Raise the Hammer

Ryan writes: That's how corporate hierarchies work: orders originate at the top and are mandatory for employees. This structure is what makes corporations efficient, even when the business plan isn't optimal and doesn't take full advantage of the knowledge and experience of the members - the savings from avoiding transactions costs more than offsets the cost of imperfect executive knowledge and misapplied resources.

I thought I would elaborate on this more.

The hierarchical approach is cumbersome in many circumstances and does not allow for others in the lower end of the spectrum to add value. I will give an example:

The top boss gives instructions to redo spreadsheets from obsolete program to one that is more up to date.

The employee who is assigned this task has a background in accounting, where the original designer did not have the same background or knowledge. The task was to make information retrieval more efficient and from an accounting point of view this efficiency would lessen the time to analyze that data.

But from the hierarchical point of view the employee assigned the task is humilated and yelled at by their supervisor who feels threatened by the change. How dare a lower employee think of something that would actually be beneficial to the organization.

The end result is that the lower end employee is terminated because of the politics involved and the change is not used.

While someone may be appointed as having so called expertise, does not necessarily make them a good supervisor or boss when they feel threatened by innovative changes that would make the organization more efficient.

As I have said before, a hierarchical system does not allow for true ideas or leadership to come through and with the hierarchical system threats, violence and intimidation are widely used to thwart change and ideas.

While getting consensus may take longer, it seems to me that with consensus, everyone would be on the same page and it does not allow for bullies to have their reign of terror.