I don’t rank people here. I am talking about roles. And if the ranks are called what they are, it is because the existing system itself was already built that way.

Let’s google any job description for frontline staff like receptionists, managers, and the final boss. You can list them yourself.

So when we go to a place to say something, we never meet the boss, the highest ranking person, or the manager. We meet the frontline staff, which is normally the receptionist. We are asked to put our query on a form and summarise it in one or two sentences so they can ask around and see who will respond to the request.

And even a three page long email cannot guarantee that an issue will be presented fully due to the limitations of language or writing, or simply because a complex issue cannot be contained in an email. An email is just an initial request for broader, deeper communication.

And why are there bosses? It is not just about problem solving skills. They know the whole flow of the organisation in a way that nobody else can, including the authority at the top and what they can decide, because when working from the bottom up, they are still at the end of the story before things go out of that organisation if they remain unsolved. Now they can even use AI for that. Why would we not invest in putting a boss’s skills and authority at the frontline?

150k for a role at the reception? But then consider one case: receptionist → normal staff → senior staff → multiple middle managers → vice director → director. It can take one week if it is just a mail trail. Assume each person takes 5 minutes to forward an email, 20 minutes to read and analyse it, and another 20 minutes to go around and discuss it with one colleague. By the time it finally reaches the boss, the issue is big, not small anymore. But the whole organisation has already used all those minutes to attempt a solution that does not work.  It is about redefining the frontline as a high-stakes problem-prevention role, and paying for the capability to stop costs before they multiply.

They claim that cases like this do not happen every day. They happen occasionally, so there is no need to use that level of power at the frontline just to take an inquiry.

In a different mindset, where people think there is only one highest authority in one organisation, that is the mindset of the past. For me, power does not stay at the end of the line. It is equally distributed at the weakest point, which is right at the frontline.

What I am proposing is a different management model: moving from a hierarchical pyramid to a load distribution model, similar to the way a structure is designed in construction. A larger and heavier structure cannot rely on one point to carry all the load. It needs supporting pillars distributed across the points where the structural pressure is greatest. The same principle can be applied to organisations. The larger and more complex the organisation becomes, the more important it is to distribute decision making power and high level capability across its vulnerable points, rather than keeping most of that power at the very top.

There will not be one director, but two or three, may be not necessarily with the titles but skills. One sits at the front, doing the frontline job to prevent anything from escalating. One is in the middle to prevent the mess around middle managers. And one is at the back for other roles. These are not simply three people with the same title. They are three supporting pillars placed at different points of the organisation to carry different types of pressure.

This also changes the way leaders use power. If we expect staff to communicate with staff before escalating an issue, leaders should also be able to communicate directly with other leaders without immediately using their ultimate authority. That is what modern leadership should model. Leadership is not about who has the highest power in the room. It is about having enough capability and authority at different points of the structure to communicate, understand, and solve problems before power has to be used as the final solution.

The person sitting at the frontline may have a frontline title, but that does not mean they need to have frontline level skills. Imagine creating a role for someone who has skills similar to those required in the highest ranking role, but agrees to work at the frontline, with a salary matched to their skills and responsibilities. Their role is not simply to receive and route questions. Their role is to prevent problems from travelling through the entire structure in the first place.

That is the modern model I hope to see in the new century, not what has happened since humans developed awareness. That investment will save the organisation lots of money, because it uses the best skills at the frontline to solve an issue while it is still small and manageable. It is better to use that power when the problem is still sound and humble than to leave it until the last person has to take the largest hit after everything has gone wrong.