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Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

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Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#11

Post by yvp »

laurentl wrote: post #6

> it is important to be aware of what projects employees work on (with much less detail) In my experience, employees get told which project to work on by management, usually through a formal budget / roadmap process which allocates resources to the initiatives being pushed by different stakeholders such as marketing, sales, IT (e.g. for maintenance projects), etc. So the need is not so much to know what the employees…

>So the need is not so much to know what the employees are working on but rather how the projects are going. This is usually handled by steering committees or similar governance bodies, where each successive hierarchical level gets a broader (but necessarily more concise) overview of all the projects they are involved in.

I agree this seems to be a common pattern. You do run into multiple issues with it (though there is no perfect solution) - some of which already described by pg in one of his essays (http://paulgraham.com/boss.html).

I tend to think the quality of information is maybe inversely proportional to the levels it has to go through to reach the intended recipient as each layer will inevitably add noise/distortion.

Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#12

Post by Aperocky »

Porthos9K wrote: post #8

The short and true answer is that THEY DON'T. Why is this? Because of the SNAFU Principle: "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." Junior people almost never give senior people the unedited truth because doing so is a good way to end up unemployed. Instead, junior people figure out what…

Ha, this is absolutely true, especially in more traditional companies dominated by a patrician management.

I still wonder what happened to Randall Stephenson when AT&T decided to buy DirecTV for $67B in 2014. What could only be described as thinking completely in an isolated bubble. It seems that the survival of traditional companies are based on the sheer incompetence of competitors to continue allow the swallowing up of disaster after disaster committed by the management.

Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#13

Post by muzani »

Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit covered how an aluminum company did it.

They made safety absolute highest priority. It was a goal that the unions and managers didn't disagree on. The processes were designed to empower lower ranked people to override when things were getting dangerous, and the CEO had to know within a few hours whether an accident happened. Long story short, this put in the processes to let information flow up the chain rapidly.

Again, the key is the right information. It's possible to have all kinds of junk go up when everyone can talk to the CEO. Managers act as abstraction layers for information for a good reason.

The story also says that once the process was in place, other information like optimizations went up the chain and profited them millions. But you want to set a standard that only really important information should go up this path.

Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#15

Post by GoToRO »

It seems they do it completley in the dark. They think they have information, but they don't. As such, after many "we are doing great!" top level presentations, they just announced layoffs and selling of some divisions and so on. That's how "great" we were doing.

Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#16

Post by laurentl »

yvp wrote: post #11
laurentl wrote: post #6

> it is important to be aware of what projects employees work on (with much less detail) In my experience, employees get told which project to work on by management, usually through a formal budget / roadmap process which allocates resources to the initiatives being pushed by different stakeholders such as marketing, sales, IT (e.g. for maintenance projects), etc. So the need is not so much to know what the employees…

>So the need is not so much to know what the employees are working on but rather how the projects are going. This is usually handled by steering committees or similar governance bodies, where each successive hierarchical level gets a broader (but necessarily more concise) overview of all the projects they are involved in. I agree this seems to be a common pattern. You do run into multiple issues with it (though there…

> the quality of information is maybe inversely proportional to the levels it has to go through

I think that each level distorts the message to bring it more in line with company culture (e.g. make it look better, or highlight blocking points, or focus on financial topics, etc.). It follows that the quality of the information doesn’t necessarily have to decrease - in theory, the right company culture will ensure that only the most relevant information is kept (and I’m pretty sure you can tie this to successful company traits)

More generally, I think that in this context you can’t treat information quality as a purely objective measure. Here quality is (at least partly) in the eye of the beholder, so you could argue that making the reporting more in line with the expectations of you higher-ups actually increase quality.

Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#17

Post by valand »

Porthos9K wrote: post #8

The short and true answer is that THEY DON'T. Why is this? Because of the SNAFU Principle: "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." Junior people almost never give senior people the unedited truth because doing so is a good way to end up unemployed. Instead, junior people figure out what…

I have a fortunate circumstance where supplying informations to direct reportee is acceptable.

We value effective problem identifications, especially those that come with solutions.

Re: Ask HN: How do big companies ensure the execs get the right info from below?

#19

Post by nojvek »

Aperocky wrote: post #12
Porthos9K wrote: post #8

The short and true answer is that THEY DON'T. Why is this? Because of the SNAFU Principle: "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." Junior people almost never give senior people the unedited truth because doing so is a good way to end up unemployed. Instead, junior people figure out what…

Ha, this is absolutely true, especially in more traditional companies dominated by a patrician management. I still wonder what happened to Randall Stephenson when AT&T decided to buy DirecTV for $67B in 2014. What could only be described as thinking completely in an isolated bubble. It seems that the survival of traditional companies are based on the sheer incompetence of competitors to continue allow the swallowing…

Or more likely they are so big that even decent sized fuckups every now and then don’t make much difference.

For the mega corps, they could shave half their workforce and still be making the same amount of profits. Some companies just want to grow for the sake of growing and invent new problems to fill time.

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