Growing Without Adding Layers

When I first imagined an organization without hierarchy, I thought the answer was structure.

In my vision, management would become support. I pictured an organizational chart turned upside down, with fewer bosses and more helpers, and I believed that was the innovation.

I also believed I needed other “professionals” to make it work. I thought we needed people whose job it was to manage the people doing the work, we just needed them to function differently.

That’s what we tried.

People hired into those support-as-management roles did not stay. Instead of replacing them, we kept going with the people who remained, the people doing the tasks and carrying the work.

Caregivers continued caregiving. Administrative staff continued administrative work. When people needed help or advice, they asked.

Work became less complicated.

Our goals stayed the same: excellent care through authentic relationships. The stakes did not change. But the friction did. Without layers of permission-giving and decision-filtering, the work moved. When a caregiver needed to stay late because a client needed extra support, there was no one to convince. The people closest to the work already knew what was needed.

People knew how to do their work. They also knew what was creating friction while they were doing it.

From 2024 to 2025, we grew.

We added clients and caregivers. We did not add layers of management disguised as “support.” Capacity did not come from more oversight. It came from fewer barriers.

What the Numbers Show

We watched the numbers closely. Each month, in our task meetings, we reviewed the previous month’s financials and our current projected income, often finding ourselves close to break-even. The numbers were not abstract. They were feedback about whether our way of working was viable in the world outside our bubble of lovingkindness.

This year, our accountants presented the final year-end numbers. On the spreadsheet, they offered proof of the financial viability of our work.

From 2024 to 2025, Biscochito’s revenue increased 36 percent. During the same period, overall salaries and benefits decreased 7 percent. As hierarchy flattened, fixed office salaries dropped 20 percent, while caregiver base wages increased on a sliding scale tied to total hours worked. Those increases ranged from 2 percent after providing 400 hours of care to 14 percent after providing 4,000 hours.

We also changed how we onboarded new caregivers. Instead of a full week of orientation, we moved to a single day of organization-specific orientation, followed by a separate day of training focused on the specific client or clients a caregiver would support. Learning did not disappear. It moved closer to the work, supported by quarterly multi-day professional development workshops that everyone in the organization attends together.

Taken together, these shifts allowed us to keep more of the value created by the organization in the hands of caregivers while becoming cash-flow positive in Santa Fe by the fourth quarter of 2025.

The financials tell us whether we are running an organization that fits into our community. They tell us whether people are willing to pay for our work and whether we are creating enough value in Santa Fe at a price that allows us to be an integral part of this vibrant city.

We did not grow by adding control. We grew by removing what was not necessary.

In the end, money does not reward good intentions. It rewards work that fits.

The numbers told us that this way of working fits our values and the larger economy we operate in.

This column ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican on January 27, 2026, under Business Different.