Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the “chain of command”. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.
Today, in contrast, government bureaucrats write rule after rule after rule hoping to achieve a uniform, fault-free society. Following the tradition of Pharisees, they exponentially out-do their biblical-counterpart busybodies. Rather than a mere 613 rules (so many steps allowed on the Sabbath, and so forth), today the administrative state has smothered Americans with hundreds of thousands of regulations. Hundreds of thousands. And the list of do’s and don’ts in our rule-giddy society grows by the hour.
If you want to persuade, treat people as smart enough to govern themselves with principles rather than Pharisaical objects to be manipulated through tons of picky rules. Give them the latitude that comes with a guidance of principles. Help them enjoy being properly persuaded.
The people at the top of the corporate hierarchy grant themselves privilege after privilege, flaunt those privileges before the men and women who do the real work, then wonder why employees are unmoved by management's invocations to cut costs and boost profitability. ... When I think of the millions of dollars spent by people at the top of the management hierarchy on efforts to motivate people who are continually put down by that hierarchy, I can only shake my head in wonder.
Any organization that designs a system will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.