On having a boss. On being a boss.

I was at Better Software in Florence last week, where I heard my friend Alberto Brandolini talk with his usual flair about how problems within organizations relate to problems in the IT departments of organizations. I agree with most of what Brando said, except for a couple of things.

You can hear it from just about every cool lean and agile speaker these days. It’s the idea that hierarchical control is evil. For these speakers, the company organizational chart is the symbol of everything that’s going wrong in the enterprise. Cool modern speakers about “agile management” propose alternative models based on non-hierarchical, ad hoc, informal communication structures. As far as I understand management, these alternative organization models are deeply flawed.

I too looked at hierarchy with suspicion, not so long ago. But this Summer I read The Puritan Gift, a book that everyone interested in business should read. This book opened my eyes (thanks @capotribu for suggesting it!) about many things. It dispels some myths that are given for granted by many people in agile:

  • Myth: American management is bad. Japanese management is good.
  • Myth: Hierarchical organization is bad. Informal, network, matrix organizations are good.
  • Myth: What a manager does is pure waste.

One key point of the book is that the success enjoyed by the Japanese manifacturing first and then Korean and Chinese economies later is due to the deep influence of the American style of management, that was transplanted by the Americans during the post-war American occupation of Japan. What the book says is that from about 1870 to 1970, the American way of managing was the best in the world, and that the Japanese learned the lesson from management experts from that golden era of American management.

Brando is correct in saying that there is a fundamental problem in hierarchical organization: that information is found at the bottom of the pyramid, where front line workers are, but decisions are taken at the top of the pyramid, where managers are. But if you read The Puritan Gift, you learn that the reason why a hierarchy works is just because it is meant as a way to let information flow up; a good competent manager spends a lot of his time talking to his subordinates. He asks them, he teaches them, he coaches them, he learns from them. (He or she, of course.) The manager must be able to understand when the subordinates are hiding or downplaying something; she will not accept a superficial report, and she will dig deeper. Not easy, you say? Well, nobody said it is easy. We discover thus that there is, in the end, a reason why a manager deserves better pay than his subordinates :-)

This way, information flows from the work-floor foremen up up to the top of the company.

And what about decisions? If you read The Toyota Way, you know that the enlightened managers in Toyota will delegate most decisions down to the lowest possible level. The big surprise is that this is also what a good American manager of the 1950’s would do. That manager, they say, would try to leave most decision making to his subordinates (after all, they have more information). He will usually suggest something, only occasionally he will give direct orders.

This does not mean that the manager will shift his burden of responsibility to his subordinates. There is a fundamental principle in delegation: when I delegate a task to you, the responsibility that the task is done well remains with me. The manager will see to it that the subordinates are taught and coached enough; that they have a credible plan; that they are executing it sufficiently well. Does this look a bit like what an agile coach would do? Does it look like agile people are rediscovering things that were common practice so many decades ago? Does it look easy? No, it isn’t :-)

Let’s get back non-hierarchical organizations and why they are, in my opinion, deeply flawed. I do have some experience in this. In my consulting life, I’ve spent some years working mainly with one company, then I worked some years with another, and so on. Four companies in all. All but one of them were small-to-medium companies that adopted either matrix or informal organizations. You didn’t really have a boss; there were many bosses who may come to you and ask you to work on this or that project. Cool, huh? Well, apparently, it is cool, but it is the “let’s skip school today” kind of cool.

When you don’t have a single boss, it’s easy for the worker, because you don’t have to regularly report to your boss, and answer difficult questions. It’s easy for the boss too, for they don’t have to think hard about how’s the work you are doing, and do all the difficult things that I said a good boss should do. Both you and the company you work with miss a lot, because there is not enough information exchange. You don’t get coaching, you don’t get to learn from your boss, you are not pushed to fulfill your potential. And the company misses out because you don’t get to tell them all the things you know and your cool ideas and all the cool things that could be done if only we’d be talking and listening to each other.

And lo, the appendix of The Puritan Gift contains a list of 25 Principles of Managent, one of which is “One person, one boss. […] Only if each executive reported to on single person could information flow freely up and down the line-of-command.”

TL;DR

The hierarchical organization is the best organization for a company; it is not about power and bossing people around. Hierarchical organization really is about letting information flow up, while decision-making is pushed down. But to make it work, you must have at all levels managers that know how to manage. Read The Puritan Gift about this.

