A few months ago, I attended a conference lead by a noted Organizational Expert. He spent the day talking about how we should flatten our companies to bring leaders and employees closer together. He presented many examples of existing silo-style organizations everyone recognized. Then he showed us those same org-charts with all of the middle managers removed. We acknowledged the advantages of these "flattened" designs until someone asked, How is the employee at one end going to talk to the employee at the other end?