Exactly. I once had the conversation about bottom-up vs top-down decision making with my CEO, and his point was essentially that the people we've hired can't be trusted with that level of responsibility. For me this was proof that our hiring process needed to improve, for him it was proof that our supervision process needed to improve.

There's a great book about companies run through bottom-up decision making called Reinventing Organizations. My take away was that bottom up can work at any scale, but it requires true believers at the top who are constantly working hard at making themselves unnecessary. Once the true believers walk out organizations naturally revert to hierarchical decision-making.

The best advice I received from an old manager when I moved into management was that if I wanted to achieve anything my primary goal was to make myself and my position redundant. Hiring and empowering the right people is the only way to achieve this, its not easy but its definitely worth it. When you can truly trust the people you are responsible for its a different game.

I'm a true believer in bottom up decision making. That said, when I was in the USMC, I had to lead some Marines that I would consider incapable of making even the most basic decisions on their own. It's unfortunate but that's reason the military must have such a rigid hierarchy. If I'd been able to pick only the best Marines for my team, we'd have been able to allow more bottom up decision making. I've experienced it on some teams, others not so much.

On the other hand, if you can make an organization work with a lower grade of employees, you will scale much more easily and cheaply. Maybe its a pipe dream to accomplish this but I think it's probably somewhere in between. At the scale of a multinational corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees, it surely comes into play more.

Ummm... I beg to differ. Well, I will admit that you need to avoid inept people. But I assert that the key to success is for management to have clear goals for the organization and articulate them clearly. Most people, if they understand the goals clearly, will make good decisions. If everyone knows the goals, and you encourage them to "think above their paygrade" (solve your manager's problems, not yours..) and a lot of good work will happen.

Management in 3 bullet points: 1. Have clear goals. 2. Articulate your goals clearly. 3. Go to 1.