By Sam Robinson
A year ago, Bayer moved to a “self-directed” teams model, cutting 5,500 management positions in hope of reduced overheads and increased value creation. The financial results have been negative in the short term, and the long term results we of course are yet to see. Here’s an analysis from Chris Westfall in Forbes: Cutting Middle Management: Bayer’s Costly Experiment One Year Later.
My takeaway from reading about this – keeping in mind I’m not familiar with the intricacies of what Bayer has done here beyond what’s in this article – is that we generally don’t have a shared language about organisations and in that vacuum the default language is confusing and “doona-like” (aka able to cover up the mess), e.g. what does “self-directed” really mean? What does “bureaucratic” really mean?
It seems to me that Bayer’s approach is management populism: self-directed is “good”, bureaucratic is “bad”. Language is critical here because it reveals the thinking (or lack thereof) and is also a conduit of thinking between people.
Does this language just allow us to avoid difficult analysis and resort instead to our popular prejudices? Another question: if self-directed is good, what’s the point of a board or a CEO?
Rather than the populist stuff, what would be better is for Bayer to analyse: What’s the work? What’s needed to do that work? There are tricky questions after this like optimum span of control if you are introducing managerial leaders to the mix, level of complexity and so on… But beginning with the work itself has to be the best way to start.
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