How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal

Re:How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal by mmatants on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @03:28PM (#10814161)

I recall reading somewhere that while military organizations are very much synonymous with hierarchy, they have historically experienced a lot of pressure to flatten and decentralize, at least as far as field command goes. Napoleon's success was attributed to smaller units that responded to feedback more quickly. Unfortunately I can't find that article.

However, this is not to say that in regular administration there isn't still a lot of de facto trust in the hierarchy. I think unbounded hierarchy is generally one of those memes that people grow up taking for granted as something that just works with any layer count. In some ways, it's a self-reinforcing thing - if you climbed ranks for 10 years, you don't want to see the system change and your "sunk cost" go away.

[edit: clarified sentence]

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Re:How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal by kyllo on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @11:34PM (#10816136)

The US Marines are often cited in management literature as an example of an organization where the leadership communicates high-level intent and purpose to achieve strategic alignment, and then totally decentralizes tactical decisionmaking to the people doing the actual work in the field. The stereotype that they are just all about top-down decisionmaking and following orders, is false. They recognize that individuals need to be able to make decisions on the fly in order to react to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

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Re:How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal by tripzilch on Friday January 01, 2016 @04:42PM (#10823607)

But it will always remain an inherently misleading comparison, because they get to train people to an extent and in ways that would be unthinkable for a business in modern civilized society to get away with. The training and drilling is such an engrained component in that whole system. Without having that first it seems to me a bit like prematurely spot-optimizing the wrong loop.

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