The magic of small start-up companies is in them being quick to respond, flexible and willing to take risks. However, when a company grows to a significant size it often loses these enticing characteristics and becomes sluggish, hierarchical, bureaucratic and dull. So how do you keep the magic of the small start-up, with the stability of a larger corporation? The secret is in whether your organisation is a spider or a starfish.

A spider is an eight-legged creature with one head. If this one head is cut off - the organism will die. In contrast, a star fish also has a number of legs but no one identifiable head. If any one of a starfish’s legs is cut off, the body will grow a new leg. In addition, the severed leg will grow a whole new body. This is because spiders are centralised creatures and star fish are decentralized, with every major organ replicated across each of its limbs.

Similarly, if your organisation remains highly centralized, with management and the office of the CEO at the centre of everything, it is acting like a spider. Organisations need to become more like the starfish and transfer more of the responsibility for change and decision making to the employees. Only in this way can an organisation retain the magic of its early days, stay focused on its goals, and release its staff to reach their full potential.

There are 3 good reasons for decentralising your organisation and transferring some responsibility for decision making away from management and the CEO to the employees:

1. Concentrating power within management and the office of the CEO drains power away from employees. The CEO is too far away from the everyday action of what is going on in the business to fully understand the challenges and complexities faced by staff. The staff who deal with real problems on the ground every day need to be empowered to make decisions.

2. The second benefit is speed. The speed of thought, of change and of implementation gets suffocated by too much hierarchy. Take away the hierarchy and the ability of staff to act speedily increases.

3. The third reason is knowledge. The complexity of the knowledge and service economies today is too great for management and the
CEO to possess on their own. Organisational leadership must be in the business of enabling the people who do have the knowledge to do what they are good at, rather than taking decisions using incomplete, imperfect and out-dated knowledge.

Each individual within the organisation needs to be equipped to take decisions, make changes and fully pursue their passions and creative talents within the workplace. Don’t let bureaucracy and hierarchy stifle the life out of your organisation, rather allow power to flow throughout the organisations, like through the limbs of a star fish.

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