This week’s tip: Don’t forget that decision-making in complex problems should always be decentralized to the lowest possible level.
I’ve had many different bosses over the years – State agency commissioners, foundation presidents, nonprofit executives – and they can be crudely categorized into two types of changemaker:
- Those who make impact by delegating decisions to others
- Those who get power by telling others what to do
It wasn’t always the case, but bosses who had the least content expertise were much more likely to empower others to make decisions.
They knew the limits of their knowledge.
Conversely, the most knowledgeable leaders – those who had years of experience and a ton of content expertise – often fell into the trap of personally directing change.
Working for them was terrible.
They always wanted to make the final decisions, even about unimportant topics.
Looking back on it now, I realize that my most common “solution” to complex problems – creating a new position to be a central coordinator among many different stakeholders – played right into the hands of power mongers.
Of course, they wanted the new position to report to them.
They liked the “solution” because it was just another way to gain more power under the illusion of collaboration.
As these leaders amassed power, they inevitably encountered ever more problems for which they had almost no experience or context.
They should have deferred to others’ knowledge.
But their reflex to decide for others – for the greater good, or so they said – was too strong to be realized or countered.
They were changemakers, but perhaps not for the better.
In today’s issue, I explore the seduction of centralized decision-making for complex problems, and then I provide a principled antidote.
The seduction of “do-as-I-say”
When we’re faced with complex problems, it’s common to think that a single entity with centralized knowledge and authority can do better than a disorganized set of autonomous stakeholders who don’t even agree on the ultimate goal.
How can you get somewhere if you haven’t defined the destination?
Many people tend to want someone – anyone – to take charge, especially when a problem has too many moving parts and it is impossible for any one stakeholder to assert control.
People say things like,
“If only the mayor would create a position overseeing this complex issue. They could devote all their time to it! Their leadership would bring order out of chaos.”
National foundations sometimes try to assume this role.
With large discretionary grant portfolios, they can end up believing that they have the solution to the toughest problems in any community.
Their do-as-I-say language is usually about “implementing evidence-based, best practice solutions that scale.”
Success is conceived of as directing as many communities as possible to implement the answer.
It makes sense.
The seduction of centralized decision-making is that it promises greater efficiency, consistency, and coordination.
But that’s only true for simple and complicated problems where context-free knowledge can be broken down into manageable parts and reassembled.
In complex problems, knowledge and expertise are spread across multiple levels and entities, and it cannot be fully captured or controlled by a single person entity, no matter how well-intentioned or well-informed they may be.
Local context and diverse perspectives are everything.
The antidote – the principle of subsidiarity
So if an appointed genius can’t solve the problem, you may be asking:
“What’s the alternative, Einstein?”
Anarchy and chaos?
A radical rejection of bosses and all top-down control?
It’s actually much simpler than that.
I believe the antidote is the principle of subsidiarity.
This principle suggests that decision-making should be delegated to the lowest level of organization capable of addressing a problem effectively.
In other words, decisions should be made by the people who are most affected by them and who have the most knowledge and expertise about the problem at hand.
The principle of subsidiarity recognizes that effective problem-solving requires collaboration and coordination among multiple individuals and entities at different levels of organization.
It empowers local communities and organizations to take ownership of solving complex problems, instead of relying on a centralized authority.
As Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, once said,
“The knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”
Mistakes will no doubt be made in both top-down and bottom-up approaches.
That’s inevitable.
But bottom-up approaches are much more likely to correct course and iterate over time.
In some sense, the strength of the principle of subsidiarity comes not from generating correct answers, but from frequently correcting wrong ones.
Who makes decisions in your town?
One example where decentralized decision-making could result in better outcomes is city planning and development.
In many towns, planning and development is highly centralized, with decisions about zoning, infrastructure, and land use made by government agencies or large development corporations.
Top-down all around.
It tends to make cities boring, unwalkable and dangerous. (If only we’d listened to the advice of Jane Jacobs as she wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities over 60 years ago).
A decentralized approach to urban planning and development – one based on the principle of subsidiarity – could instead empower local communities and residents to make decisions about the development of their neighborhoods and communities.
Here’s how it would work:
By decentralizing decision-making to local entities within neighborhoods, those closest to the problem can collaborate with those most affected by it to develop innovative solutions tailored to their specific needs.
It would foster a sense of community ownership and accountability, as local organizations and individuals are more likely to be invested in the success of solutions that they have played a role in developing.
There’s also no one to blame but themselves when interventions are tried but don’t work.
The subsidiarity approach prevents one-size-fits-all policies that may not be effective in addressing the unique challenges of different communities.
Of course, there are limits to the principle of subsidiarity, and there may be extremely high-risk cases where centralized decision-making is necessary to address problems effectively (wars and global pandemics come to mind).
However, as a general principle, the concept of subsidiarity can help us create more responsive, innovative, and effective solutions to the complex social problems that we face today.
To recap:
Don’t centralize decision-making in complex problems.
Problem-solving is much more effective – and errors corrected faster – when decisions are delegated to the lowest possible level.
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See you again next week.
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