Happy staff members create happy customers, which lead to successful businesses. As leaders, we all know that. But how can turning management ‘upside down’ lead to positive change in an organisation?
Different Management Models
As organisations adapt to dynamic changes in business, society, and workforces, they are starting to move towards different management models. Where a couple of decades ago, the traditional top-down management style was the norm, future-orientated organisations are starting to look more seriously into a modern ‘upside down’ version of management, namely a bottom-up structure.
Concepts such as flat organisations, participative management, and employee engagement are all current buzzwords that companies are using to challenge the traditional, often autocratic, management approach that was the norm.
Now, business leaders and organisational stakeholders are starting to realise that – simply put – with an employee’s ‘hands’ comes a brain that has the potential to be tapped to the long-term benefit of the company. This also increases an employee’s sense of engagement and leads to personal and professional fulfilment.
Bottom-up Management
In comes the notion of bottom-up management, where employees are more engaged, more involved and creativity is encouraged. This type of management approach is especially effective in the innovative sphere, where ideas are put forward by creative employees, which are then driven up the ranks to top management for consideration and, ultimately, a green or red light is given. Companies such as Google and 3M Company are good examples where this approach has been implemented successfully.
By contrast, Elon Musk has a different approach in Tesla, with Musk and his senior team initiating a strong vision, which then gains the support of employees, who buy in to the ideas and then set about in making them work. Musk is credited for his ability to make people believe in his vision, and he leads by example. He calls himself a ‘nano-manager’ which means he is even more hands-on than most and more demanding, expecting only the best.
Good People vs. Good Ideas
Ed Catmull, the founder of the highly successful Pixar Animation Studio, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, aptly notes that good people are much more valuable to an organisation than good ideas. ‘If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works,’ he writes. Great teams may therefore benefit from a bottom-up approach.
Jean-Philippe Deschamps, emeritus Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD in Lausanne (Switzerland), confirms that bottom-up (innovation) leaders share a number of traits, such as a knack for attracting great talent to the organisation.
A bottom-up management style also aims at sharing responsibility for innovation and success through all levels of an organisation, but it still requires a supportive leader with a clear vision. Again, not every manager is cut out for the job, as is the reality that not all managers are leaders.
True Leaders Required
Deschamps argues that only true leaders can be effective in this kind of management environment. He cites the late Nelson Mandela as an example of someone who understood true leadership, even when leading from behind (which is another way of describing bottom-up leadership).
He quotes from Mandela’s biography, Long Walk to Freedom: ‘A shepherd stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.’
‘Bottom-up innovation leaders are indeed more supportive than directive; they encourage initiatives and experiments, but they ultimately manage to lead their teams towards greener pastures,’ says Deschamps.
Room for Models
Not all companies are suited to a bottom-up management approach, though, and success depends largely on the quality of its employees. If one were to take the example of a state-owned government enterprise with a very large unenthusiastic corps of workers with poor ethics and low engagement, the bottom-up management approach would be a dismal failure.
Bottom-up and top-down management styles are not mutually exclusive. As in many situations in business, deciding on a bottom-up versus top-down management approach depends on the unique circumstances of the organisation or a team.
In some instances, a bottom-up management style would be a perfect solution to empowering and engaging an enthusiastic and creative team, or solving a particular problem or challenge, while some businesses or teams might benefit from a more traditional approach. It is a case of horses for courses.
Lara Theron
Sources
http://www.bottomupmanagement.com/
http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/the-benefits-of-bottom-up-management-without-the-dogma/
http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2017/02/28/the-eight-attributes-of-bottom-up-innovation-leaders/
http://www.business2community.com/small-business/business-can-learn-pixar-01557578#jjXVpZPmC9LAH9ey.97
https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-calls-himself-a-nano-manager-2015-1