I think people like the idea of democracy more than they like actual democracy. On some level, most people would agree that pure democracy as in one person one vote in every organization is ridiculous. Any organization of sufficient complexity cannot possibly be fully understood by all of its members. It would be absurd for example to give full voting rights on strategic direction to a new hire. What I think people actually want is the sense that their voice is heard by the decision makers. They also want the opportunity to advance to the level of decision maker in their particular domain as they gain experience.
The problem that I think most organizations face is that they eventually end up with a strategic decision making level that is impenetrable by the rank and file. The people at this level only hire their friends or promote people who have similar viewpoints to them. This is incredibly demoralizing as well as toxic to the organization because you as a person who is actually doing the work have important context that the strategic leaders don't have and won't listen to.
Solving this problem is one of the more interesting systems problems out there. I'm not aware of any large organization that has truly figured this out (including national governments).
As a dev in an XL org, I agree with the parent comment: if decision-making power isn't clear from the outset, people hold important-feeling weekly sync meetings for months and then wonder why they can't hit the deadline. Also everyone disagrees as to what the product that we were building in the first place even was because nobody was in charge of clearly delineating it.
Good leadership feels like a democracy while actually being a dictatorship.
Walk people towards the decision you want using a Socratic method and then let them take the credit for the decision making.
Of course sometimes you will get a situation where someone doesn’t arrive at the solution you want anyway so you need to excise a bit of hard power, but hopefully that is rare enough that people respect it when you do it.
> Walk people towards the decision you want using a Socratic method and then let them take the credit for the decision making.
I've been trying really hard to do this. It is an impressive hack when you can pull it off.
If you have gigantic egos on your team, then getting everyone in agreement can often be expedited with a little bit of inception. My own ego is the biggest reason I have difficulty engaging in the socratic technique. And, as you note there are definitely cases where you kind of have to beat the sense into everyone else.
I am at a point where I kind of don't give a shit about the intermediate decisions and exact correctness anymore. I am far more interested in getting further down the product roadmap and seeing my entire vision unfold. Money has almost become a secondary concern to me. As long as the appropriate steps are taken, I don't even care if my name is on it anymore.
It is a lot easier to move an elephant when it performs of its own volition. The most advanced and effective forms of people management seem to involve manipulation of egos.
People like the illusion of democracy and the stability of dictatorship. As we can see from this and the other thread, when the proverbial shit rolls horizontally instead of vertically effectiveness goes down and leadership becomes impotent. The game becomes 'who can I blame this on adjacent to me?' instead of either up or down.
The best way to make everyone happy is to have the democratic discussion, hear everyone out, and then let the boss acknowledge their help and make their decision. Loyalty to the boss, regardless of their decision then determines performance. Team members did their duty by offering their best insight, whether it was selected or not.
