Leading

Flattening Communication

Published on May 28

Jensen Huang has more than 40 direct reports at Nvidia, and he doesn't hold one-on-ones. His reasoning:

"Almost everything that I say, I say to everybody at the same time. I don't believe there's any information that only 1–2 people should hear about. I love that everybody's working off of the same song sheet. I love that we're able to all contribute to solving a problem. Everybody hears the reasoning behind the problem and the solution."

This is a 42,000-person company.

Every company needs an org chart. Most lean on it too hard.

The strongest cultures are the ones where the org chart is largely irrelevant. It doesn't dictate who hears what or who gets to weigh in. If you're curious, the information is available. Ideas are considered and debated on their merits, not on who they came from or what their title is.

The opposite is also true. When information flows only along reporting lines, the company is quietly poisoned. Smart people stop offering ideas outside of their lane. The CEO ends up surprised by things that everyone else saw coming.

The org chart is a tool for accountability. It's a terrible tool for bringing out everyone's best work.

The leaders I admire most put real effort into flattening communication and making it just as easy for anyone to push signal back up. I spent 15 years doing it as a CEO, and there's still a lot I would do differently today. It takes constant pushing against the grain. People instinctively put the org chart on a pedestal — your job is to keep knocking it off.

Most leaders worry about chaos when everyone is working with the same information. The risk they ignore is the silence of indifference.

Talk to everyone at the same time. And make sure they can talk back.