There's an old story of two trees in a field, one a large, majestic oak with a sturdy trunk and broad branches. Not far away is a small, thin, and wiry willow. The mighty oak boasts of its strength and size and reminds the willow of all the ways the oak is superior to the willow. The willow is quiet. In time a heavy rain starts. The oak boasts of its ability to absorb so much water. The willow is quiet. After a while the winds pick up and grow in intensity, howling through the night. It's so dark and loud that the willow can't see or hear anything as it is battered in the wind. Eventually, the wind dies down and the sun rises. The willow looks around to see the once-mighty oak has been toppled in the storm. What made it such a formidable being in good weather led to its demise in the bad. The willow stretches to the sun. The oak is quiet.

In good times, it's easy for top-heavy organizations to rationalize their imbalance and boast of the number of vice presidents and executives in the system. As COVID-19 has reminded us, big and rigid isn't always better. Efficiency is.

Efficient organizations are nimble, agile, and flexible. They're able to see challenges and respond quickly to win.

So what should companies do to fix the problem?

1. Flatten the organization. Managers are not only expensive. If their roles are mostly to manage people and processes, they move further away from understanding the customers and adding value that can be directly connected to sales.

2. Increase the staff-to-manager ratio. It’s not uncommon to find a ratio of 4–1 or 5–1 in large companies. A big challenge here is that while this can help each employee think they get a lot of personal attention from their boss, this ratio can lead to incredible bloat. And since every level of management earns incrementally more than the people who report to them, senior managers and executives may spend most of their time managing managers. Increasing the ratio to 20–1 or, in some organizations, depending on roles, as high as 100–1, removes a tremendous amount of expense and process creep. Of course, this means every employee won’t get 30 minutes to an hour each week with their manager, but many employees don’t require or desire this level of interaction, anyway.

   For more information on this, read “How to identify the right span of control for your organization” by McKinsey & Company.

3. Trim the number of supervisors. This feeds off step 2 here but becomes a line item in the to-do list. As the ratios are adjusted, some supervisory roles are no longer necessary.

4. Trim the admin staff. Every executive probably doesn’t need a personal admin, much less a group of administrative people at their direction.