Employees know the truth

What we call "military organizations", those who give and blindly follow orders, are not like the military at all.
Photo by Daniel Foster Flickr CC

Military Commanders consult

Brigadier Bill Dunham, the former Commandant of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM), tells how he prepared the training plan:

I first checked the plan with my management team and formally took their views. Then I went out and talked to my junior officers, warrant officers and NCOs. Not all of them; that would have been impossible, but a representative cross-section, people I could rely on to give straight answers and not tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. Did I have the right priorities? What additional resources would we need? Did what we were doing reflect accurately what people were experiencing on operations?

So if Commandos preparing for life and death situations use a consultative process, why do so many managers persist in forcing their will on their organizations?

Employees at the bottom of the pyramid better at predicting the company's future

When Crowdcast started their game system which lets employees bet on the companies future they made two strange discoveries:

• Employees far down in the organization are better than top management at predicting when projects are going to be finished and what customers will say about the product.


• Some top managers will refuse to listen, even after having seen the evidence.

Do you agree, or do you think that talking to employees is a waste of time?