The Challenge of Hierarchies

Gary has just facilitated a three day ‘Managing Change’ workshop for a client in Bangkok, Thailand. An interesting challenge was presented by the participants that were local to the region:
We were debating how successful a programme can be if it is driven or pushed not top down, not even bottom up, but by a group of senior middle managers who then have to implement the programme to others who have not been through the same programme, in particular to more senior people back in their regions.
It was felt by the far east Asian participants that this can be quite problematical as they are often (if not always) working in very hierarchical companies where trying to influence someone more senior than you to do something can be very difficult. No easy answer but it does bring a different perspective to the Margaret Mead quote: “never doubt a small band of citizens can change the world, in fact it’s all that ever has”. I wondered what in addition might be needed to help enable people in this environment, to support the process of introducing something new.