It is often the case that companies are faced with a dilemma about whether the change initiatives must be driven from the top or they should be organic from the bottom up. This is especially the case with organizations that are growing in size where the increase employee base or the skyrocketing sales and revenues mean that the top management’s scope of control is more and hence driving change from the top alone might not just work. And for those organizations that initiate change from the top, they might find themselves in a situation where the middle and bottom layers of the organizational hierarchy may not be responsive or energized in the way the top managements wants them to be. So, the existential questions as to whether there ought to a spontaneous involvement from all the levels, or whether the top management must induce the change, are very real and need to be answered for change initiatives to succeed. |
The answer as to which option is preferable depends on a number of factors. First, any change initiative would succeed only if it is communicated appropriately and to all levels. Honest, transparency and feedback loops must be the elements of the change initiative. Next, the employees ought to have a voice in the way the change initiative is managed. For a change initiative to be successful the top management has to communicate and the employees have to respond. Like Bees gathering around honey and being driven by the Queen Bee, organizations have to ensure that while the CEO or the other top managers initiate the change, employees at all levels must take to the change as well. So, a mix of having the top management initiate the change and letting the employees take over from them works best for larger organizations where micro management by the top management might not work.
Examples of organizations that have embraced change successfully include 3M, Google and Facebook where the visionary leaders at the top ensured that the initial germ of an idea was seeded in the employees and then they let the trees grow by sampling nourishing them from time to time while at the same time preferring organic growth rather than transplanted growth. The other extreme is marked by failures like HP where the top management was unable to make their employees buy into their change strategies. Of course, this is not to say that organizations need visionary leaders as essential elements of success. Though it helps, companies can make do with success if they have a combination of people enablers who take pride in their organizations and can empower the employees to participate in the change initiatives.
In conclusion, change can be driven solely from the top. However, for continued success, change has to come from within each employee and this can only happen in organizations that have an organizational culture that encourages each employee to contribute to the initiatives. Change can thrive where there is an institutional catalyst and hence the key takeaway is that the organizational structures have to be built in such a way that no one individual can either make or mar the chances of success. | |

Advantages and disadvantages of the top-down and bottom-up implementation approaches
The top-down and bottom-up approaches to deploying your identity management solution are provided to help you decide the best way to integrate identity management capabilities into your environment. Each approach has distinct advantages and disadvantages, as shown in Table 11. Table 11. Pros and cons of the top-down and bottom-up implementation approaches | Bottom-up approach | Top-down approach | Summary | * High deployment coverage in early phases * Earlier return on investment * High visibility of organizational changes * Higher impact to organization | * Tactical, limited coverage * Delayed return on investment * Lower impact to overall organization * Higher deployment costs | Advantages | * User and business awareness of the product. Benefits are realized in the early phases. * You can replace many manual processes with early automation. * You can implement password management for a large number of users. * You do not have to develop custom adapters in the early phases. * Your organization broadens identity management skills and understanding during the first phase. * Tivoli Identity Manager is introduced to your business with less intrusion to your operations. | * Your organization realizes a focused use of resources from the individual managed application. * The first implementation becomes a showcase for the identity management solution. * When the phases are completed for the managed application, you have implemented a deeper, more mature implementation of the identity management solution. * Operation and maintenance resources are not initially impacted as severely as with the bottom-up approach. | Disadvantages | * The organizational structure you establish might have to be changed in a later roll-out phase. * Because of the immediate changes to repository owners and the user population, the roll-out will have a higher impact earlier and require greater cooperation. * This strategy is driven by the existing infrastructure instead of the business processes. | * The solution provides limited coverage in the first phases. * A minimal percentage of user accounts are managed in the first phases. * You might have to develop custom adapters at an early stage. * The support and overall business will not realize the benefit of the solution as rapidly. * The implementation cost is likely to be higher. |

How do you reconcile this approach with a top-down approach?
Not easily. From our survey Focusing Change to Win you can see these business leaders’ Change Management Issues. You can see why their people feel it is still top down approach.
A top-down approach to change management implies imposed change as the initiative comes from the top. Decision-making is centralized at higher levels of the firm, excluding lower-level employees in the change process, even though they are directly affected. Top-down change is about making changes quickly and dealing with the problems only if necessary. The problem is that top down approaches to change management increases resistance – the biggest problem in changing any organization. Regardless of how well these top level decisions are made, change management will be insufficient because they ignore so much of the organization. Where the leader makes all the decisions and expects subordinates to follow creates resistance to change. Naturally, people who are forced to adapt to change have the initial reaction to resist.
What are the other limitations of this top down approach?

Why people feel change is top down
Change based on unidirectional, rational and traditional approaches has very definite limitations. Problems to this approach include:
(1) Decision-making is limited to the top of the organization, therefore a lack of information, suggestions and ideas coming from the bottom;
(2) People at the top are not willing to listen to lower level employees’ ideas, suggestions or feedback, resulting to poor employee motivation and performance;
(3) There is very little task delegation involved in the change process, thus lower level employees can feel they are somehow incompetent and under qualified for such tasks;
(4) Keeping the change process to the upper level of the organization, breeds skepticism from amongst the lower level people;
(5) Misunderstandings because of communication problems and inadequate information of both parties;
(6) Many differing assessments to a given situation exist in lower levels and different functions. These employees have little chance to participate, do not know for sure the exact circumstances revolving around the change, and thus resist it.
These reasons to the top-down approach problems in change management rests too often on leaders clinging to the belief that power, privilege and success lie in their core group.