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In a relentless pursuit of agility and efficiency, many organizations are aggressively flattening their hierarchies, effectively eliminating layers of middle management. This move to a flattened organizational structure is often inspired by the success of tech giants like Amazon and Google, with the goal of accelerating decision-making and streamlining operations. However, while automation can replace tasks, it cannot replicate the nuanced skills of strategy, vision, and decision-making that define true leadership. Even AI cannot replace the human element of leadership that drives innovation, inspires teams, and navigates complex strategic challenges. Our collective challenge, therefore, is to understand the unintended consequences of this organizational flattening and implement actionable strategies to ensure that we are not sacrificing our long-term leadership capacity for short-term gains. The good news is that with intentional effort and a rethinking of how experience is gained, you can still build a formidable bench of executive talent. Heres how: 1. STOP ERASING AND START REDEFINING YOUR MID-LEVEL EXPERIENCE The most significant leadership development challenges in flattened organizations stem from the absence of director-level readiness. Without mid-level roles, you might miss crucial opportunities to manage people, budgets, and complexity at scale. Think about the typical progression: from individual contributor to senior individual contributor, and then, traditionally, to manager. The manager role was where many learned the intricacies of people management, conducting performance reviews, navigating difficult conversations, and fostering team development. When organizations eliminate this stepping stone, employees can jump from senior individual contributor to director without ever developing these foundational skills. This creates a dangerous experience gap. To counter this, identify the core managerial and strategic skills that were learned in those now-eliminated roles and create alternative pathways to gain them. For instance, you could take on internal mini-CEO roles for specific projects, giving yourself full accountability for budget, team oversight, and strategic outcomes, even if for a temporary period. Even at an individual contributor level, you can seek out opportunities to lead specific initiatives or mentor newer team members to build these skills. 2. PRIORITIZE PROJECT-BASED LEADERSHIP AND EXECUTIVE SHADOWING In a flatter structure, traditional promotions are fewer, but opportunities for leadership experience arent. Empower yourself to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives. This is a powerful way for you to gain influence and exposure outside of your direct reporting lines, learning to navigate organizational politics, manage diverse stakeholders, and deliver results under pressure. Simultaneously, seek out executive shadowing opportunities. Ask if you can sit in on high-stakes meetings or strategic offsites. This direct access to senior thinking provides an unparalleled understanding of how decisions are made at the highest levels, building your confidence and presence. This real-time learning is invaluable when formal management layers are gone. 3. FORMALIZE MENTORSHIP, SPONSORSHIP, AND TARGETED CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT Leadership readiness will not emerge by default in a flat structure; it must be deliberately built. Establish formal mentorship programs where senior executives provide direct coaching and feedback. Even more critically, sponsorship programs should be implemented where senior leaders actively advocate for emerging talent, opening doors and creating opportunities for growth you might not find on your own. Beyond these relationships, create targeted development tracks with clear milestones that focus on specific capabilities required for future executive roles. For example, if critical thinking under pressure is a key executive skill, you might find that participating in leadership simulations or strategic case studies allows you to practice decision-making in a safe environment. This ensures that even without traditional promotions, you are continually acquiring and demonstrating executive-level skills. BUILDING A CULTURE OF CONTINUOUS LEADERSHIP GROWTH In the absence of established leadership ladders, organizations must take deliberate, proactive steps to build their future leadership pipeline. This presents a unique opportunity, whether you’re just starting your career or are a seasoned executive, to define your impact by the comprehensive leadership development strategies you intentionally create. It also clearly communicates the new growth expectations for leadership within a flatter structure. If you lead an organization that has embraced flattening, you must recognize that designing meaningful development programs in this new landscape may be one of the most important contributions you make to your companys long-term success.
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E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. “CEO succession is the board’s No. 1 job, says leadership expert and Harvard Business School executive education fellow Bill George. “In my experience, across hundreds of companies, businesses rise or fall with decisions on CEO succession. Yet according to a new report by executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, only 26% of directors and CEOs say that chief executive transition is among their top priorities. Another 40% don’t consider it a priority at all. Tom Monahan, CEO of Heidrick & Struggles, says succession can get crowded out if boards get pulled into crises or are distracted by other issues. As a leader, you have days where you say, the most important thing today is do this, and you look up and [realize] I spent two hours on [my] coffee selection, he says. It turns out boards seem to have some of that as well.” And when they do turn to succession, too often directors are trying to figure out who could step into the role immediately in the event of an emergency, such as the unexpected death of a CEO. Instead, Monahan says boards should remember that CEO succession is a strategy exercise. “We do see more boards and leadership teams treating succession as a process, not a project, he says. If you look at companies where it’s a projectCEO says I’m retiring, board says it’s time to move, we kick into place a projectthat compresses a lot of important strategic activity into probably too narrow a timetable. The Berkshire Hathaway model Heidrick & Struggless “Route to the Top” report praises the CEO succession process at Berkshire Hathaway. CEO Warren Buffett earlier this year announced his plans to retire at the end of 2025. But Buffett, 94, had been talking about his replacement for more than a decade, and in 2021, the company anointed Greg Abel, who currently serves as chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy and vice chairman of the conglomerates non-insurance businesses. In a time when CEO transitions often spark volatility or uncertainty, Berkshires process delivered confidence, continuity, and