A familiar story:

This will be a familiar story to anyone who has worked with large American companies in the last 25 years.

We stayed many times before at the Hyatt Regency in Jerusalem. We are here again, but now it is just "The Regency." We were curious how the loss of the "Hyatt" designation would affect the quality of the hotel. I have only noticed subtle differences.

I asked a regular (who stays at the hotel often on business) what changes he had noticed. "The biggest change," he said, "is that they fired all the middle managers."

Well we know how flattening the hierarchy can have very little in the way of bad effects on a large organization...