Management by Democracy

In my previous article "Human resource management"I have put across a comparison and tried to re-present “management” in a more easy and understandable way. Human resource is a functional area of the organization and many such functional areas lead to overall organization, and the person who is leading the organization has more responsibilities to deliver and is the only individual responsible for the fate of the organization.

Now the question is that whether that individual should be free to take decision or is there a better way to do that. “Prudent decision”.

I suggest that there are ways to take prudent decision; the key for that is “management by democracy”. Being the person in charge doesn't mean that he needs to have all the answers and neither he/she should pretend that he knows everything (Real business geniuses don't pretend they know everything). Decision should always taken in a democratic way by gathering subject matter experts and domain experts. But if the boss thinks that he knows everything (Aham Brahmasmi: Ravana had a gut-feeling that he knows everything and his decision are correct) and those decision are leading to fatal problems and downfall of the organization then there should be a provision of employees vote their boss out of office.

Management by democracy will reduce concentration of power in one hand and will reduce the possibilities of individual treating/ thinking himself as God. There will be provision of employee generating a trouble ticket the way customer raising ticket and for which a response is required.

Management by democracy requires A 360 Degree feedback implementation. Generally senior managers don’t want to be exposed on there flaws and try to avoid anything that evaluates there way of managing the things, they avoid answering the queries and avoid responsibility of bad outcomes.

India being a Command and control society from centuries; we have a habit of controlling our kids (by virtue of our power & age) till they get married and have there own kids. Command and control is the easiest management style but it may not be very productive for the organization, while democratic accountable model is very difficult on management but it is very productive.

Note: “Innovation emerges from the bottom up, unpredictably and improvisationally, and it's often only after the innovation has occurred that everyone realizes what's happened. The paradox is that innovation can't be planned, it can't be predicted; it has to be allowed to emerge."

“Boss is always right” is an adage but if boss believes in the said concept, then he might be instrumental in downfall of the. If the top notch carry this attitude, they are bound to loose respect of there team members and have to face there rage. Rage need not be a direct expression but may be in there action and behavior.

image source: incollaboration.ning.com/groups