org flatness through info flow

We [at Google] have something called a project database, which is visible to all employees, which lists all the projects, and we use that to manage a lot of the remote stuff. There's also something called the snippets database where people put in what they are working on.

... a culture which requires, if you will, people to write down what they're doing and then other people get a chance to see it, even if they're not in the same place. That seems kind of obvious but it's not true in almost any organization. At other organizations they can't see what the other organization is doing, and the CEO can't see either because the management prevents communication.

So you get a flatter organization -- flatness is not a function of reporting hierarchy, it's a function of information flow.

-- Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google Inc., My [Fred Vogelstein's] other interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Wired)