New ask Hacker News story: Democracy at Work Is Bad

Democracy at Work Is Bad
2 by bluefone | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Managers are outsourcing their work to teams, in the name of democracy. They ask the team to come up with goals and direction for the work, which was actually the job of the manager. Effectively this results in someone from the team making decisions on behalf of the manager though he is not a competent authority to do so, leading to poor decisions. Managers believe that this approach has benefits of democracy, empowers the team and makes them more committed to the work etc. However, a business org with roles is different from the political voters without roles. Organization roles have an accountability for the decisions made and they are expected to be experts in their domain. A voter in a democracy is not expected to be accountable for his decisions (there are no wrong votes) nor is expected to be expert in choosing a leader. A democracy is not meant for making decisions at work in an organizational context.

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