5 ms·

The trade off is decision cycle time. In a dictatorship, the dictator (and getting their attention) becomes a bottleneck.

lolinder 4y ago
OP isn't saying that the person with ultimate authority has to be involved in every decision, just that when they do make a decision everyone respects it. You can have the kind of authority that OP is describing while still delegating most decisions to the individual contributors. You just need someone who is officially empowered to make the final call in cases where there's disagreement.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  I disagree, they are fundamentally different cultures. You can have a blend of them I suppose. But you are either top down or bottoms up, and one of the top down trade offs is that people begin optimizing for what they think will pass approval by the decision maker. This can obviously work, see apple under Jobs. But companies kind of have to pick a lane because the culture is either “drive to what I think is impactful” or “drive to what I think boss thinks is impactful”.
philwelch 4y ago
A democratic or consensus-based approach to making decisions can be even slower though, which is when it’s handy to have a dictator.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  Yes, especially with big groups. In smaller groups, decision making is usually faster and done by people with more local context in bottoms up organizations. See Team of Teams as a decent reference.
- kqr 4y ago
  When has the decision been made? When the dictator says "make it so" or when the software developers understand the rationale and are able to implement it successfully? Because the time to the latter is sometimes infinite in the dictatorships I've been in. (In contrast, when a decision is made democratically, most people are already on board with the implementation details and rationale.)
  - philwelch 4y ago
    If you can’t effectively communicate the rationale and intention behind your decisions, you’re failing as a leader. A dictatorship doesn’t work without a competent dictator, just as a democracy doesn’t work without a competent demos.

lolinder 4y ago

OP isn't saying that the person with ultimate authority has to be involved in every decision, just that when they do make a decision everyone respects it. You can have the kind of authority that OP is describing while still delegating most decisions to the individual contributors. You just need someone who is officially empowered to make the final call in cases where there's disagreement.

edmundsauto 4y ago
I disagree, they are fundamentally different cultures. You can have a blend of them I suppose. But you are either top down or bottoms up, and one of the top down trade offs is that people begin optimizing for what they think will pass approval by the decision maker. This can obviously work, see apple under Jobs. But companies kind of have to pick a lane because the culture is either “drive to what I think is impactful” or “drive to what I think boss thinks is impactful”.

philwelch 4y ago

A democratic or consensus-based approach to making decisions can be even slower though, which is when it’s handy to have a dictator.

edmundsauto 4y ago
Yes, especially with big groups. In smaller groups, decision making is usually faster and done by people with more local context in bottoms up organizations. See Team of Teams as a decent reference.
kqr 4y ago
When has the decision been made? When the dictator says "make it so" or when the software developers understand the rationale and are able to implement it successfully? Because the time to the latter is sometimes infinite in the dictatorships I've been in. (In contrast, when a decision is made democratically, most people are already on board with the implementation details and rationale.)
- philwelch 4y ago
  If you can’t effectively communicate the rationale and intention behind your decisions, you’re failing as a leader. A dictatorship doesn’t work without a competent dictator, just as a democracy doesn’t work without a competent demos.