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DPR Construction had only 50 employees when Mike Humphrey began working there 32 years ago. At the time, the organization embraced a “flat” way of doing business — that is, where employees in all positions may be involved in decision-making, as opposed to the traditional “top-down” approach where top leadership is in charge of making decisions.
At first, the approach was relatively easy to maintain, but it began to require more intention as DPR grew into one of the largest commercial construction companies in North America, with some 10,000 employees and more than $9 billion in revenue.
Still, DPR has managed to maintain its flat character, and part of that success has been achieved by emphasizing roles, responsibilities and individual expertise instead of job titles and positions.
“We push power to the front lines because that's where everything’s happening,” said Humphrey. “So, we organize it like an upside-down pyramid, with the base at the top, where the most important people are making decisions. Then, it is the managers’ job to support the front lines, and the leaders’ job to support the managers.”
Despite this bottom-up way of operating, DPR has an org chart that looks as hierarchical as you might expect. The discrepancy begs the question of what “flattening” an organization really means and whether some version of this strategy can help other companies improve.
A Trade-off Between Flatter and Efficiency
Flattening an organization sounds desirable in theory but tends to be difficult, messy and time-consuming in practice. That’s because the key defining feature of increased flatness is including more people’s voices and perspectives in company strategy and operations.
Trey Coleman, currently serving as chief product officer at Raft, spent 24 years in the Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 2023. He made a point of finding methods of flattening systems within the highly hierarchical structure of the military. Those included expanding meetings to include tens or hundreds of people instead of a few, and always adding abundant CCs on emails. The goal of both approaches is to loop more people into the spaces where decisions are being made to raise awareness and participation in more areas.
“I didn't say it was more efficient; I said it was flatter,” he responded when asked whether such cumbersome methods would hamper a workplace’s efficiency.
He went on: “It's really hard to stay efficient when you have a flat organization because the lines just aren’t as neat and clean. But if I want the best results and the best ideas, and I want people to understand my intent — if I care about that more than I care about getting the thing done as quickly as possible — then I make that sacrifice.”
Humphrey agrees that flatter does not equal faster or easier: “In some ways, it makes things harder because it requires more communication. The flatter it gets and the more people you have, [the more] you need to be about really good communication.”
The motivation to communicate well is one great benefit of flattening, and there are many others that its proponents argue make the messiness of the approach worthwhile. These include reduction of bias, better surfacing and incorporation of diverse ideas, and more inclusive decisions. Anecdotally, it also makes workers happier.
“One of our core values is enjoyment, and we want people to be excited to come to work because they can see their potential within this organization,” said Humphrey. DPR has a very low attrition rate, and he believes it’s because the flattening of the organization has created a culture in which people feel valued and listened to.
Related Article: Building a Resilient Organization for Turbulent Times
How to Flatten an Organization
There is no one way to flatten an organization, just as there is no single way to structure one.
“Organizations are complex, with formal and informal structures and hierarchies of all kinds,” said Eero Vaara, professor of organizations and impact at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.
Yet, flattening any organization requires a simple calculus, he said: “Being willing to do two things: one is to increase transparency, and the other is to foster engagement.”
If flattening your organization sounds appealing, here are four ways to start.
1. Emphasize Roles and Responsibilities, Not Job Titles
Flatness in an organization does not necessarily mean lack of structure. It simply emphasizes how the functions of a job and the expertise of the job holder serve the organization, as opposed to how the job — or the person holding it — relates to others.
“I don’t think roles and responsibilities imply hierarchy,” said Coleman. “You can have roles and responsibilities in a very flat organization.”
2. Focus on Development
With the emphasis on job function and personal expertise comes an obligation to help workers become as useful and knowledgeable as possible, so they can contribute collaboratively at the peak of their abilities.
Humphrey posits that many workers learn 70% of what they need to know on the job, not in a training program. As a result, at DPR there is an explicit focus on learning on the job, including building development plans that guide workers in that effort.
“We’re focused on that 70% and your development plan,” he said. “What is your development plan? The vocabulary is different than ‘what’s my job?’ or ‘what’s my title?’”
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Related Article: How Leaders Can Build Stronger Teams Through Better Conversations
3. Implement the Right Reward Structure
Providing well-calibrated incentives can encourage flatter working relationships. While non-managers may be recognized and rewarded for their individual contributions to the work of a team, the reward structure should change for managerial and leadership positions to encourage collaborative planning and decision-making.
In a flatter organization, as a manager “you are now recognized for your ability to build teams and manage different functions within a team,” said Humphrey. “And then, if you continue growing into a leadership role, you are now measured by your ability to inspire people to take action.”
4. Open up Strategy Discussion
The ultimate in flattening is getting people in all roles involved in strategy, an “open strategy” approach that Vaara says is “a 180-degree departure from the idea that strategy is very hierarchical.”
The concept is that anyone can participate in or be engaged in strategic decision-making, within reasonable limits.
“I think open strategy can mean anything in terms of trying to open it up for people, involving new stakeholders, internal or external, to participate in one way or another,” said Vaara.
While a situation in which all organizational members fully participate in strategy-making can seem a bridge too far — “like a utopia,” per Vaara — the idea is that “you can approach it as opening … an opening strategy, which can be a much more meaningful thing in practice.”
Any approach to opening up elements of an organization — whether email communication or strategy-making — to more of its workers will help make it flatter. Doing so deliberately and with thoughtful methods can make an organization better — albeit likely a little messier.
