Tata Motors truly "flat"

Tata Motors is taking the concept of “flat organization” right to the core.

In a country where people are so driven by positions, status and designations, the company has decided to completely do away with designations. No more VPs, managers, regional sales managers, general managers and other scores of “posts”.  None of the 10,000 employees will be carrying any designation.

The new business card of employees will now have their name followed by the function/responsibility — for instance, ‘Sales – Medium and Heavy Commercial Vehicles’. A person heading a team will simply be called ‘Head’ followed by the function, be it in the Jamshedpur Plant or the Paint Shop in Pune. For those who operate solo, their function/area of specialisation will be their calling card. The Executive Committee, comprising Guenter Butschek, Managing Director, and his leadership team of some 10 people, will be the only ones to continue with their designations.

This is for the first time ever that we are seeing the removal of such hierarchical fixations.  It is performance only that should matter and for the younger generation, such designations do not matter but for the older ones, this will be a huge adjustment. Designations do create layers of differentiations and status thus removing them, makes one free, liberated from labels.