“All forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will
eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy
practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex
organizations.”
This is how the German sociologist and political theorist Robert Michels summarizes
the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” in his book, Political Parties, published in 1911. Oligarchy
is the name of the system in which a minority group takes control. Although the
seeds of democratic and participative management approach have been sown for
many years, in many organizations, including political parties and labor unions which
are expected to be the most democratic structures, the tendency towards oligarchic
or one-man decision-making mechanisms is at a very high level. However, Michels
believes that oligarchic tendencies are inevitable in organizations, he is in favor of
continuous efforts to approach the ideal of democracy. Because any deviation from
democracy in the management of such organizations could have negative
consequences.
The situation is no different in today's organizations. One of the important milestones
of the agile journey in companies is undoubtedly the elimination of the existing
hierarchical structure based on the understanding of command and control, and the
establishment of a distributed organizational structure instead. The aim is to prevent
the decision-making power in a single person’s or in a narrow clique’s hands (only in
the general manager or senior management) and to include the employees in the
decision-making mechanism of the company.
At this point, although the scaled agile organization models serve to the desired
purpose, it should be known that the process will not end only moving to this
structure. Designing the new structure, regardless of the name, processes and
workflows in such a way that the managers do not have to reach the final decision,
may bring us a little closer to the desired goal. But this is not enough either.
Individuals also have important duties in the establishment of this distributed,
democratic or decentralized decision-making system. We could even say that
individuals are the starting point of this transformation. The presence of individuals
who consider their individuality, believe in the value of their own ideas, take initiative
and responsibility is of vital importance for the transformation to begin in a healthy
way.
It should not be ignored that the main transformation is in the operation of the
mental participatory decision-making mechanism. At this point, the low level of
awareness inevitably results in the fact that the employee, who used to receive a
directive from Mr. Director, takes orders from Mrs. Tribe Leader in the new model. We
could only name this as the transition from the known-hierarchical structure to the
unknown-hierarchical structure. Moreover, the model in which the top-down
decision-making we are accustomed to is replaced by an unfamiliar and complicated
structure.
Our experience shows that most of the companies that have transitioned to agile
organizational structure are cautious both in the point of delegation of the managers
and taking the initiative of the employees and, as Michels stated, they move towards
the old oligarchic understanding. While the manager tries to make all the decisions
by him/herself, s/he goes towards keeping control, while the employee refrains from
taking responsibility by transferring every decision to his/her manager.
As a result, we can only achieve our ideal of agility with a lot of effort. Therefore, our
starting point should be the revolution in our mentality rather than a revolutionary
change in organizations.