Working Both Ways...West Point and Woodstock: Authoritative Leadership and Democratic Decision Making

This Element is an excerpt from Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today's Profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth (9780137083640) by Inder Sidhu. Available in print and digital formats.

How to get the best of both "command and control" and "decentralized" organizational structures--and avoid the drawbacks of each.

In command-and-control models, power flows downward through a hierarchal pyramid of authority. These models provide scale, replicability, and accountability, but aren't optimized for speed or flexibility. In contrast, collaborative environments often foster creativity, and operate faster. However, they often fail to execute decisively or measure progress accurately. Scale or speed? Replicability or flexibility? What if you didn't have to choose?