Democratising Decision–Making In Organisations By Seni Adetu

Today marks almost four months to the day I started this column on March 20, sharing my perspective weekly on various leadership subjects.

Since that day, I have received loads of compliments from many of you esteemed readers across the country and across different socio-economic groups. I could not be any more appreciative to you all. You would however permit me to mention Sir Dr. Michael Omolayole, the first Nigerian CEO of Lever Brothers; my mentor, and a doyen of management in Nigeria, who called me on July 4 and told me he had read every single article in this column since inception, encouraging me to “keep it up.”

As I trust that you are reading this as well, sir, I doff my hat. I also wish to celebrate one of the security men at the main gate of my estate, a certain Kingsley, who stopped me as I drove in from church on Sunday, July 10 and said he had just finished reading the write-up of the day “inspect what you expect” and gave me highlights of the article off-head. I was blown away. Kingsley – kudos!

Starting today, and over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing my thoughts on some of the leadership questions that were sent to my e-mail box. I have answered other questions one-on-one with the senders but I wish to openly discuss the following specific ones that I consider relevant to more than a few readers.

Q: “I read your piece on ‘Talent Management for Succession” in SUNDAY PUNCH of May 29, 2016. It is one of the best leadership thoughts I have read in recent times. My question is: how do you democratise decision-making in the organisation from top managers down the ladder; a departure from the traditional ideas of command and control from a small cadre of top managers?” Alex

A: The traditional top-down communication approach of cascading decisions across the organisation with little or no input from the lower level employees that execute the decisions is an archaic form of leadership that needs be consigned to the waste bin. Forward-looking organisations and leaders are increasingly dialling up employee engagement and alignment conversations before firm decisions are made. Of course, there is the exception of a few “untouchables” that you could accept as the exclusive responsibility of business owners and/or CEO’s– areas such as trademark representation, strategic transactions in the form of mergers and acquisitions, etc. Causing alignment on decisions that affect employees typically results in increased ownership, stronger commitment and better outcomes.

The good news is that with the advent of technology, there are now more diverse ways of “democratising” decision-making such that employees need not be physically present in the room or have to travel from their work stations to make their contributions. There are enterprise social networks such as Yammer, Chatter etc that enable teams collaborate openly; in addition to the more formal email and video conferencing communication platforms. Furthermore, some companies carry out annual Value Surveys, where questions are asked online to every employee and responded to anonymously (a modern form of “suggestion box”).

Finally, there is the skip-level meetings option whereby a manager meets with the direct reports of his own direct report in the absence of the latter; to create an atmosphere of total freedom. I recall having a skip-level meeting with my marketing team in the absence of the marketing director, their boss, sometime ago in Kenya. This was a team of about 10 people where (I think) only two were men and the rest young ladies just starting their families. If my memory is correct, about three were in fact pregnant at the time of the meeting. I was unhappy about the employee turnover in that department. On digging deep, I found that our welfare package which had a lot of components we considered juicy was not appreciated or enjoyed by the ladies. These included for example, our partnership with a nearby gym– which cost the company good money in the hope that after work, employees would stop by for some keep-fit engagement. For starters, on hindsight it was probably shallow thinking on our part that pregnant women would go do strenuous gym exercises; but even after having their babies, what apparently mattered to these ladies was going home immediately after work to attend to their toddlers. So we got the welfare package wrong. We were paying bills and yet our female employees were unhappy. On digging further, I discovered that they would prefer we had a package for ante-natal and post-natal care–which was missing in the medical policy. I did the mathematics and found that the elements we paid for that they did not value were actually more expensive than funding their requests. I came out of that meeting and together with my HR director revised the medical policy accordingly. It was shocking to see the positive impact on employee engagement (as manifested in our annual Value Survey scores) and ultimately, employee retention – all that at a lower cost to the company.

To conclude, where achievable, I always advise leaders to seek the input and/or the alignment of their employees particularly on matters that affect them. My article of April 3: “Power of Alignment” throws more light on this. In the end, “all roads lead to leadership.” If you have a leader who does not feel threatened by one smart subordinate appearing to overshadow him, you would see him co-opt more and more junior people within the organisation into the decision-making process. If however the leader is the type that fears that the more exposed his employees are to decision-making, the more empowered they become and the more vulnerable he is job–wise, you would see him shy away from engaging with and aligning his team on decisions that matter, at the expense of quality company performance.