Nairobi, Feb. 29 -- In architecture, form follows function. In management, leaders decide what needs to be done, and design-structure-the business around the prime purpose.

While pyramid-like hierarchies with the traditional omnipotent being at the top linger, leading-edge organisations can have an imaginative design. It's not uncommon for a civil service to have greater than 15 levels of hierarchy, an audit firm can have 10. Quite sustainable for millennia, the Catholic Church has five levels of hierarchy from the Pope to the village priest.

Today hierarchical organisational models aren't just being turned upside down-they're being deconstructed from the inside out. Many leading businesses are reinventing themselves to operate as 'netw...