Once again: being a competent manager is not easy, but it can be done. Some people can do it. I’ve seen a very few do it. There is a way, and there is hope.

9 Responses to “On having a boss. On being a boss.”

  1. Alberto Brandolini Says:

    Hi Matteo,

    and thanks for the links (I haven’t read the puritan gift, but I don’t think I fall into the stereotypes you mentioned… ). Most of all, thanks for the feedback about the message delivered by my talk. And the opportunity to clarify some of it.

    Pyramids and hierarchies do exist for a reason. They do solve at least one problem: “who decides here”, but they are awful beasts, because they tend to be incredibly resilient despite the original intent. And they tend to be incredibly slow when it comes to evolving. Hierarchical structures are a family some of them can be healthier than others. But the fact that decisions are taken up in the pyramid always tend to produce the same antipatterns (the ones I summarized with the Versailles pattern). People who haven’t been exposed to other forms of organization won’t probably even recognize those as antipatterns. And Italians have a serious problem with that. Church, schools, P.A. and workplaces are often organization which are not meant to evolve. You might be in your thirties and never really have had a chance to self organize. That’s very different in the US, for example. And the cocktail turns different in organizations as well (you could probably see a very wide spectrum there).

    The discriminating factor is – again – decision. How many sensible decisions need to be taken in your organization? If they’re many …you have a serious problem. If they are a few, then a pyramid might still be the best choice.

    But

    If the need for decisions increase, a pyramid is definitely not fit for the job. Unfortunately, pyramids are stable. They’re hard to change. A posse style organization might eventually turn into a pyramid sometimes, while the opposite move is incredibly more demanding. You need a quick coup to revoke democracy and a long process to set it up. Same applies to organizations.

    In general, I wasn’t advocating a revolution in the workplace. But I was trying to show that there is a wider organizational spectrum than the one we’re used to work in, and that some of the common “it’s always like that” explanations are flawed. It’s not always like that, it’s context dependent and the pyramid it’s not the only possibile context. It’s only the most common and less demanding.

    Cheers

    Brando

  2. Alberto Brandolini Says:

    I forgot to mention one thing, which I cut from my speech also. The ability to make decisions is a HUGE discriminating factor.

    Decision makers are promoted, often more for their ability to decide than for the quality of the decision taken. Improving the way decisions are taken might benefit both organizational styles.

    Delegation without skills, and without decision making skills …doesn’t work. But the good thing about skills is that they can be improved.

    Cheers

    Brando

  3. matteo Says:

    Hi Brando,

    it seems I’m saying “it is so!” and you reply “no it ain’t!”. I’m saying that a pyramid is a good structure for making decisions, because good managers will delegate and push most decision-making down to the proper level. You respond by saying that pyramids are bad for decision making, period. I say the problem is with incompetent management, not with the pyramid shape!

    I’m interested in what makes a good manager. Not in new, exotic organizational shapes.

    By the way, democracy is *not* what we want at work. We want to let the people with the right knowledge and skills to make decisions. The pyramid is meant to achieve this!

    One more thing: my daughters spend a lot of their free time with the Scout movement and by 13 they’ve seen and done a lot of self-organization ;-)

  4. Andrea Mariottini Says:

    If I understood you almost identified non-hierarchical organizations with matrix organizations.
    I think that matrix != non-hierarchical and that matrix is worse than pyramid.
    A good book I recently read about this is Slack by Tom Demarco. He explains why matrix management is bad and a lot of other useful things.
    What I learned is not that hierarchy is evil but that hierarchy is evil without communication, knowledge, delegation, empowerment, feedback. These things however have a natural non-hierarchical flow, good managers are those that facilitate this flow.

  5. Alberto Brandolini Says:

    We need to fine tune or disagreement a little. :-) I mean… “We want to let the people with the right knowledge and skills to make decisions.” (quoting from your comment) is exactly my goal. But I strongly disagree with the next sentence “The pyramid is meant to achieve this”: and you’re right, my answer to this is “No, it’s not!” because “good managers will delegate and push most decision-making down to the proper level” didn’t happen that often, at least in my experience. I am happy when it happens, but it’s definitely not the norm. At least in organizations I’ve seen. I think you’re describing a sweet spot, but maybe I am describing a black spot.

    Also, when I meant “decisions taken in the wrong place” I included also decisions taken in the wrong department. I.E. HR establishing salary policies or constraints for physical equipment. Turning wrong decisions right is an awful amount of waste.

