Hayden Swerling

Hayden SwerlingSep 26, 2026

This might be the most accurate onboarding video I’ve seen. “Welcome to the company. Now park on this moving trailer.” It’s funny. Until you realise how often we do exactly this to new starters. New systems. New acronyms. New people. New politics. New expectations. And while they’re trying to understand it all, the organisation keeps moving at full speed. Three weeks later: “Why aren’t they performing yet?” Maybe capability isn’t the problem. Maybe we never gave them a fair chance to get on board. Good onboarding doesn’t need to explain everything. It needs to make the important things easier to understand. Who does what. How decisions really get made. What good looks like. Where to go when you’re stuck. Which unwritten rules somebody should probably write down. Hiring great people matters. Giving them a fighting chance once they arrive matters just as much. Before asking how quickly someone can become productive, ask: What can we stop moving while they find their feet? Follow Hayden Swerling ayden Swerling for more on people, organisation design and change. I write a free newsletter with practical ideas for making organisations work better. Join here: https://lnkd.in/eysBEU_k

Hayden SwerlingSep 27, 2026

Most companies don’t have a trust problem. They have a control addiction. We trust people to raise children, manage mortgages and make decisions that shape their lives. Then they arrive at work. Suddenly we need to know: Where are you? When did you log on? How long was your lunch? Why isn’t your Teams light green? Were you “visible” enough today? And we call this accountability. It isn’t. Accountability is being clear about what someone owns and holding them responsible for the outcome. Surveillance is checking whether they look busy while doing it. There’s a big difference. I’ve seen organisations add more processes, approvals and controls because they want people to take greater ownership. Then wonder why nobody takes ownership. But think about what we’re teaching people. Ask permission. Follow the process. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Wait for approval. Eventually, people do exactly that. Then leadership complains that nobody shows initiative. Ricardo Semler’s quote gets to the heart of it: We hired adults. Perhaps we should stop designing workplaces for children. Give people clarity. Give them boundaries. Hold them accountable. Deal properly with poor performance. But give them room to think, decide and occasionally get something wrong. You don’t create responsible people through more control. You create them by giving them something worth being responsible for. Follow Hayden Swerling for more on people, change and leadership. I write a free newsletter about the workplace truths that rarely survive the corporate PowerPoint. If that sounds like your kind of read, join here: https://lnkd.in/eysBEU_k

Hayden SwerlingSep 30, 2026

The layer disappeared. But the work landed on people who were already full. That’s the part of delayering we don’t talk about enough. On the spreadsheet, it can look brilliant. Five roles removed. £500k saved. Fewer layers. A simpler structure. Then Monday morning arrives. Someone still needs to approve the spend. Someone still needs to coach the struggling employee. Someone still needs to resolve the escalation. Priorities still need setting. Performance still needs managing. Decisions still need making. Removing a management layer doesn’t automatically remove management work. Sometimes it just distributes it across people whose jobs were already full. And because good people compensate, the design can appear to work. They stay later. Managers take more direct reports. Experienced people pick up the difficult cases. Meetings multiply because decision rights are less clear. The saving is visible immediately. The organisational cost takes longer to appear. So if you’re delayering, don’t start and finish with boxes on an org chart. Ask: What work genuinely disappears with this layer? What decisions move, and to whom? Which approvals can disappear completely? Can the remaining managers realistically manage the new span? What capability will people need that they didn’t need before? What should stop being done? And perhaps the most revealing question: Would this structure still work if everyone worked their contracted hours? Then measure what happens after the restructure. Decision speed. Manager workload. Overtime. Escalations. Rework. Absence. Turnover. Customer impact. Because a flatter organisation can absolutely be a better organisation. But only if you redesign the work as well as the boxes. Otherwise you haven’t removed the layer. You’ve removed the salary and redistributed the job. Follow Hayden Swerling for more on people, organisation design and change. My free newsletter shares practical ideas, questions and frameworks for designing organisations that work beyond the PowerPoint. If that sounds useful, join here: https://lnkd.in/eysBEU_k