clarity to the market, the report concludes. CEO succession has become something of a parlor game in investor and media circles, especially at high-profile companies such as Apple and Disney. (Please check out my colleague David Lidskys surprising take on who should succeed Bob Iger at Disney.) The founder-CEO challenge Replacing founder-CEOs can be especially challenging because the entrepreneur is so personally tied to the company and can have a hard time letting go. A founder is also one of a companys largest shareholders and may feel compelled to step in when the company struggles. Michael Dell, for example, returned to the top job at his eponymous tech company in 2007 after the computer maker started to lose market share, among other issues. If you have a founder who has been able to conceptualize an idea and scale a company, thats a rare set of talents, and youre not going to be able to replicate that, Monahan says. Monahan encourages boards to make clear which committee will be responsible for succession planning and then to make sure the topic is on the agenda. He says boards should have a process for meeting with executives in the C-suite, as those leaders are candidates to take over for the sitting CEO. And directors need to constantly assess the link between leadership and strategy to make sure theyre looking at candidates who can support the business in the future. And what is the role of the sitting CEO? CEOs should play an active role in training their successors, but don’t groom people in your own image, cautions George, who has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Target, Novartis, Mayo Clinic, and Medtronic, where he was CEO for 10 years. Figure out what [the company] is going to need for the next 10 years, and find people with the mental agility and courage to look at it differently than you looked at it. What is your succession plan? CEOs, do you have a successor in placeand if not, whats holding you back from naming an heir apparent? Send your feedback to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Ill publish your responses in a future newsletter. Read more: CEO succession Who will be Tim Cooks successor? This founder was miserable as CEO, so she brought in a replacement How entrepreneurs should handle succession
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E-Commerce
When it comes to turning a beloved toy into a box office hit, it’d be hard to top 2023s Greta Gerwig-directed Barbie. But Mattel veteran Robbie Brenner, who produced the nearly $1.5 billion-grossing film, has no interest in resting on her laurels. In June, the toy company launched Mattel Studios, bringing together its film and TV efforts under Brenner. At the studios president and chief content officer, Brenner now oversees more 15 projects in development, each with a unique twist. There’s a Hot Wheels movie helmed by Wicked director Jon M. Chu, a horror-skewing adaptation of Barney being written by The Bears Ayo Edebiri, and an adaptation of the He-man property Masters of the Universe. Most recently, Mattel announced that it’s working with Minions studio Illumination on an animated Barbie movie. I spoke to Brenner about how she chooses which intellectual property to develop into bigger projects, the importance of delivering both fan service and organic storytelling, and how she plans to replicate Barbies success with another toy franchise. You came to Mattel from Miramax seven years ago. When you first started at Mattel, how did you take stock of what properties you wanted to develop into bigger projects? Where else do you come in your life, aside from Disney, where you have endless titles that you and your kids grew up playing with? When I came into the company, there were like 200 brands, either from Mattel or from buying other libraries or buying other companies. I looked at each title and used my intuition, to say like, okay, that title, that brand, that sounds like that could be like a big theatrical experience. And so I whittled it down to some 40 titles. Those were my starting block for building out this film division. Barbie was the last movie that I ever thought we were gonna make. Everybody has a relationship with Barbie, and that makes it even harder to find a way into that story. For us it was really Gretas love and affinity for Barbie, and her voice, which is so unexpected and authentic. Thats the way were trying to approach all these moviesdoing things that feel like they have a reason to exist by working with these unique voices. Especially when were consumed by our phones, the only way to cut through that is to do something that feels wholly unique in an authentic way. To be able to open up my rolodex and pair the filmmakers and writers Ive worked with up with these brands has been so much fun. Did the success of Barbie change your approach to how you develop a project? You need a strong script and somebody that has the vision to tell the story in a way that feels different and interesting. That has always been a huge component of how we approach our IP. Were just keeping our heads down and trying to tell great stories. Barbie was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenonone could only hope to replicate that. But weve got Masters of the Universe coming out next year, and its the polar opposite to Barbie. Its this incredible spectacle that [director] Travis Knight has pulled off with the rich canon of characters and mythology. Itll be fun to show the world that we can do so many things. Similarly, [tk IP] Matchbox is a high-octane action movie, but it has so much heart. Im sure a lot of people will compare everything we do to Barbie. Not everything can be Barbie. We look at these brands individually and we treat them individually. Sometimes were going to make smaller movies that are just great stories that need to be told, and other times there will be just huge tentpole movies. I think as long as we continue to stick with our approach and vision, good things will come. Now that Mattels TV and film efforts are unified, has your approach changed? You mentioned Disney as having a similarly rich IP library. Do you take inspiration from their approach? Movies and TV, theatrical and streaming, theyre all very blurred lines right now. So I just look at it all holistically as contentshort form, premium, scriptedand I want to work with the same writers and directors that I have relationships with. Mattel Studios is about aligning under one banner and looking holistically about where a brand is better sittingas a television show or a movie. The philosophy is the same: telling great, unexpected stories with brave filmmakers. Over the next couple months, youll see a lot of movement on television. We have a lot of shows in negotiation right now with incredible creatives. Were all working together to maximize the evergreen properties we have to make sure that were franchising them in the best way so were not stepping on each other. Its more synergy and made a lot of sense for all of us to sit together and work together to maximize Mattels potential.
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E-Commerce
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