I may be confused by the regular association between Agile and Lean.

My experience also tells me that, especially in financial institutions where political games try to emulate those of imperial Rome, the positive part quickly disappears to conform the system.

So one of the original questions was how do you change that system to make it possible for agile teams (close to autonomous units of production) survive.

My point is, to resolve that, the way managers are evaluated needs to change and it is the share holders (private equity, wall street investors or employees themselves) who can make that change happen.

Having spent the last 30-or-so years working with mangers at all levels, from newly promoted first line supervisors through CEOs I’m here to tell you that it just ain’t true.

I know marvelous managers at all level and in all sizes of companies, including bootstrapped start-ups, just as I know rotten ones as well as the entire range between those two extremes.

I’m the first to say that I don’t have a good grasp (actually no grasp) of Agile and many of the things you’ve mentioned, but I have a great grasp of people and it’s the worst kind of simplistic attitude to predicate ideas/actions on the idea that all managers wear black hats and non-managers white ones. I dread the thought of a company that elects its managers. What makes you think that either the candidates or the voter turnout would be any better than they are in political elections—whether local or national?

Culture matters. Some of the most successful/innovative managers and companies on the planet—Lou Gerstner (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060523808/qid=1152560499/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5593467-3647000?s=books&v=glance&n=283155), BMW (http://www.rampupsolutions.com/blog/?p=241), Nucor (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982075.htm), Immelt/GE (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_31/b3945409.htm?campaign_id=search), IBM (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_14/b3978073.htm), Best Buy (http://www.leadershipturn.com/leaders-that-do-brad-anderson-and-culture/) and, of course, Google (http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/47314/google-finds-r-amp-d-opportunities–pitfalls-abroad.html) are proof.

No, they aren’t perfect and no, not every manager buys into the culture, but, then, perfection doesn’t really exist, does it?

Also most managers have no interest in making themselves irrelevant.

Finally we can easily picture small entities that work on this kind of paradigm but how does that scale ? (ah scalability, the buzzword of the year !)

The problem is, that in order to benefit from the kind of employee-owned democracy you’re describing, the employees have to shoulder significant financial risk. Most people aren’t willing to do that and hence they don’t get the kind of say in matters they ideally would like to have.

But I think that’s the real crux of the matter here, and something you hinted at when you said democracies don’t get the best leaders except in times of dire need: people (managers and worker-bees included) don’t make the most optimal decisions for the company unless they have something significant at risk. That’s why anyone who wants to have a say should also be required to have something to lose from the decision.