What Is Bottom-Up Planning?

Bottom-up management means that in a bottom-up organization, most decision-making power is delegated to the middle and lower levels. The top level is only responsible for the organization's long-term strategy and major matters related to the organization's long-term interests. Disputes between them are mainly settled by themselves.

Bottom-up management

Top-down and bottom-up are two ways of thinking about organizational work. Generally speaking, organizational work mainly includes the allocation of resources, decision-making power in various departments within the organization,

Chairman of Toyota

Why bottom up? The traditional organizational structure is mainly a straight-line organizational structure, which is a top-down organization, which better meets the needs of mass production of industrial social organizations. However, with the rapid development of the economy, market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and organizations are in a rapidly changing and unpredictable market environment. This trend requires organizations to make changes to increase their responsiveness and adaptability.

Knowledge management thinks more from the perspective of methodology, and it is from the perspective of methodology that bottom-up becomes the theme. The knowledge of an organization mainly flows from the bottom up. The quality of an organization's knowledge management depends mainly on the level of knowledge management at the lower levels of the organization, or the level of knowledge management at the level of direct contact with customers. Therefore, more decision-making power should be delegated to the lower and middle levels, and the enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity of the lower and middle levels should be brought into full play. In 1998, TCL redefined the powers and responsibilities of its sales department. Under the new definition, salespeople are no longer simply selling products, but rather collect market information, organize customer knowledge, and have The right to make autonomous decisions.

Bottom-up as a concept has been widely recognized and has begun to be applied in organizational management. From unskilled work to knowledge work, from repetitive tasks to innovation, from individual work to team work, from functional work to project work, from single function to multi-function, power is transferred from the boss to the customer, from superior coordination to colleagues coordination. These principles are in line with the bottom-up organization mechanism, which has brought members into a new realm of self-management, self-restraint, self-coordination, and self-development.

In bottom-up organizations, management concepts also need to change. There is a point in management that leadership is service. This concept is most suitable in the era of knowledge economy. It turned out that leaders are commanders and give orders. Now, leaders are servants and people who provide services to employees. For example, when an employee has an innovative idea, the leader should investigate the feasibility of the idea, then provide him with resources and conditions, and give him some power to help him realize the idea.

First, carry out the responsibility to the end

A dynamic organization must put power and responsibility in the hands of everyone in each position, especially the lowest-level employees, not floating above it, and not concentrated in the hands of someone. Separate responsibilities from the leadership and return to employees along with power and trust. Before deciding to take responsibility, employees must first see whether the organization has given trust. On the one hand, Siemens implements a loose-type authorization management system at the middle and senior management levels; on the other hand, it implements a "project and team-oriented, global networking, micro-organization set up according to customer tasks and product characteristics" among employees. This organization While cultivating the ability of employees to solve practical problems, the method has inspired great work enthusiasm. In this regard, the book "Biography of Siemens" states: "People are committed to simplifying the hierarchical system, and at the same time they also bring their own responsibilities, because everyone has more freedom to play and make decisions To complete their mission. "

Second, open the channel of thought

Bill Pollard wrote in the book "The Soul of the Enterprise": "Employees are not just 'one-handed', but collectively creative and creative, they can take the initiative to change all aspects of the enterprise." Undoubtedly, Most of the innovations that can really promote the development of productivity come from the front-line minds; the shrinking of an organization also begins with the rigidity of employees' thinking. Therefore, one of the tasks of a modern organization is to activate the thinking vitality of employees, open the way for speech, build a career platform full of imagination, and make employees become thoughtful practitioners. General Electric (GE) has long adhered to imprisoned management, and employees are only expected to be "hard-working and tight-lipped." Under Jack Welch's initiative, GE proposed a bottom-up management model. The basic approach is as follows: 1. Encourage employees to share their insights in a collaborative company culture; 2. Give frontline employees more Responsibilities and greater rights; 3. Eradicate procedural waste, irrational and repetitive links; 4. Break the restricted area that prevents free exchange of ideas and results. "You have to give them freedom to make everyone a participant," Welch concluded.

Let employees take the initiative

Traditional management models advocate authority and control; modern management concepts require employees to take the initiative. When talking about Sony's transparent management law, Kazuo Inamori, who is known as "the sacred of business", said: management must be transparent, how many items were ordered that month, how much later than planned, how much profit, how to use expenses, etc. Employees at the end should know clearly. This not only makes employees feel valued, but also allows the behavior of middle and senior management to be restrained in transparency, thus activating the motivation deeply embedded in employees.

"Transfer" means passive, and "active" can be responsible. There is a factory in Seoul, South Korea. In order to cultivate the sense of ownership and responsibility of employees, since 1983, a unique management system has been implemented-let employees take turns to be "one day factory director" every week. Every Wednesday, the employee who is the factory manager for one day goes to work at 9:00 in the morning, enters the role, and listens to brief reports from various departments. Then, according to the problems reported by the competent authorities, the real factory manager proposed to focus on one or two things. With questions, the factory director accompanied the factory director to various departments and workshops to inspect the work situation. The factory director has the power to handle official documents on a day. Before the end of work, he must make a detailed diary of the factory manager on duty, and put forward suggestions for handling one or two major issues encountered on the day, and circulate them to all employees. In this way, the employee has been out of the narrow field of his own post, which has greatly expanded his vision, strengthened his overall consciousness, and inspired his potential.

Of course, there are other ways, such as sharing ownership, that is, allowing employees to obtain appropriate company equity to satisfy their business sense of belonging, and can also activate his inner initiative.