The office is a unique entity. Bustling with individuals from different walks of life, it is where casual meets formality. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines chain of command as “a series of executive positions in order of authority.” The Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as “a series of positions of authority or rank within an organization that are ordered from lowest to highest.” I quite like Dictionary.com’s rendition the best, though: “a series of administrative or military ranks, positions, etc., in which each has direct authority over the one immediately below.” In other words, chain of command is when a position or direct report (and by extension the individual holding that position) receives guidance and takes instruction from the position immediately above. In the workplace, this position is generally known as a supervisor or manager, and employees generally know who their supervisor or manager is, as it should be outlined in the organizational structure and/or job descriptions. Managers and supervisors also have the right to punish or reward their direct reports.

The chain of command need not be a complicated concept. After all, we are all accustomed to it from birth. Consider the home. The chain of command would be children taking guidance and instruction from their parents. If a child refuses to do what a parent asks, there is usually a negative consequence. Similarly, if a child does what a parent asks, there is some sort of positive consequence, even if it is simply the absence of a negative one. Imagine how the home would be run if children did as they pleased without regard for their parents’ guidance or instruction! Chaos, at the very least, I would imagine.

Now, let us look at the school system. A teacher would be a child’s supervisor, for want of a better term, and the principal would be the teacher’s manager. One does not have to imagine what could happen if students did as they pleased at school. So, why do some employees seem not to understand chain of command at work?

It is not unusual for the chain of command to be broken in some workplaces. Sometimes an employee may, deliberately or not, appeal to a manager above his or her upline. This also happens the opposite way too, for sometimes it is not uncommon for CEOs or General Managers to ask employees to do certain tasks, bypassing all the managers and/or supervisors in that employee’s direct line of operation. This should not be so, for when this occurs, several negative consequences can result. It is almost like a child approaching his father directly with a request to use his phone half past eight one night when there is a house rule that prohibits the use of electronic devices after eight o’clock. The father, believing that the mother had already permitted it because the child told him so, agrees. Or, the father calls his daughter to see how to change the car tire and the daughter immediately obeys, although her mother had already instructed her to cut up some vegetables in preparation for lunch. One can imagine what sort of confusion ensued from these scenarios.

In the workplace, broken reporting lines lead to uncoordinated spending, duplicated effort and compliance failures. Consider this scenario: The Finance Department in an organization consists of an Accountant, an Assistant Accountant and three Accounts Clerks. One of the Accounts Clerks decides to approach the Accountant directly with a request for some stationery. The request was granted. However, this resulted in their paying more for the said stationery because the Assistant Accountant, to whom the request should have been made in the first place, had developed relationships with certain suppliers over the years, and would have been able to organize procurement fifteen percent cheaper. Uncoordinated spending. Or consider this scenario: A negative incident happened between a customer and an employee from the Maintenance Department, causing ripples locally. The Maintenance Manager instructed the Admin Assistant in the department to write an apology to the public. At the same time, the Communications Manager asked one of her officers to write an apology, as communication with the public is the responsibility of the Communications Department. Together, both employees spent a total of six hours penning an apology. Duplicated effort. Look at this scenario: The Production Manager notices a fault on the production line. Instead of reporting it to the Operations Manager, who would have issued an instruction to the Maintenance Manager, he instructed a plant worker to do a temporary fix to prevent downtime so they could meet their deliverables. This resulted in two workers being hurt and ending up in the hospital. Compliance failure.

However, there can also be fallout from stringent adherence to chain of command. It’s almost like a child telling her mother that there is a puddle of water on the floor near the toilet and mummy now has to approach daddy (who has plumbing expertise) with that information to find out what should be done, when the girl could have just approached daddy directly.

Stringent adherence to chain of command could lead to slow decision-making, especially when there are many tiers in the reporting structure. This can be costly to an organization when time is of the essence. Slow decision-making can result from administrative bloat, where the organization has a structure with managers for every area, along with assistant managers and supervisors. In other words, the reporting lines are deep in every capacity and if sticking to chain of command is insisted upon, this can cause operational bottlenecks and high costs (as if hiring all those managers and supervisors is not costly enough!)

But what causes poor chain of command in the workplace? For one, rapid organizational growth where all employees are accustomed to dealing directly with the Founder CEO. There can also be leadership misalignment where all managers do not interpret the rules and policies in a standard manner and employees learn quite easily to whom to go for an easy “yes”. Also, some founders or CEOs and executive managers are prone to micromanagement, where they routinely bypass middle managers, creating unnecessary conflict between employees and their direct managers or placing such employees in a position of vulnerability through silence, being afraid to say “no” to upper management. Overly bureaucratic organizations sometimes breed a poor chain of command, especially when there are high-performing employees anxious to get their jobs done. Sometimes employees, and perhaps managers, simply don’t know what an acceptable chain of command looks like.

In cases like these, employees and managers should be afforded formal training in adhering to the chain of command. It is not uncommon for middle managers to need leadership, decision-making or conflict resolution training to enable them to develop skills that effectively meet the needs of both the employees below them and the executive management above. Indeed, it is possible to break such mindsets by implementing comprehensive policies, detailed and clear job descriptions, clear organizational charts and in the case of matrix structures, defining clear authority boundaries.

A broken chain of command is a cost driver resulting from structural ambiguity, which leads to wasted payroll costs, delayed revenue and unmonitored spending. Let’s get the links right today!