Published
Models of corporate hierarchy that put the client or the person paying the bills at the top of the tree in terms of decision making have long been seen as the most secure way of assuring value in a business and in projects. The logic is unassailable: I am the person commissioning the work and the one paying for it so I need to be the one making the decisions. And this relationship of master and subordinate is reflected down through each level in the supply chain.
Alongside authority, the hierarchical model also brought personal accountability for the results (or the failures). Unfortunately, our practice of allowing or even, for the very best of reasons, requiring senior staff to move into new roles before the outcomes of the projects for which they are responsible are realised, effectively left no one (apart from the occasional unfortunate but handy scapegoat) to carry the can.
Whilst this traditional model is so hard-wired into our thinking, culturally, economically and intellectually, it has patently outlived its usefulness in the complex, fast-changing world of today:
Pleasing your boss rather than your client – in a hierarchical model, those serving the top are often motivated by the needs of their immediate boss rather than the business or worse still the client;
There is a culture of obedience – bosses and clients, themselves under pressure rarely welcome those who bring them problems or indicate obstacles to their carefully laid plans;
Rewards and praise tend to fall upwards – those lower down the supply chain are rarely publicly recognised for their contribution, with the main contractor taking this kudos for success, in the eyes of the client;
Change and decision-making happens at a snail’s pace – with everything required to go back up the line to the decision-makers to make – and back down again to communicate – the decision, there’s no way an organisation can hope to keep up with the pace of change around it;
The structure of the organisational hierarchy bears no resemblance to the informal knowledge structure – people naturally make their own connections across the organisation to find support and get what they need in terms of information on the project. This true knowledge structure is often encumbered and constrained by the traditional, linear hierarchy;
Innovation is rarely seen as in the interests of the hierarchy – which, when it doesn’t view innovation as a simple irrelevance, may even feel that its status threatened by upstarts;
There are lots of reasons why changing the model is supremely difficult: the overwhelming force of the status quo; the inability to focus on changing the system when we are all so focused on delivery; the challenge of trying to influence change in a complex system; the natural risk aversion of bureaucracy; and our old heuristics which blind us to alternative ways of doing things.
Escaping the Major Projects Echo Chamber
The Major Projects Association annual conference (12th and 13th September) will look at alternatives to a linear, hierarchical model for project delivery.
Further reading:
Six Reasons Why Corporate Hierarchy Works Against True Leadership – Forbes (2019)
Alternatives to Hierarchy: Breaking the Bonds of Mind – Tom Peters (1988!)
Improving Delivery Models – Global Infrastructure Hub (2021)