Most small business owners in the flooring industry have never worked for a Fortune 500 company. I have, and my experiences working at UPS, Target and Grainger, helped me see what management systems were supposed to look like, how information should be disseminated throughout a company, and what a proper training program looks like to ensure the best possible new hire success.
These companies have a structure where you clearly know your place within the company and what is expected of you. Any one of these companies would have an organizational chart that started out at the top and put the CEO there, then under them the other C-level executives, followed by vice presidents and regional managers, until you got down to the employees that unload trucks, sweep floors or stock the shelves.
The traditional way of looking at this company organizational chart is that it is built as a pyramid with all of the low-level employees making up the base and slowly rising to the capstone, which is the CEO. This is great for organization and helps people see where they land in the hierarchy, but it also tends to lead to a train of thought that the person at the top is the most important and the people at the base are the least important.
When the pyramid is built with a wide foundation and grows slowly upward, taking a piece out of the bottom doesn’t affect it a whole lot. Even taking a piece out of the middle doesn’t affect it a whole lot. The entire thing still stands and functions as it should for the most part.
If this is how your business is running, then I congratulate you. You are absolutely killing it! I don’t believe most businesses are running this smoothly, and I want to look at turning this concept on its head. Not only do I believe it will give you a more efficient business, but I also believe it will create a better culture and help you ensure longevity by encouraging better promotion habits from within.
A New Perspective
I propose you take your organization chart and flip it so that your CEO is now the base of your company and all of your entry-level employees are on top. Before we truly start getting into this perspective shift though, I want to add one more element. Let’s create a block that represents your company and put it underneath the CEO. The company must come first or there is nothing to protect. Everything rests on your company succeeding.
My buddy Trask Bergerson always tells the story of how their family tile business is to be treated as the Golden Goose. If you had a goose that laid golden eggs, would you not protect it at all costs and make sure that it continued to produce golden eggs for you? Your company is your golden goose, and its needs should be first. You may own your company, but you are not your company. You are merely one piece of it. The decisions you make on behalf of your company need to have the company's best interests at heart, not yours. Sometimes your interests may align and sometimes they may not, but don’t go sabotaging your golden goose.
When you flip the org chart upside down and force it to balance with a focus that is on the company, then there has to be a clear message to keep all components in check so that balance is maintained. You can much more easily see how communication from the leadership through to the top of the pyramid matters now. If the pieces at the top with the “lowest” job functions cannot stay on task and know why and what they are doing, they will throw the entire company out of whack. When you look at the pyramid in the traditional form, this would not look like a big problem as the “wide and strong” base shows no flaws, when in fact there are many.
We have every employee in our company balancing on top of the company. If I pull a block from the outsides, there is a much higher chance that the pyramid falls apart now. If I grab a block towards the bottom, there is an even higher chance of it falling apart. The people most at risk of getting hurt are those at the top. You have to empower the entry level employees and keep them propped up to be successful. Only when the visionary of the company is able to clearly lead, communicate and delegate can they properly balance the company on their shoulders.
Out with the Old, in with the New—Structure
Traditionally, we look at the people higher up the org chart as having more authority and control. By putting our entry-level employee up top, we challenge this idea and are looking to find ways to empower them to be successful. We can also consider how decision-making and new ideas can be important coming from these employees that are on the front line.
If the low-level employees of a department store do not show up, then that store cannot function. There is no one to run the registers, no one to unload trucks and stock shelves, and no one to clean the store. There may be management in place to hold people accountable, go over sales numbers, figure out demographics, and many other high-level tasks which are important but the things that generate the revenue are not happening.
These entry-level employees are the life blood of the business. By letting these employees know their importance and how much impact they can have on the company, what kind of opportunities lie ahead for them, and how they can influence the culture of the company is very important.
The key here is that we start finding ways to empower our entry-level employees and get them to buy in to a complete system that we have for success. At the very least, help them see how great the company is and that as long as they are here, we want to invest in them to make them the best version of themselves possible. Not everyone is going to stick around, but we should, at a minimum, be leaving people better than we found them, not worse.
Communication is Key
Communication breakdowns often apply to small companies. Employees may feel that they have multiple bosses, not know who their actual boss is, or just that management doesn’t listen to their concerns. There may even be a breakdown in getting great ideas up the chain because you are not designed for it.
This new perspective on your org chart can help facilitate you seeing new ways to design your communication structures. Not only do you need the vision to go from the bottom up as previously discussed, but you need to get feedback from the top to the bottom.
There may be some really easy fixes in your company and by talking with those employees at the top of the pyramid now, they can inform you of how they spend their days and what difficulties they are having. That information can easily be assessed and integrated when there are actual changes to make. Perhaps they know of tools or equipment that would be worth an investment. Perhaps the daily expectations need to be adapted or even your processes can be changed to remove a step that is redundant or not super clear.
Systems and Processes
Clearly one person cannot keep the entire pyramid balancing. This is why we need the systems and processes. The CEO must depend on his management team to get the directions of the vision and goals out there. The teams all need to communicate so that the CEO can focus on the vision and mission.
He can only balance the pyramid with the quality of information he is receiving about progress and bottlenecks. It’s not that he can’t do his job, but the more unstable the pyramid becomes, the more he wastes time putting out fires instead of steering the ship and making sure it is headed where he wants it. He has to let go of the control and trust others to perform their duties as dictated. When the upper management does the same with their teams, the pyramid begins to become stable.
Promote From Within
I want to look at how this upside-down structure can help you promote from within. Your new communication structures should also help you identify key talent that has the skills, traits and values that you would like in management positions.
Being able to pull a quality employee down into the triangle to strengthen it so that you are running more smoothly will continue to keep that balancing act running smoothly. You will more clearly see who is fitting in and succeeding with the correct skills instead of just basing it off of seniority or numbers. The leader may not be the most senior or experienced person in the division, but they can easily be the right fit to promote to a higher job role in order to keep that team functioning at a high level. As you pull people down the triangle, then you have a bunch of movements happening at once to keep it all balanced and fill in the gaps. The way it all has to flow becomes much more apparent and necessary.
Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
In order to grow your company, you must first be willing to admit you don’t know everything. Then, you must be willing to get uncomfortable and grow. Sometimes that will be by considering alternative views and untraditional viewpoints.
Some of the biggest changes you can make to your company may come from these viewpoints, but that’s what makes them awesome. Most people dismiss them or claim to know it all. I’d much rather run the exercise of learning something new, hearing it out and deciding if it is a good fit based on an informed decision.
Don’t ever forget that sometimes the most obvious answer may come from just flipping a piece of paper upside down and looking at things from a different perspective.
Want to learn more? I will be presenting on this topic at The International Surface Event on Wednesday, January 24, 2024.
