In many workshops I manage, someone will come up and say: “the problem with this organisation is that the executives never listen. They don’t have a clue (or don’t care) what happens on the front line.” This complaint is neither new nor surprising. Front line staff have little experience of the the difficult decisions confronting senior staff.
However, there can be more important forces at work that go to the heart of human behaviour in organisations. Organisations are about power, who has it, who wants it, who rebels.
Our organisations work by vesting power in formal leaders, creating hierarchies that concentrate decision-making power at the top.
The old Taylorist model of scientific management did this explicitly by removing discretion, skills, and thinking from production-line jobs and speeding up simple, routine activities. Those days are gone but vestiges of its management structure remain.
The effects of this structure can be quite subtle (and pervasive). Roger Schwarz points out that traditional ‘control model’ leaders make certain assumptions: they understand what is going on, they have pure motives, they know what is best for the company, their feelings are justified. Leaders tell others what to do and discount others people’s responses.
As a result, this kind of leadership produces the consequences that leaders are trying to avoid: misunderstanding, resistance, conflict.
What is also lost where the power allocation is top heavy is an organisation’s capacity to adapt rapidly to new circumstances, innovate, respond. In the knowledge economy, the power of front-line must be harnessed, including for collaborative decision-making.
Modern work requires decentralised, distributed leadership. And organisations need explicit strategies and structure for developing (even allowing) such leadership.
Schwarz contrasts this control model o a “Mutual Learning Model”, where a leader is open about the information she or he knows, and seeks input from other people, even (and especially) in difficult situations. Openness, and a positive attitude to mutual learning creates better results.
For more information:
Download “Does your leadership reduce learning” by Roger Schwarz at PDF file