I have been working on formalising a mathematical model of how major decisions in large organisations quite often seem to be massively wrong. In these austere times this understanding could hold the key to unlocking some massive cost savings.
I found the fundamental assertion for this thesis was found in Eric S Raymond’s Cathedral and the Bazaar which I think he attributes to Kropotkin in the notes of the essay. (link later). This assertion is -
“True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies
than for telling the truth.”
This basic problem underlies a significant number of issues in large organisations which are further compounded by an ever increasing trend to recruit people in to middle management positions who have not done the job of the people they are managing. The net result of this is that when issues are initially reported up stream to these managers a large portion of the importance of these issues is lost.
This issue combined with the previously mentioned issue of trying to put a positive shine on reports up-stream, which is a necessary survival tactic in middle management due to the replaceable nature of the roles, results in each up stream report being a slightly diluted version of the information which was presented to them.
Attempting to quantify this dilution is potentially quite difficult as there is quite a large deviation between managers. Some will be scrupulous and always try to be truthful, honest and strive to fully understand the issues which are raised to them. Unfortunately these are in the minority. Some others know full well they are out of their depth and will not ask for clarification on issues they don’t understand, for fear of showing how little they know, and will therefore deliberately gloss over huge sections of information and distort information to make themselves appear better or pass the blame to others. These too are probably in the minority (although on some days I think otherwise). The majority simply try to explain things the best they can and not put their own necks too far on the line because they have kids to feed. The omissions they make, whilst not out of malice or overt self interest, still reduce the flow of correct information to the tiers where the big decisions are made.
By way of an illustration imagine the truth of a situation being numerically quantifiable and the truth dilution factor being applied sequentially to the value of the truth for each management tier the information is passed up through.
For a reasonable good manager we might expect them to capably communicate 95% of the truth upstream. The truth dilution factor in this case would be 0.95. If this was then applied through 5 tiers of management (about normal for the size of organisations in which I work). The end quantity of truth would be 1 * 0.95 ^ 5 = 0.77 or approximately 77%.
Now lets try it for an average manager who we might expect to achieve 80% accuracy which would be a dilution factor of 0.8. The end quantity of truth would be 1 * 0.8 ^5 = 0.32 or about 30% truth.
Now what about a hierarchy of particularly bad managers where the reduction of truth is approximately 50% or a truth dilution factor of 0.5. The end quality of truth would be 1 * 0.5^5 = 0.031 or just over 3% truth.
These examples assume all managers in an organisational hierarchy are equal which is more often the case that you might imagine as people tend to recruit people who are more like themselves or worse so as to be less of a threat. The equation is simple and you can try it with other numbers and fewer tiers of management but the results can be quite alarming.
The issues in this case are compounded exponentially with each tier of dilution which means even when you have a good team beneath you you won’t have a 100% accurate picture to work from. The real problem is just how bad the information quality gets when the truth dilution factor increases and just how quickly it tends towards zero.
The question is what can be done about it.
1) Recruit good managers.
It should go without saying really but this should include some experience in having done the job of the people they are managing at some point. This is really the only way (unless they are a very quick learner) that they will understand the detail and import of any issues escalated to them from their staff.
2) Destroy the culture of Fear.
If there is a culture of fear amongst managers and threats of redundancy for the reporting of bad news this will increase the likelihood of even good managers to distort the truth.
3) Delegate Decision Making downwards.
This doesn’t reduce the truth dilution factor but it reduces it’s effects. By allowing important decisions to be made with autonomy nearer the front line the exponential effects of the truth dilution factors have less overall impact. This also increases the levels of motivation and ownership any manager feels when they have to be responsible for larger decisions. For this to work however it is essential that the previous steps have been taken as bad managers can’t make good decisions and in places where a culture of fear is rife people will be paralysed by that fear, unable to make a decision quickly and effectively.
