Creating Liberatory Hierarchy

Hierarchy is Dead. Long Live Hierarchy - Part 4

The organizational hierarchies that pervade many nonprofit and for-profit organizations are deeply problematic both morally and tactically. Yet, our experience helping hundreds of organizations align their structure, operations, and strategy with their values, has led us to a seemingly heretical conclusion:

Hierarchy is actually an essential component of an effective organization. 

We steward groups through the process of dismantling oppressive hierarchies and teach them the precision and discernment necessary to create liberating, interdependent hierarchies. 

In this series, we’ve discussed 5 types of hierarchy: Tactical, Strategy, Policy, Livelihood, and Cultural. 

We’ve outlined the ways that all of these hierarchies are helpful, maybe even necessary to keep organizations functioning well. We’ve also highlighted some of the pitfalls particular to each type. But what actually causes these interdependent hierarchies to become oppressive? 

Hierarchy becomes destructive when every type is collapsed into one. And that is the case in most of the organizational models that we have inherited.

For example, someone might have a boss who sets the strategy, delegates the tasks, has the final word about organizational policy, and determines what people are paid. This stagnant situation in which one person always has multiple forms of power over another and the roles are never reversed sets us up for all kinds of problems.

For instance, in the example of a collapsed hierarchy above, it becomes really hard for someone to self-advocate or challenge the boss on anything. Some may want to push back against the boss’s strategy decision, but they know they run the risk of getting worse assignments and being denied promotions. This harms people emotionally and makes it harder for the organization to harness the collective wisdom and leadership of all members.

But imagine if there was one person who had the final say on pay, another on strategy, and a small group who had the final say about task assignments. We would still have the clarity and alignment created by hierarchy, but we would be in an entirely different relational space. Everyone would be deferring to each other’s authority about different things. And the fact that everyone both gives and receives deference encourages them to learn how to hold their authority well. There is no one who is always in a position of power over the others. In this way, the organization starts to work like a flock of geese–different people temporarily inhabiting positions atop various hierarchies, always knowing that their position is temporary and contextual.

Where Does Authority Live?

An important part of creating and maintaining liberating, interdependent hierarchies is attuning to where authority lives. There are four locations where hierarchical authority can reside: in a person, role, team, or the whole.

When hierarchical authority resides in a person, it means that the group defers to a specific individual. For example, “Jose sets the strategy.” This type of authority is actually fairly rare. It usually shows up with founders or people with long tenure at organizations, particularly when those organizations do not have a clear structure.

Authority more often resides in roles. For example, “The Executive Director sets the strategy.” There is a particular role in the structure and whoever is in that role has the authority. In some organizational models, we think of each person as having only one role and a person really only leaves that role if they lose their job or are promoted. But that doesn’t need to be the case.

In our Bakery example, the Shift Lead tried to organize the group after a catastrophic spilling of muffins and batter during rush hour. That shift lead was in the role of Shift Lead a few times a week, but sometimes he was in the role of Baker, and sometimes he was in the role of Supplies Purchaser. So even though he was temporarily atop a tactical hierarchy, the next day he might be in a role where he is following the authority of another Shift Lead, and the next day he might be executing tasks assigned by someone else entirely. Playing with roles creates space for lots of different power dynamics, all while preserving the useful elements of the hierarchy.

We can also locate authority in teams. For example, “The strategic planning team sets the strategy.” This opens up even more possibilities because we can be intentional about who is on the team and how the team makes decisions. So we can create a system where five people with different identities, from different locations in the organizations, design and implement a collective process to create a strategy that the whole group then defers to. This creates tons of participation and tons of opportunities to build intentional relationships, but there is still a hierarchy because everyone has agreed to defer to the authority of that team on that matter.

When we locate authority as a whole, we are saying that we will only defer to a decision if it obtains the consensus of the entire group. Even when we do this, we are still employing a hierarchy because we are locating authority in a specific place and allowing it to inform everything else. 

Ultimately, even whole group consensus creates hierarchy because it calls upon individuals to defer to a decision-making body outside of themselves.

Hierarchy is about deference and power. And so, we cannot escape it, especially in groups. Inevitably, power will be somewhere and people will defer to something. If each person defers only to their own personal sense at the moment, with no reference to prior agreements, intentions, and directions, it becomes incredibly difficult to coordinate as a group. The clearer it is who/what we are all listening and deferring to, the better we can work together. The more we are transparent about deference, then the more we can ground it in consent. The more we try to avoid hierarchy, then the more likely we are to unconsciously create forced deference and other harmful power dynamics. 

Getting Practical

Your organization has these five types of hierarchies. Chances are it will always have these five hierarchies; and, if you try really hard to dissolve them completely, you will likely end up with a convoluted soup that accomplishes very little.

As you think about how your particular organization wants to work, think about how you want to employ tactical, strategy, policy, and livelihood hierarchies. When is it best to have a person be the point of authority? When is it best for it to be a role, a team, or a group? If you put an individual atop a hierarchy, would you prefer them to be there for a long time or rotate often? Does your answer change depending on which type of hierarchy it is? How can you make space for everyone to be at the top of some hierarchy in the organization and for everyone to sometimes not be?

Hierarchy is not the enemy. Hierarchy is a really useful tool. We can use it to build clear communication, alignment, power sharing, mutual accountability, and personal growth. Or we could use it to create coercion, extraction, and dehumanization. It can go either way. But what we’ve noticed in our time co-creating liberating organizations, is that an allergy to hierarchy or the rejection of hierarchy in principle serves no one. It actually gets us overly fixated on a particular type of “equality” that impairs clear thinking about how we want to organize ourselves.

Let’s dismantle The Hierarchy and replace it with many interdependent hierarchies. We all will lead. We all will follow. We all will transition in and out of these roles fluidly, forming an organic and ever-evolving system.

We will play jazz. In rhythm together we will embrace harmonies even as we challenge them. Taking turns with our solos, we will build on each other as we discover the new riches of co-creation. If we do it right, we won’t be able to help but dance. That’s when the party will really start, because in the words of Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”