Bulldozer00's Blog

In a time of crisis, some “leadership” experts promote imposing the corpo equivalent of marshal law via the execution of more top-down control and discipline in the form of more frequent, multi-layered, financial reviews and detailed status reporting.

The thinking behind the “more control” approach is that by shining the light more often, and at a higher intensity, on those directly-in-the-soup will cause the crisis to dissolve. Another unquestioned assumption behind the “more control” approach is that the light-shiners will be able to better understand the real problems behind the crisis and offer “helpful”  solution idea candidates – inspiring the troops to success.

Sounds great, right? Let’s switch gears, step into the deliciously diabolic role of devil’s advocate, and ask “what’s wrong with this picture?“. Are these thoughts missing:

• those doing the shining may be responsible for the mess in the first place but don’t realize it.
• those doing the shining have been so disconnected from the real world for so long that they are incapable of understanding the problem details well enough to help?
• those being illuminated will batten down the hatches, narrow their thinking, and withhold important information if they think it can be used against them.

Nah, probably not. After all, it’s a no brainer that the best and brightest problem solvers and decision makers sit at the top of the pyramid. If you don’t believe me, simply ask them.

On the other hand, a different pool of leadership experts promotes the unintuitive loosening of controls and less formality in a time of crisis – to allow more ideas from more people to surface and have a chance of resolving the crisis. Which approach do you think has a better chance of success?

Don’t try to address difficulties by adding more meetings and management. More meetings plus more documentation plus more management does not equal more success. – NASA SW Dev Approach