#Committees

Keep your organizational structure flat

Southwest believes that when you minimize the layers of management, you are able to streamline communication channels and eliminate miscommunication and red tape. That is why at Southwest, they:

• Do not have more than four layers of management between a front-line supervisor and the CEO.
• Do not have assistants, as they only add layers to the hierarchy, increase overhead, and create more formal communication channels.
• Limit the number of committees as they overcomplicate decision making structures and waste time.

Let your employees monitor leadership

Former CEO, Howard Schultz created a 'Mission Review Committee' as a way for staff to voice their concerns through surveys about any company policy or leadership behavior that they feel opposes Starbucks' mission or core values. This opened communication with employees and helped hold leadership to higher standards resulting in improved policies like paid leave for adoptive parents.

Stay fast and loose by eliminating committees and avoiding bureaucracy

Part of the Trader Joe's buying strategy, which they refer to as Intensive Buying, focuses on making quick decisions to beat out their competition by gaining exclusive rights to products. As founder Joe Coulombe explains: "We don't take more than 24 hours to make a buying decision, even if it is over a $1 million purchase." This results in Trader Joe's leaving all buying decisions in the hands of their buyers and not bureaucratic committees, as they are seen as "a waste of time, and (Trader Joe's is) action oriented."

If there is a project that needs cross organizational collaboration, a skunkworks team is formed. These teams fall outside of the existing organizational structure and are made up of staff whose sole task is to focus on solving the problem at hand. When the project is complete, the group is dissolved and the team members are dispersed back into the company structure. As Joe describes it: "I wanted to instill this feeling of transience, to keep the organization loose."

Create a club of cultural ambassadors

To keep a pulse on the company's culture, former CEO Ray Davis created the President's Club, whose members are cultural ambassadors for Umpqua Bank. Besides acting as cultural role models, members are responsible for recognizing teams for doing a great job and providing Ray with unfiltered constructive feedback on how to improve the organization's culture.

Each month, the club meets for dinner with Umpqua executives, where Ray discloses what's going on from the leadership's perspective, and members talk about how new initiatives are being received and the overall morale of the staff.

To be a club member, associates must first be nominated by their peers and then receive at least a 75% approval rating from club members. Only one or two members are admitted each quarter, and once initiated, members receive company stock, special name tags, and other perks. Associates can be a club members for up to ten years and then be eligible to join the President's Club Advisory Council.