There are only three ways to manage your organization, department, or branch: top-down, bottom-up, or a combination.
What is top-down management?
– Keep decision making at the top of the organization.
– Setting goals, quotas and direction at the boardroom or senior executive level
– Have strategic planning meetings or events that include only top management
– Motivate people only with fear or incentives.
– Not being willing to listen to the ideas, suggestions or comments of lower level employees
– Training and reviews are all top down
– Senior executives are too involved in the hiring process
– Very little top-down delegation
There’s more, but let’s move on.
What is bottom-up management?
Well, we could say the opposite of all of the above to save time, but here are a few others.
– Ownership and acceptance of initiatives and projects from lower level employees
– Improving the performance and effectiveness of employees.
– Fewer resources wasted on activities and programs that don’t last
– More motivated employees.
What are the consequences of a top-down style?
– Top management is not in touch with reality
– Low motivation and performance of employees.
– Short reaction time to the market and to competitors.
– Poor customer retention or loyalty.
– High selling costs.
– slow growth
– High employee turnover.
What are the benefits of an ascending style? I am running out of space, so the answer is the opposite of all the above and many more.
Are you in touch with whether your management style or your organization is top-down or bottom-up? This is how you can get a fairly accurate image.
1. Is your corporate direction clear to all employees? If so, are you sure? How
to know?
2. Is your culture safe for honest bottom-up feedback or is reality editing being done before it happens?
does it come to you?
3. Do many decisions, projects and initiatives go wrong sooner or later?
4. Have acquisitions generally been successful over the long term or over time?
decided they were a mistake?
5. Is morale lower than it should be or is it desirable?
6. Are your employees under a lot of stress?
7. Does communication break down anywhere in the organization: top-down, bottom-up, or
department to department?
8. Is your culture ‘here we go again’?
9. Are employees more concerned with the success of their own department than with the
success of the entire organization?
10. Are you losing some of your best employees?
11. Are sales lagging behind the previous year(s)?
12. Is it hard to hire really good new people?
Can your organization be both top-down and bottom-up?
Yes. And these are some of the benefits.
1. Combining top-down corporate needs with bottom-up accountability
2. Combine the creative ideas of lower-level employees with the vision of higher-ups
management
3. Improved decision making
4. Faster problem resolution
5. Beat the competition
6 delighted customers
As you can see, I like lists. The simple reason is that in my experience most people would prefer this bullet point approach. If you want more dialogue, I can provide you with dozens of resources. I have over 750 articles on a variety of management, leadership, and supervision topics. Just give me a call and we can discuss customizing a program for your management team.
