I like good graphic designs and as they say, one image is worth a thousand words. Such social and entrepreneurial illustrations go a long way and can be powerful explanations. One of my favourite ones is the birds on tree, where the ones looking up only see assholes and the ones looking down only see shit. I’ve worked in organisations of all sizes and while it is not always that simple, there is some truth into it.
However, such illustrations, or rather the concepts behind them sometimes are just plain wrong. I’ve seen one again this morning, which triggered this article, about how front line workers see 100% of the problems and top managers only see 4%.
Illustration by Roberto Ferraro. Roberto made the illustration, not the concept, don't blame him!
You can trust me on this one, I’ve been in all positions, from front line to CEO and everything in between and I often have my fingers in operations nowadays. The idea that knowledge about the problems diminishes when looking at higher stages of the hierarchy is not only wrong, it is also misleading and potentially dangerous.
The truth in this idea is that managers don’t get 100% of the details of the front line issues, and this is ok. Where it gets a bit dangerous is because it implies that managers are not aware or just ignoring problems. First of all, some front line problems are solvable at the front line. Organisations should give front line people means and ways to solve issues themselves. We don’t want micro-management, right? And this is not about not checking all the time but also about giving what is required to solve issues. Managers should not have to solve each and every little problem, and therefore they don’t even need to know about them.
Another thing I don’t like about this whole concept is that it implies a strong difference between front line workers and managers, almost creating clans and it is prone to creating tensions and potentially conflicts. As a manager, I try to have an open ear for complaints and also for proposed solutions. My job is to help solving problems. Let this sink in… help… solving… problems. Not just solving problems.
Companies are structured as pyramids for a reason. If all problems had to go up to the top, it would be unmanageable. Do you think the CEO of a large organisation personally solves all the problems? What kind of organisation would that be? Dummy workers, layers of stupid managers and one guy on top doing the problem solving? The middle layers must bring value and not just pass problems up the tree and solutions down.
This analogy is also wrong at a completely different level. When an organisation grows in size, and believe me, this starts very quickly, new problems appear which are not seen by the front line workers at all. Displaying problems as an onion with layers of hierarchy around each other is wrong. Some problems come directly from outside of the onion without being seen by the lower layers. Regulation changes, tensions with customers, issues with invoices being or not being paid, tensions in the workforce, strategy questions, and so on… Not only do front line workers not see those problems but they also don't need to see them. The job of the middle layers here is to solve the problems as they come and protect their team members from them.
So wherever we are in the onion, the right thing to do is to get our fair share of work, solve issues as far as practical and escalate the unsolvable ones. Protect the guys above from what you can solve yourself and protect the guys below from what they don’t need to know and worry about, so that we all live in a happy onion.