Why boss don't get all the information

Not long ago, a friend who works in television complained that the industry isn't interested in real business stories. And I have to agree with him, since we don't see much on TV that isn't about stock prices or some kind of scandal. Well, with one exception, maybe. The British Broadcasting Corporation and PBS in the United States broadcast a popular commercial program called "Back to the Floor". Fast Company magazine first told us about the show, where CEOs leave their corner offices for some time on the front lines. And as they work on the front lines, the cameras roll. For many, if not all CEOs, the experience is an eye opener. And, according to the magazine, “Almost without exception, CEOs learn a lesson in communication. “We find people at the heart of every organization who know exactly what's right and what's wrong,” Thirkell [Robert Thirkell, the show's producer] says. “But between them and the bosses is a layer of people, those whose careers depend on sterilizing that information. Leaders are always surprised at how much knowledge exists further down the ladder. With that in mind, let's spend a minute or two thinking about the obstacles to good upward communication. And instead of blaming middle management, which seems to be one of the topics of the article, let's look at the structural problems. First of all, upward communication requires the collection of information or data. For example, a supervisor might report on the efforts of five frontline employees, a manager then aggregates data from five supervisors, and a vice president collates all the information provided by five managers. As information is aggregated in this way, it loses most of its context and richness. By context and richness, I mean the anecdotal and personal knowledge that frontline workers glean and build from ongoing interactions with customers or users. Of course, most CEOs don't have time to read reports made up of hundreds of anecdotes; they want summaries of information. Second, as information or data moves up, it tends to fall into pre-existing categories. Frontline employees know and understand the nuances of every customer's story; It reflects, to a greater or lesser extent, the personal relationship between the worker and the customers. But there's no room for nuance in the weekly reports. Third, upward communication is typically about compliance, rather than competitive or operational intelligence. Managers use information moving up the hierarchy to determine how well their instructions have been followed. When they want competitive or operational information, they use different means, such as involving consultants or commissioning studies. It's always tempting to attribute communication failures to the moral failures of managers, but if you really want to understand communication failures, you have to start by looking for the structural roadblocks. In short, CEOs who spend time on the front lines are bound to be in for a lot of surprises. But if you want to stay abreast of the action on the front lines, you'll need to address the structural nature of upward communication.