You probably ask yourself how mountains and management concern with each other? Management deals with work and mountains refer for most of us to leisure. But there is a lot of parallelism…
Source: 123rf.com
On top of the mountain stands the executive board. At this position you can see the whole landscape around, partly even far away. This outlook takes place out of huge height, therefore you can see things which are deeper below or far away not so accurate.
The basis of the enterprise is located at the root of the mountain. At this position you can see at the own side of the mountain everything very accurate, what happens here and what is needed in order to be able to start climbing the mountain. However you cannot see what happens at the other side of the mountain. Also vision is limited, probably even blocked by trees.
The different management levels are at different heights of the mountain. The higher you are the more vision you have, however connected to the consequence that the accurate sight on that what happens at the root of the mountain and around more and more is reduced. Also the complete panorama is missing.
What are we learning out of that? Communication within the enterprise, across all levels and within all levels, is extremely important. The basis needs to know what the executive board sees on top of the mountain, in order to understand what is actually needed and also what the reasons are. The executive board needs to know how the situation at the root of the mountain is, in order to take proper decision. Within each management level a common understanding is needed, in order to make sure that the level itself but also the levels above and below act according to the purpose of the enterprise.