Flat Organizational Structure: The Advice Process (Holocracy)
Guide to Implementing the Advice Process/Holacracy of Decision-Making
Why Organizations Embrace Flat Structures
Many teams choose a flat organizational structure or near-flat structure to speed decisions, boost engagement, and tap into everyone’s expertise. By removing layers of management, small businesses and startups gain agility—anyone can see an emerging problem, flag it, and correct it. This decentralization often yields higher job satisfaction and a stronger sense of ownership across the team. According to Business.com, flat models are most common in startups and small businesses that need to move fast and stay adaptable. Forbes data shows that tech and digital-service firms lead the way in using flat structures to to encourage innovation and responsiveness.
Even large players have flirted with flatness. Meta, Alphabet, and FedEx have all experimented with eliminating middle layers - although not fully. Often, pilots coexist alongside more traditional hierarchies. When flat experiments show signs of distress or failing, organizations reintroduce former management hierarchy to restore clarity and accountability.
Well-known organizations have tried flatness — Zappos’s Holacracy, Cisco’s networked teams, IBM’s agile pods, and Walmart’s self-organizing projects— and ultimately shifted back toward more defined leadership roles. Each of these companies discovered that as scale and regulatory demands grow, some degree of hierarchy becomes unavoidable. Therefore, embracing a flat ethos demands forward-thinking in anticipation of organizational growth and , responding to both internal and external complexity.
This Tool is For Leaders Using the Advice Process of Team Decision-Making:
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- Ideal for: Teams of 3–15 where roles are clear but not rigid
- Why it works: Encourages autonomy while surfacing relational impact and knowledge gaps
- Failure risks: Can collapse into performative consultation if advice is ignored or tokenized
- Key Characteristic of the Advice Process: Anyone can make a decision, but they must seek input from those affected and those with expertise.
- Additional note: Requires cultural norms around feedback and boundaries to avoid decision fatigue
Choosing the Right Advisor: 4 Qualities to Look For
As your organization nurtures flat life ideals, you may decide to partner with an advisor to help your team overcome recurring problems or in anticipation of inevitable complexity. When you do, seek these traits:
- Systems Expertise
Look for someone who can diagnose your unique structural gaps, design lightweight convening rituals, and iterate frameworks as your team grows. - Clarity & Accessibility
Your advisor should translate dense theory into simple guides and playbooks that everyone on your team can use without jargon or gatekeeping. - Cultural Stewardship
They must foreground psychological safety, establish norms for principled dissent and repair, and prevent tokenism through rotating roles and shared facilitation. - Iterative Mindset
Choose a partner committed to continuous reflection—embedding regular retrospectives, transparent communication, and accountability practices that honor your flat-life values.
An advisor with these qualities—grounded in systems thinking, cultural nuance, and willing to engage the iterative process to make sure your team commits to processes that reflect its value for flat organizational structure and balances autonomy with just enough structure to thrive.