Who’s in Control?

The Problem

What is it about control? All of us want to be in control, but none of us want to be controlled. We think we could do our jobs so much easier if we acted alone and had absolutely no interactions with anyone or anything, eliminating the need to control or be controlled. That’s just not possible. Whatever we do and wherever we go in our work, actually our lives, we have an effect on one another, and, most often, a degree of control over our impact.

Top-down and bottom-up organizational design suggests we can classify control on a scale of two extremes. There are situations where top-down control makes sense. For example, the military provides defense from external threats by establishing and executing its mission, strategies, and tactics at the top and then dictates them from above to the ranks below.

Meanwhile, there are instances where bottom-up or self-organizing control makes sense. For example, an airline transports passengers and freight according to the FAA Pilot-in-Command (PIC) rule, where the captain has complete authority over their airplane operation and safety. A PIC operates their airplane as a bottom-up organization, knowing they never need to waste precious time getting approval from anyone during an in-flight emergency, because this situation requires immediate action.

Control depends on numerous organizational factors, like purpose, scope, size, and complexity. So, what’s the best mix of control that accountably empowers each member of an organization to deliver the most value?

The Solution

Agile offers a great example of how to balance the two extremes of top-down and bottom-up organizational control. Agile is a management philosophy typically used in project management and software development. What’s agile about Agile is that a self-organizing team divides its work into short periods, evaluates the work product and team performance regularly, and uses the evaluation results to improve teamwork, plans, and product development quickly and easily. Agile welcomes and adapts to the inevitable uncertainty and change found everywhere in not only projects or software development, but in life. It also relies on self-organizing teams that choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than top organizational leadership directing them.

This is great, but how do organizations embrace Agile philosophy, maintain control, and deliver maximum value? Many don’t. They just use the adjective “Agile” without meaningful change. Top-down leadership fears implementing Agile diminishes centralized control, resulting in confusion and disarray.

One of the best ways to implement Agile successfully is to re-visit the dichotomy of top-down versus bottom-up organizational control.

A few years ago, just before my two sons and I boarded a flight for a Grand Canyon adventure, the airline delayed our departure. The pilot failed a random alcohol test, so he could not execute bottom-up PIC of the aircraft as a consequence of centralized leadership’s control.

Is the plane operating as a top-down organization or is it a bottom-up organization? It’s both. The airline designed their organization with noticeably clear rules. They designed an organization that delegates top-down control to the PIC, the captain, who has complete authority over their airplane so long as he or she complies with FAA rules.

A key doctrine of this design is clarity. The airline is absolutely transparent about FAA rules. A pilot, certified according to precise regulations, has total authority over their airplane operation and safety. Deviate by consuming alcohol within eight hours of piloting a plane, and the airline will enforce FAA rules, using their top-down control.

When embracing Agile successfully, leadership authorizes a project according to a non-negotiable rule. The project must contribute to the organization’s purpose. Now it’s time for leadership to let go, knowing their organizational design empowers a self-organizing team to develop a particular software product. The team is free to solve software development problems, so long as they comply with the rules. It’s not easy for leadership or the team, but at least everyone knows clearly who’s in control. That certainly helped us get to the Grand Canyon safely, even though it was eight hours later than originally planned.

Source

Sisney, Lex, “Top-down vs. Bottom-up Hierarchy: Or, How to Design a Self-Managed,” Organizational Physics, October 13, 2016w

Who’s in Control?

The Problem

The Solution

Source

Patterns Matter

A Good Match

The Missing Link