Where Should Decisions Be Made? Papers have been written on top-down vs bottom-up management styles.  Which is best?

• In Richardo Semler's book, Maverick, he repeatedly expresses his bottom-up management style belief. If you cannot trust the people working for you to make good decisions, you need to hire different people. Period.

   

• Tim Conner created an article and a quiz on the topic of management styles. 

   

• Andrew Filev talks about merging the two styles to get a more New York Times approach.

   

• RURALnomics outlines key differences (.pdf) making the bottom-up approach stand out for any company wanting to break the sound barrier of success.

   

• TedTalks created a video on ants.  Ants have no central control what-so-ever and yet accomplish everything they need to to maintain the colony.

   

McClatchy is looking for a new way to do business and all the answers are already here, in house, waiting to be utilized to their fullest.  By tweaking management styles to a bottom-up approach and looking to the people in the field, doing the work, we will find the answers we need to be an even better company and be leaders in the newspaper industry of tomorrow.

Adding this in from the text file that Robin linked to in the comments:

OK here it is.  I'm going to use the "Key Differences in Management Styles" pdf as a guide and examples I hear talked about on a frequent basis.

Top-Down Management Style Examples

Forced Compliance: Commitments are frequently made and contracts signed without input from other MI Departments verifying it will work well with our systems or affiliates getting much of a say.

How to change to bottom-up: After a need is determined, allow other departments and affiliates to have a say on vendors they find attractive. Research and compare several vendors. Present features, pros and cons of each. Have a core group of affiliates, selected from a group of people that would actually be using the product, and have them decide which option will best represent ALL papers. Keep in mind that we have A LOT of incredibly intelligent people in house that are fully capable of creating anything we need, if time is allowed and details are specified.

Rulemaker:

• Corporate project form. Before anything new can go on a site, it must be approved.
• People are given the responsibility to carry things out and never allowed the authority to make adjustments and make things happen. There is a lot of "mother, may I ?"

How to change to bottom-up: Give individuals responsible for making things happen the authority to make deadlines, do things properly, give incentives for good work, and create an environment for success.

Oppositional (Intimidate by Confusion): Both affiliates and MI staff use this technique. If at first you don't suceed, ask ask again. Circumvent people that will have the information and authority to say yes or no and ask people that are more likely to give the response desired. If that does not work, ask someone higher or ask a publisher to email Chris Hendricks and make a big stink. After enough jumping around from person to person and making a louder noise, eventually those that scream the loudest are taken care of before all others.

How to change to bottom-up: Stop the I'm telling Mom/Dad mentality. Have intelligent discussions on why things can or cannot be done and realize that while we all would like to accomplish every dream that affiliates and MI have, we have to set priorities and do what is best for everyone first.

Exclusionary: Things decided on by management and given to employees for implementation without prior knowledge gathering from employees who have the know-how.

How to change to bottom-up: Find employees who are passionate about the subject matter and wish to be stakeholders. Give them meaningful responsibility for shaping the course of the action. Allow other employees to review for further insight.

Commonplace: We are a risk adverse company in a risk adverse industry. In current times, this is akin to paralysis and could be fatal.

How to change to bottom-up: Allow employees to take intiative and make their ideas come to life. Many times MI employees have fabulous ideas that could take our sites ahead of other media sources. These initiatives are squashed by other "important" projects.

Confrontational (Secretive, fear based)

•  Project managers spend a good deal of time working with team members to determine how long it will take to accomplish all the tasks in a project. Upper management comes back and says, "Chris Hendricks won't understand why it will take that long.", "The family expects..." There is a looming scary Chris Hendricks and family who apparently will be very angry, even if someone sat down and clearly explained why items are taking X amount of time.
• There have been a number of tickets coming in that say, "John Jordan says ..." and carry a tone of "make it happen now" and jump because John Jordan said it has to happen.

How to change to bottom-up: After the people who do the work determine how much time it will take to accomplish items, allow for the necessary time to do things right, with quality instead of cutting corners or slicing things out of projects and creating a second project later to take care items chopped or to repair issues created by the fast steam roller that came through.

Reactionary (Manage by crisis. Damage Control Orientation): This is how MI runs every day. There is always another fire to be put out and it needs to be put out now. As one fire is extinguished another one looms in its place. When everything becomes a high priority, we no longer have a high priority, we now have a new median.

How to change to bottom-up: Allow time for planning. Understand that people cannot operate at 110% capacity constantly. Understand that a project might take X hours, but when meetings, documentation and other items are added in, they really take X+Y+Z+1.

Myopic View (Restrictive): In many cases, ideas don't have weight until they come from an authority figure or some other paper has already done it and proved it is successful.

How to change to bottom-up: Ask employees to flesh out ideas with examples. Acknowledge them and move forward with good ideas. Weigh the ideas pushed down by "people of power" and ask if they are really what sites need and how difficult it would be to implement. In other words, take good ideas, research them to determine their real value rather than an opinionated value and move forward on the good ideas.

Acquisitive Orientation (Physical asset based): Can't think of anything.

Redundant: We make the same mistakes over and over again.

How to change to bottom-up: Use past mistakes as learning tools to all us to succeed on future projects.

Bottom-up Management Style Examples

Collaborative-based

• People from various departments who know how our system works and who use mobile devices discussing what would and would not make a good mobile template.
• When MI Support members run into an issue, they consult with co-workers to come up with a variety of solution options and determine which is the best option.

Culture of Contagious Cooperation:

• Phil Buckley working with Kathleen Henzel on the SEO innitiatives to make sure support understood where she was coming from and that she understood how the systems Support would be using to implement the items work.
• MI Ad Ops and MI Support building better communications across departments.Leslie Boyle even gave Support a Quick Training on Ad Operation Tools and what information they work with on a daily basis.
• MI Support members always being willing to assist other Support members with issues. I suspect other departments do the same, since I know the kind of people that work at MI.

Responsive (Satisfying target customer):

• Affiliate relations working with staff at various sites to make sure concerns are addressed by building a bridge across the communication gap.

Routinely Identify Strengths/Weaknesses:

• The report cards for each department address some of these issues.

Inclusionary (Stakeholder Ownership. Invitation to get involved):

• I am sure there is an example, I just cannot think of one at the moment.
• Development construct days.

Educated (Eager to be exposed to new ideas and methods):

• MI Support has quick trainings every week to expose members to items they are unfamiliar with.
• Development trainings.

Conciliatory (Open to sharing):

• When the mcclatchy.com site was updated and started requiring every paper to send a daily frontpage pdf to mcclatchy.com two sites shared their automation scripts for the rest of affilates to use.
• Kansas City and N&O shared their Mom's sites (phpBB and Drupal).
• When SacBee was working on their Q&A Forums templates, they sent code changes back to MI to make items easier on readers.
• There are probably many other examples of this type.

Visionary: Can't think of any ideas.

Regional/Global Perspective: Can't think of any ideas.

"Social Capital" Origins (People Centered):

• The Support Department culture.
• Member services being there for each other during tough calls.

Innovative: Can't think of any ideas.

Ant Style Example:  I am told the MI Commenting solution was more of an ant style innovation.  It started with one site needing a solution, a tea-time discussion on how to make it happen, an implementation, management seeing it was good, further innovating, and a final product that blew many of the other commenting solutions away.

I hope this helps. Feel free to add to it or correct things that I may only have partial insight on or the grapevine rumors that took a wrong turn.