HIERARCHIES & Why It Increases the Risk of Calamitous Decisions

by Gary Hamel, Harvard Business Review, 12/11.

… the typical management hierarchy increases the risk of large, calamitous decisions.

• As decisions get bigger, the ranks of those able to challenge the decision maker get smaller.
  • Hubris, myopia, and naïveté can lead to bad judgment at any level,
  • but the danger is greatest when the decision maker’s power is, for all purposes, uncontestable.
• Give someone monarchlike authority, and sooner or later there will be a royal screwup.

A related problem is that the most powerful managers are the ones furthest from frontline realities. All too often, decisions made on an Olympian peak prove to be unworkable on the ground.

Read more at … https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers