Having gone for various interviews over the last few months, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes the company tick? Who really calls the shots?
In general we tend to hear of top down approach when instructions are relayed from the man to the grunts at the bottom. Information is distorted as it trickles down to those at the front line. The other approach is the bottom up approach where the proles on the ground band together for a cause and revolt against the institution.
From observation, startups tend to have the bottom up approach namely for two reasons:
- No one knows what the hell is going on (the whole bs about true north and direction tends to be bs, everyone is winging it until you find something meaningful. This is the supposed pivoting that startups adopt)
- Founders generally do not have enough political clout/ external motivation ($$$) with members of the startup to dominate and drown out voices. He/ she requires their expertise to help build the company and allow others to insert their interpretation of their vision into the bigger picture (once again the pivoting)
Corporations on the other hand do not really have a top down approach. There is a common perception that Asian companies will have a strict top down approach where some out dated senior leader barks orders to his immediate henchmen and this trickles down the organization structure until it reaches those at the bottom with 99% attenuation. Needless to say, the execution at that point is next to useless.
I would propose a different theory. What ever happened to having the middle management dictate the company? It may seem strange and they may seem like mere cogs, but somehow these cogs are dangerous and have a collective borg mindset. My hypothesis is that as companies grow from startup and the founder raises money, the company expands to a stage where despite the fact that he/ she may despise management, realises there is no other way to scale then to call on the bean counters. Bean counters armed with their MBAs and fancy metrics swoop in to set up rules and processes. At this point, the founder has lost control of the company to the processes which is now dictated by fiefdoms of middle management.
The rise of corporate politics is the rise of these fiefdoms to secure power from each other. It is no better than the warlord era in China where different power hungry warlord try to wrestle power from their neighbours while protecting their asses from being ravaged by other neighbours while they go on the offensive. The founder at this point becomes a puppet head to raise more funds and collect more money. The top down commands become nothing more than fart in the wind. This is perhaps why older companies with second or third generation leadership tends to have fanciful interviews with nice ideas while internally it’s still a mess with ridiculous infighting.
So what’s the proposed solution? There’s always the scorched earth policy. But everyone dies. Or insert a really strong warlord into the mix and watch the person take over the territories and rule under his/ her banner.
For us mere peasants, joining a cause tends to end with bloodshed or death (even if you are in the right camp).
