Intel Leads the Way

Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, in a sterling example of receiving and acting on a clue, will be laying off approximately 1,000 managers. Why? According to an Intel spokesperson, "We have too many management layers from the top of the company to the first line of supervisors to be effective," and, "Over the last five years at Intel, the number of managers has grown faster than our overall employee population." (Emphasis mine.)

Now where else does this also seem to be a problem?

One guess only, dear reader.

It's unfortunate that one thousand or so people won't have a job in a few weeks, but when you have cancer, sometimes you have to cut some of the good flesh away to ensure you removed the entire tumor. Otherwise, you get unchecked growth that makes later surgery that much more difficult.

In a world where even the U.S. military is trying to streamline its managerial structure, Microsoft continues to support its deep organizational tree. Those inside the organization can confirm this by digging through HeadTrax or the Global Address Book (GAB) to count the managerial levels -- I've found up to thirteen.

Even other Softies agree that things are broken in management-land, and that there are too many monkeys in the tree.

Keep them around, and we'll continue to bog down in pointy-hair types who will "process" us to death. Trim the ranks and flatten, and we might just see an outbreak of managing and leading.

My second request of of management and leadership at Microsoft: flatten the organization proactively before market forces force us to do so reactively.