Companies have moved from bureaucratic structures to distributed leadership over the last 100 years. The 60s saw the rise of interpersonal relationships and the ability to influence people. Whereas, the 90s saw the rise of change management and the importance of company vision. Today however these ideologies have modified accommodate collaborative and distributed leadership.
Going flat is about transparency, title-less work, teaching, coaching, asking and connecting. As the number of layers go up in the organisation, decision making becomes subjective and less transparent, titles matter more than content, coaching takes a back seat to performance appraisals, there is more telling than asking and fewer connects who actually understand the decision making process.