In: Operations Management
What is the biggest mistake many organizations make in the top-down approach
In the top down approach, where organizations are trying to focus on decision making as well as cascading of objectives, they may not take into consideration the requirements as well as challenges faced by employees lower in the pecking order. Particulary with regarding to decision making, organizations should be aware about the issues being faced by employees lower down and understand the same before a final decision is given. Else the top down approch fails at multiple levels because the decisions get cascased down but by the very nature of this approach, the issues or problems being faced are not resolved or understood and organization fails to achieve its' objectives.
Similary, when there are performance metrics decided for employees, and the same is cascased down in a top down approach, there are gaps in terms of understanding what is happening at the ground level and the performance measures being suggested at various levels. This again leads to a big disconnect with the employees working at different levels and the organization's primary objective of measuring the overall performance through linkage with performance of different departments does not happen in the expected manner