Chapter 18From Top-Down to Decentralized Decision-Making
Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
—General George Patton, American military leader
In traditional organizations, all decisions are approved at the highest levels. Literally every piece of content, every campaign, and every internal email must be signed off by the highest-level marketing person. This is inefficient. Customer-ready material sits in the approval cycle for days, sometimes weeks.
The centralized model reflects a lack of trust in the people doing the work, and it robs those people of accountability. It can demoralize the team, particularly in the early days of adopting Agile, when individual contributors expect change. If Agile results in the same approval delays and the same burden of rework, morale suffers, people leave, and the change cynics are proven right.
Agile organizations must shift their decision-making in several ways: who makes decisions, how they are made, and how quickly they are made. Let's take a look at each.
Who Makes Decisions?
Who should make a given decision? Is the call made at the highest level of the organization or at lower levels? Here are some guidelines.
Strategic vs. Tactical
Effective management understands the difference:
- Strategic decisions—the goal and the unique approach we'll use to achieve that goal—belong to those highest in the organization.
- Tactical decisions—the intermediate objectives and specifics ...
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