, a short term freeze on external management recruitment whilst redeployment, voluntary redundancies and compulsory redundancies are used to cut at least 1 in 5 management posts.Better use of technology, new working practises and out sourcing of some services will reduce the total workforce so it is important to focus on the management ratio not simply the number of management posts.The result is a Leaner organisation it is also one that struggles with the loss of expertise ,has retained managers not because of their competence but based on how expensive it would be to get rid of them and has created a management structure where spans of responsibility have been dramatically increased. Managers are now responsible for services they have no background in and no knowledge of. Managerial expertise is valued over professional expertise. The trouble is most managers are ill equipped for their new role.This is not the Lean organisation promised by the management gurus or described in the academic books and articles on organisational development this is an uncomfortable, unattractive and over stretched Skinny organisation. My own experience was that from being a senior manager in social services following a management restructuring I became a manager with a portfolio of responsibilities ranging over residential and day care services for people with a learning disability, libraries, museums, registrars and coroners support. Put another way I was responsible for budgets and staffing in relation to disability, books, artefacts, births, deaths and marriages a range of services that had nothing in common. I was reliant on the professional expertise of those managing these services whilst at the same time cutting their posts. The size of services meant I could not know the detail, the range of services and my lack of background in them made me vulnerable if anything went wrong. I had my monthly budget reports, my quarterly performance reports and what my managers chose to tell me as my means of keeping on top of things.I also had high blood pressure. The difference between a Lean organisation and a Skinny one is in how comfortable managers are in not knowing the detail, how confident they are that their managers will tell them what they need to know, how aware they are of the impact their behaviour has on those around them and what happens when something goes wrong. Another way of putting this is, just because with some effort you can fit into a skinny pair of jeans doesn’t mean you should! Blair McPherson author of UnLearning management and Equipping managers for an uncertain future both published by Russell House. Follow Blair @blairmcpherson1