    It all boils down to GRASP “Information Expert” pattern (here I can use this shortcut! ;-) ), only …at the organizational level. If it doesn’t happen the required amount of information necessary is huge, and I doubt traditional organizations are able to cope with this problem. They normally start with cutting “feedback”, the rest comes later.

    But really, I was not advocating different organizational shapes – that’s beyond by goal – only highlighting the relationship between recurring antipatterns and recurring organization structures. There’s more then one, and people can study. Then decide. But the pyramid is taken for granted.

    Also, I am glad that you introduced the Scout example. It’s both good or bad. It’s good because it’s a good example, bad because it’s in an optional path. Mandatory paths such as school deliver mostly the message “decisions are taken elsewhere and there’s nothing you can do about it”. I am not saying the opposite doesn’t happen, but the overall message is the wrong one. :-(

    Cheers

    Alberto

  6. matteo Says:

    Dear Alberto: yes it’s true, delegation does not happen that often, and often decisions are taken in the wrong department! But the problem is not in the hierarchy, is it? The problem is that the people in the pyramid do not do their job well. All I’m saying is that I don’t believe that the solution is in getting rid of the pyramid; it’s in getting people in the pyramid to realize when they’re not working well.

    In the book I’m quoting The Puritan Gift it explains quite well that the form of organization that worked well in the USA until 1970 is line-of-command (the pyramid) plus staff (various department, such as accounting or personnel) where the head of departments ultimately depend on someone high in the pyramid.

    All problems start when, as they say in the book, a head of acccounting gets his head out of his kennel, sniffs the air of the top of the pyramid and jumps up there, taking the place of the proper person, who probably was someone with deep knowledge of his or her industry. You put an accountant at the head of the company, and he will rule according to all he knows: costs and profits. He will ruin the company. An accountant should be the director of a company only if it is a company that sells accounting services :-)

  7. Alberto Brandolini Says:

    Hi Matteo.

    I still think that we are discussing slightly different matters. The problem for me was not the hierarchy “per se” (there is hierarchy in marine corps as well) but organizations where decision making is put at the top (maybe calling them tayloristic is better?). Apple might be used as an example against me, but I think the right question for Apple would have been “how could a guy like Jobs manage to retain all the strong personalities in the staff, despite his attitude?”. And I don’t think it’s the money.

    My concern is about the stability of the pyramid. That goes well beyond its goal. Suppose I am a founder of a smalla company. I experienced all the roles, but I need to hire. The newly hired person is fresh, and needs guidance, since he lacks skills. Perfect. When the person learns new skills …the desire for autonomy sneaks in. If it is fulfilled (healthy situation, the one you described), fine. If it’s not …the skilled person is now very likely to leave. A fresh replacement will join in reinforcing the need for a hierarchy.

    What I am saying is that pyramids where decision making is at the top are dangerous, because they tend to survive well beyond the need for such a configuration. They tend to look like the one and only solution, but they’re not. And alternative configurations require a different set of skills, that people often lack. Ignoring this problem make organization fall back to what they already know.

    I have to read that book. I might agree on many of the things (more than you imagine) but I don’t think that’s the only problem.

    What I found interesting instead, is the fact that the pyramid fulfills immediate need of Sistem 1 in Kahneman framework. It’s the most efficient configuration in terms of intelligence devoted to organizational structure, ora at least it hits a stable minimum.

    Cheers

    Alberto

  8. Alberto Brandolini Says:

    I uploaded the final version of my presentation on slideshare. http://www.slideshare.net/ziobrando/fare-pip-controvento I hope it clarifies a little, or at least I hope that it will provide readers who were not in florence some common ground :-)

    Cheers

    Alberto

  9. Uberto Says:

    Hi Matteo, as you know I switched from a big corporate to a small startup. The problem in the big corporation was not the hierarchy per se, but the burocracy. In our project we were 5 developers, 1 operation, 2 testers (shared), 1 build engineer (shared) and 7 managers. I’m not joking, we had: PO, Dev manager, Project Manager, Product Manager, QA Manager, Enterprise Architect, Operation Manager. The Product Manager himself was a small fry it the whole organisazion, so he changed direction every time one of his many bosses had a new idea.

    On the startup I have Dev director, PM and on their top the CTO. I understant the different size but the startup itself is bigger than the section of the big company, still it has 1/4 of the managers in that section.

    I think we need a low hierarchical company, not one completely anarchical.

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