{"id":3532,"date":"2024-09-27T08:37:38","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T07:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/?p=3532"},"modified":"2025-01-24T12:16:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T11:16:30","slug":"work-design-and-less-hierarchical-organizing-in-global-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/2024\/09\/27\/work-design-and-less-hierarchical-organizing-in-global-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Work design and less-hierarchical organizing in global companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By 2022, German athletic apparel and footwear manufacturer Adidas seemed to have lost its way. External criticism pressured the company to break its lucrative Yeezy collaboration with divisive celebrity Kanye West after the rapper\u2019s increasingly inflammatory public comments. The company was burning money, losing almost $800 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. And it had become bureaucratic and complacent<\/a>. With its back against the wall, Adidas appointed Bj\u00f8rn Gulden, a former employee who had turned around Adidas\u2019 rival Puma over the previous decade, as their new CEO.<\/p>\n

When the Norwegian took over the helm of Adidas in January 2023, he realized that many things weren\u2019t working as they should. Risk aversion and copious layers of management had paralyzed decision-making and stifled innovation for an iconic brand known for designing and selling hugely popular sports fashion across the globe. Employees didn\u2019t seem to speak up anymore or, as the unravelling of the Yeezy partnership showed, weren\u2019t heard<\/a>. Gulden set out to streamline reporting lines to accelerate decision-making and shape a more agile culture. To illustrate his sincerity, he adopted an unorthodox approach: he handed over his personal phone number to all 60,000 of his employees. He wanted Adidas staff to understand they could shrink hierarchical distance and share ideas and concerns directly with management. Remarkably, and fully consistent with his decision, Gulden also responded<\/a> to the hundreds of calls and texts he received. The message was clear: Adidas was moving towards a flatter, more decentralized organizational structure, thereby increasing management\u2019s proximity to the rank-and-file.<\/p>\n

Gulden\u2019s approach seemed to have returned Adidas to a path of recovery: Adidas\u2019 share price bounced back by 40% over the first 12 months of his tenure<\/a>. The need to break up entrenched hierarchical structures and simplify reporting lines to revive agility and speed may seem terribly obvious during times of crisis. And yet, injecting more decentralized decision-making and empowered leadership shouldn\u2019t only be a last resort. It is a proactive design choice to future-proof organizations and ensure they can navigate their global competitive landscape and, importantly, attract the best talent.<\/p>\n

To understand how essential this choice is, consider how graduates\u2019 employer preferences have changed over the years. When I started as a faculty member at IESE Business School almost two decades ago, most MBA graduates would either target large consulting and banking employers or land a cherished job at a leading global corporation. While IESE had an entrepreneurship program, very few MBA students were bold enough to envision a new venture upon their graduation. Fast-forward a few years, and the school\u2019s summer entrepreneurship program has been oversubscribed. Rather than accepting cushy offers from established companies, an increasing number of graduates are willing to go it alone or work in small scale-up companies. While advances in technology and the financing landscape have certainly reduced the costs of starting a business, the decision to build a venture from scratch instead of learning the ropes in a successful organization is still the riskier option.<\/p>\n

There are different reasons for these shifts, but one message becomes increasingly palpable: Many of the most talented young professionals don\u2019t want to work in established companies anymore because their organizational systems and their ways of working seem antiquated and unattractive. It is telling that the growing number of start-ups and scale-ups that have populated the corporate landscape across different sectors are actively experimenting with new forms of work design<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If established global organizations want to regain their access to top talent, they will need to learn from these innovative approaches to shrink hierarchical distance, decentralize structures and craft greater proximity to its workforce. Sharing your personal phone number with all staff is a powerful symbolic act to break entrenched structures\u2014but thriving in the new world of work will require stronger medicine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By 2022, German athletic apparel and footwear manufacturer Adidas seemed to have lost its way. External criticism pressured the company to break its lucrative Yeezy collaboration with divisive celebrity Kanye West after the rapper\u2019s increasingly inflammatory public comments. The company was burning money, losing almost $800 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. And it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":3533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18330,14094],"tags":[110692,110691,110601],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views-and-news-about-expatriates","category-featured","tag-empowerment","tag-hierarchy","tag-work-design","megacategoria-mc-leadership-and-people-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3535,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions\/3535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}