Our company, a small CPA firm, almost universally uses a democratic decision making style. The group of voters changes depending on the decision being made. Most high-level decisions are made by the partners, but no one partner has a say over the others. The "managing partner" has say over the rest only in matters of administration. When dealing with introducing a new holiday to the calendar the entire company took a vote and chose, oddly enough, the employee's birthday.
One time that this democratic approach backfired drastically was in the launch of the company's website. A group of volunteers met and selected a chairman who had lots of gumption but no clue about what he was doing. Different people took on different aspects of the decision, such as colors to use, writing of content, the organization of the pages, without talking to each other. Since the production of each section was dependent on interrelated pieces, the whole project ground to a halt.
Eventually the partners voted to have a private company manage the website, and the whole thing was planned within a week. Some projects need to be taken on by a single person with certain qualifications. The group might have worked if each person submitted suggestions and then the chairman designed the final product. At any rate, websites require top-down thinking.
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