Can “leadership” start from the bottom and travel up?
June 10, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: ~PATRISH~
By Wes Ball, author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. Read all of Wes’ posts here.
When innovative thinkers in a company run up against restrictive management, their first thought is to “lead from the bottom.”
They try to create influence among other employees. They try to create a following among suppliers, distributors, salespeople, and anyone else they think they might influence. The result most typically is that the restrictive manager squashes them.
Interestingly, many top managers hope that these good ideas will filter up and be discovered. Sadly, they seldom, if ever, see such good thinking. They have no way of un-filtering the ideas that were filtered through the restrictive managers they placed between themselves and the real innovative thinkers at the lower levels of the company.
I’ve run into this in every large and many smaller organizations with whom I have worked. Top management desperately desires the ideas that are floating around at the lower levels of the company, but they never get to see them. I recall hearing a creative director at a large ad agency say that he regularly went into the junior copywriters’ offices and searched their trash cans – not to find problems, but rather to find good ideas that had been thrown away because they didn’t recognize their value. Too often, we see good ideas being “trashed” because managers don’t recognize their value.
In the meantime, top management is saying, “Where are all the good ideas we need?”
What about you?
Your comments—priceless
The longer term upshot of this kind of attitude is that the best junior staff, with the best ideas, tend to leave the company and take their idea somewhere it will be appreciated – or set up in competition.
Nicola:
That is exactly what I see over and over again. Instead of seeing the “cream rise to the top” (to quote an old phrase), it most often runs out the door. We had a comment last week about that suggesting that the problem was one of a badly planned mentoring program. I wonder, however, if there are any larger publicly-held companies that have an answer to middle managers who drive off good talent by their own fears and restrictive management approach.
Something I learned working in one Fortune 100 and one Fortune 500 corporation is that few have the power to say, “Yes.” Everyone has the power to say, “No.” Middle managers use that power often.
Thanks for the comment!
It only happens in a culture where where the top exec has enabled “lead from the bottom” thinking and provided ways to bypass a restrictive manager.
Of course, assuming a culture that doesn’t support those actions, such a manager wouldn’t be hired in the first place. If one does slip in the problem should be dealt with immediately.
Sad, but all too true, Miki.
I hope that my book, The Alpha Factor, will help make it more likely that such top leadership might become sought after. It is most certainly the path to greater profit, wealth generation, and prosperity for everyone in an organization and supplying that organization.