I once worked for a company where leadership viewed everyone as a valuable professional with unique insights that can help grow the company. For this reason, they found it important to include the people’s opinions (and sometimes their active collaboration) in many impactful situations. Leadership made the strategic decisions, but not without consulting the employees.
One of the traits of this organization’s culture was that people would be actively involved in the Agile journey. Often people volunteered to be part of the team that aimed to bring substantial improvements, like simplifying the approval process or improving stakeholder collaboration. It helped enormously to make the changes stick. As people felt involved, they understood the need for the changes and why certain decisions were made. They considered themselves co-owners of the change.
Then a leadership change occurred. The new head of the leadership team ignored this common practice and limited the involvement of the employees to receivers of the message. They would no longer have a way to be involved in finding the best way to achieve the transformation goals. From then on, the leadership team would inform them of the changes and expect the people to comply.
This didn’t sit well with the people. They felt ignored, and less invested in the organization. They lost trust in leadership. This was not the organization they believed they worked for. Some tried to highlight how things work in the organization, to no avail.
Great people left the company. Others only did what was required according to their job description. Silos that were successfully removed in the past years started to form again. The company lost its edge, its recipe to success.
The new leaders ignored the organizational culture. They thought the transformation was merely a matter of improving processes. And by doing so, the organization perished.
That is quite a haunting image you included. When management lives in an ivory tower, they really are detached from reality, not engaged, it's hard to shake the perception of elitism, seem inflexible and erode their own credibility. Really appreciated this article!