[emagdnim2100]

The Marine Corps teaches the "rule of three:" each leader should have at most three direct reports.[0] In practice, leaders at the platoon level or higher (~40 people total on the infantry side) also get a senior enlisted advisor who serves as a trusted second-in-command but who isn't a direct report in the same way as your subordinate unit leaders. Additional folks beyond those three should report to one of the boss's subordinate leaders, not to the boss. The structure repeats up and down the line, sometimes with small tweaks: three rifle platoons to a company, three squads to a platoon, three fire teams to a squad.

I always found this approach to be tremendously effective. If decentralized command were applied diligently from a company's earliest days, I believe it would sole a lot of the scaling issues organizations face. But it's difficult for most startup founders to give up control.

[0] See, e.g., https://www.inc.com/magazine/19980401/906.html

[bb611]

I have always loved the USMC's leadership principals, but they have a hard time adhering to them in practice. Talk to pretty much any infantry officer who saw combat in the last 15 years and they have endless stories of chaotic command arrangements.

My guess is that businesses have the same issue - it's great in theory, but the cost of failing to achieve it in practice is low at first so it creeps up over time. It takes a catastrophic event to force leadership to rearrange reporting relationships and clear up lines of communication again.

[BatFastard]

Makes for a very deep hierarchy. I personally prefer flatter companies.

[JamesSwift]

It doesn't create a deep hierarchy really, and scales well due to it being a Log3 of the total employees.

Seems very reasonable to me.

[jakecopp]

Are there any companies with a strict structure like this?