Falling Flat? How flat is too flat when it comes to management? You'd better find out before it's too late.

Bill Gilmer runs his 16-person commercial printing company withas few managers as possible. "We're an extremely flatorganization," says the owner of Wordsprint Inc. inWytheville, Virginia. Gilmer, 48, has made big investments intechnology to make sure each of his press operators and other keyemployees has all the information he or she needs to make decisionswithout a supervisor.

"Everything is in the system, from schedules to the latestbreaking news about a job, so every worker has access at theirkeyboards to the same information as management," Gilmer says."So why have management?"

Why, indeed? The answer is that an organization can be too flat.Sometimes managers are necessary. The key is to make sure yourorganization doesn't have too many managers-nor too few. Whenyou have too little hierarchy, decisions don't get made or aremade wrongly by employees who lack experience, accountability ormotivation to do the work of the missing managers.