The Quota: January
From January 2006
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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
By Grant Eppler
Most of us are accustomed to the never-ending changes in why, with what, and how we go to market. But in today’s global economy, small, medium and especially large companies contain structural limitations that are difficult to transcend, as many older companies drew from the military when forming their original organizational framework and management style.
In a militaristic top-down management style, all communication has to stream both down and then up through the ranks, thus hampering the information flow. A simplified version of this style flows like this:
The CEO says to his trusted VPs, “The sky is orange.” The VPs turn to their regional VPs and repeat, “The sky is orange.” The regional VPs turn to their regional managers and repeat, “The sky is orange,” and so on… all the way down to the salesperson or customer service rep (the people who actually interact with the customer). They then take the time to research, form an independent opinion and respond, “The sky doesn’t look orange, it actually looks blue.” Amazingly, the lowest person on the totem pole is then asked to justify the sky-is-blue position. Then the process begins in reverse. “So and so says the sky is blue because…” and this information is repeated up the chain of command, back to the CEO.
While this example highlights only the delay in communicating a simple idea, it is easy to infer the delay caused when implementing complex ideas or commands. In work environments where generating ideas and fostering pure abstract creativity is not only desired but essential, such outdated management styles can be real business killers.
Interestingly, terms such as “execute,” “line-of-fire” and “collateral damage,” still permeate the corporate nomenclature. Even terms such as “open-door policy” actually help to demonstrate how closed the communication flow actually was (is).
Continued...
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