The Steering Committee - about top down commitment

The seeming contradiction of consent management is that it MUST be implemented from the top, by an autocratic decision, in order to work.

I had always understood this, but in one situation I decided that even with those limitations it was worth trying an experiment when I was made responsible for running a steering committee for IT resources in a largish company (Stolt-Nielsen). The principle of reasoned objections certainly worked its magic, and started leading to better compromises, and a more comprehensive ortientation towards value add to the company as a whole, rather than short term politics. But that does not mean there were not challenges. At one time one of the members actively lobbied the CFO to get a decision of the committee overturned, which would have destroyed the effectiveness of the committee. In that particular case, I managed to prevent the problem, but in a hierarchical organization, you can never guarantee those outcomes, and thus if you start creating an island of empowered management in a hierarchical organization, you are asking for trouble, as the very effectiveness of it will upset the apple cart of the political power in the organization.

More recently I listend to Michael Hugos and indeed he had a success story of similar empowered management in an IT department within a large corporation, and on a break (he was on a book tour for his book Essentials of Supply Chain Management, I told him that his very success meant that he would have to go, and within a year after that he called me to tell me I had been right.

Fortunately, things seem to have worked out well for him subsequently, but it was another sad comment on the inertia in organizations, and fundamental change will not happen, unless it starts from the top.

(c) 2008, Rogier Fentener van Vlissingen