<aside> ⚠️ Traditional top-down decision-making, where a few leaders hoard all the power, is one of the biggest sources of frustration felt by organisations.
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In most organisations, centralised authority (such as the senior leadership team) holds much of the power. A few people at the top make most decisions, plus some lucky middle managers, while everyone else does as they are told. Employees need approval before they can do stuff that they haven’t been told to do. A few things may be approved here and there but, typically, lots of people feel frustrated and disempowered.
Decisions are too often made by people who are far away from the customer or information, while promising ideas are left on the shelf and forgotten. Ultimately, people stop making proposals and sharing ideas because they tend not to be approved. We grin and bear the baffling decisions from top brass and it’s annoying, to say the very least…
Distributed decision-making on the other hand, is one of the tried and tested patterns found in progressive organisations. Recognising that it makes tremendous sense to move control to where the information and knowledge is, progressive organisations distribute the control that is traditionally hoarded by a few at the top. They understand that the more people are involved in decision-making, the more collective intelligence is harnessed, and the more empowered people are to make decisions, the happier and more engaged they will be.
*And this requires a structured process to ensure it doesn’t take ages and teams don’t fall into the trap of seeking deathly consensus - the best way to get nothing done quickly and end up with a compromise that suits nobody. One such process is ‘The Advice Process’ (created by Dennis Bakke), and it is wonderful.
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