In times of crises, decentralized decision-making is an asset, not a liability
Let me start this post with a poem for kids:
A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg moves after which?”
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.
There are many versions of this poem, but the message is always the same: Even tasks that require complex coordination seem easy, and can be performed efficiently and quickly (I’m German, I like the sound of that).
Many tasks are easy to perform, but hard to explain:
- Did you ever wonder how breathing works?
- Or writing?
- Ask a chef how she decides which spices and flavors to add!
Kata and Flow
Athletes strive for kata in martial arts, artists pursue flow and master craftsmen after decades of experience just know that a machine needs a new bearing.
The reason for that lies in the fact that masters have fully internalized these tasks and perform them semi-automatic, without their consciousness messing with it.
This is how our brains work. Here, most of the activity is subconsciuous, to allow for handling the massive cognitive load coming from our eyes and ears and to make “sense” of our umwelt (see this amazing book David Eagleman).
Marvin Minsky in “Society of the mind” took this concept of conscious vs subconscious decision-making even further. Instead of just 2 parties involved, he sketched how a large number of agents is debating to find consensus on the best possible decision or action to pursue.
Group Decision-Making
Decentralized (~group) decision-making considers more aspects and can therefore balance more pros and cons. All the parties which were involved in the decision-making process are also more committed to the decision that has been made. In addition to that, we avoid the creation of bottlenecks, so we can come to decisions even with parts of the system not being reachable.
All this is actively put to good use with Agile methods, the SAFe framework or even in non-techy contexts such as Liquid Democracy or Holacracy. Sometimes we might need to agree that we disagree, but we gain more resilient systems with more commitment.
Centralizing Decision-Making in Times of Crises
But what happens in times of crisis? Some argue that decentralized (~group) decision is slower, so in a craving for safety, predictability and efficiency, we tend to centralize decision-making. We make our decisions conscious.
I can see that it is comfortable to delegate responsibility and decision-making to a board, a task force or even a committee. The problem is that this approach creates bottlenecks and lowers the commitment. We risk ending up with fragile systems not being able to react quickly to external stimuli.
With centralized decision-making, the centipede of our organizations will eventually just …
…stumble, Not knowing how to run.