Top-Down vs.

Bottom-Up Approach | Smartsheet Page 1 of 18

Which Management Style

Is Right for You: Top-
Down or Bottom-Up
Approach?
by Kate Eby on Jun 28, 2018

The top-down approach relies on higher authority figures to

determine larger goals that will filter down to the tasks of
lower level employees. In comparison, the bottom-up style of
communication features a decision-making process that gives
the entire staff a voice in company goals. Each task remains
fluid as employees achieve their goals.
Included on this page, we’ll detail the key features of both the
top-down approach (https://www.smartsheet.com/top-down-bottom-up-
approach#what-is-a-top-down-approach-in-business) and bottom-up
communication (https://www.smartsheet.com/top-down-bottom-up-
Discover a better, more collaborative
approach#what-is-bottom-up-communication) way
, what theto
topmanage
down your
teams andupresources.
bottom approach looks like in project management

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(https://www.smartsheet.com/top-down-bottom-up-approach#what-is-bottom-
up-approach-in-project-management), industries that leverage both
approaches (https://www.smartsheet.com/top-down-bottom-up-
approach#industries-that-use-top-down-and-bottom-up-approaches-), and
more.

In This Article

The Purposes of Top-Down and Bottom-

Up Management Styles
Both the top-down and bottom-up styles of management offer
significant advantages for the companies that leverage each
approach. Both styles distinguish between high level and low
level work, but how each management styles achieves this
process varies widely. As with any business, the goals of
each are to appropriately and efficiently think, teach, gain
insight, and develop an overall leadership system that works
well for the company and generates revenue.

Discover a better, more collaborative way to manage your

teams and resources.

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The top-down approach can spawn many positive business

impacts through unique aspects of management, including
the following:

• Creating clear lines of authority

• Standardizing products and services

• Facilitating quality control

Discover a better, tasks

• Streamlining moreand
collaborative way
achieving goals to manage your
quickly
teams and resources.

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By comparison, the bottom-up approach utilizes alternative

ways of management to achieve success. These can include
the following:

• Forming a unique perception of the company, its goals,

and its employees

• Measuring operational risk (in terms of fraud, model, and

employee risk)

• Reallocating assets and decision-making power

• Giving voice to all employees

What Is a Top-Down Policy?

The top-down policy, also referred to as autocratic leadership,
is a management process driven by a business’ upper level of
executives.
Senior project managers create company-wide decisions that
trickle down to lower departments. The decisions are first
weighed on variables like frequency and severity, and then
made based on the higher or lower levels of such variables.
Upper management gathers and acts upon the knowledge,
which employees carry out.
This policy type relies on a hierarchy of high versus low rank
employees — the high ranking individuals rely on it for the
decision of tasks and goals, and the low ranking employees
to complete
Discover tasksmore
a better, and achieve goals. This
collaborative structured
way to manage your
programming of management leads to neatly defined
teams and resources.
subsystems of employees and departments. Sometimes

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Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approach | Smartsheet Page 5 of 18

referred to as a stepwise design or decomposition, a system

and its goals are broken down into compositional sub-
systems in order to gain insight into the smaller aspects that
make up a larger system. This format is made more specific
with the assistance of black boxes, which make the
backward-looking approach easier to follow as upper
management pushes down decisions. There is a distinct
splitting of work between employees in different departments.
This delegation of tasks is sometimes referred to as reverse
engineering or a big picture outlook because of the way larger
goals are fragmented into small tasks that are then handed
down to lower level employees.
There are many industries in the workforce that find this
business approach especially appealing. In particular,
designers, software developers, and engineers are drawn to
the top-down policy because reverse product engineering
often leads to the best final outcome. Similarly, investors
leverage this policy because it is non data-intensive and
analyzes the entire economy rather than the ebbs and flows
of an individual business or sector of an industry. The top-
down style is also leveraged across companies in an effort to
budget effectively.
Top-down budgeting assesses the larger budgeting strategies
of a company and allots a certain amount to certain
departments, events, and employees. Well-known,
popularized figureheads who own companies also leverage
this approach. For example, the Martha Stewart Living
company, owned and managed by lifestyle expert Martha
Stewart, utilizes the top-down approach — therefore, Stewart
makes the decisions, holds the most equity in the company,
and drives the brand awareness due to her worldwide
Discover a better, more collaborative way to manage your
popularity.
teams and resources.

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The perks of top-down approach make it widely utilized

across many industries. These benefits include the following:

• Decreased Risk: Since the highest level of management

is also usually the most informed and most
knowledgeable about the business, there is a decreased
risk involved in the decision-making process when lower
level employees are taken out of the equation.

• Strong Management: The upper authorities in a company

will be able to determine best practices and reach goals
easier with decisions created and enforced at the highest
ranks of a business. Should you need to make immediate
changes, a top-down change (also known as an
executive-driven change) can come into play to resolve
any problems within an organization, bypassing a slower
decision making process involving lower level employees.

• Good Organization: Tasks are determined and filtered

down company lines without any confusion because
business goals are set by upper management and will not
be affected by outside opinions.

• Minimized Cost: Lower level employees are free to

complete their own tasks unique to their role in the
company and aren’t saddled with the responsibility of
setting company-wide goals.

Of course, there are also some downfalls to the top-down

approach:

• Limited Creativity: Employees are siloed in their

Discover a better, more collaborative way to manage your
responsibilities and are unable to contribute to the overall
teams and resources.

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goals of the company — sometimes leading to frustration

and a lack of motivation to perform.

• Dictatorial: The approach can seem oppressive to the

employees who aren’t a part of the process.

• Slow Response to Challenges: When a challenge arises

as a result of a decision, it can take time for upper
management to establish a solution because there are
limited minds contributing to decisions.

What Is a Top-Down Approach in

Business?
Companies utilize the top-down approach in order to assess,
determine, and implement business decisions made by upper
executives.
The processes are streamlined and communicated to lower
rank employees, who carry out these tasks. Consequentially,
projects are more easily managed, and risk is decreased
significantly due to strategic decisions created from the top
management. This approach relies on the executive level to
decide how to prioritize, manage, and conduct everyday
processes.

Discover a better, more collaborative way to manage your

teams and resources.

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What Is Bottom-Up Communication?

Bottom-up communication revolves around the inclusion of all
employees, their ideas, and their perceptions of the business
in order to make the most informed decisions.
In this case, a business invites the entire team to participate
in the company’s management and decision-making process.
Communication and an all-encompassing approach is a vital
aspect of this style of management, lending itself to the
appropriate name of bottom-up communication.
The bottom-up communication style of business leverages all
of its employee’s perceptions of business and ideas for the
company. This process allows the company to identify its
most targeted — and most appropriate — goals. Bottom-up
communication is sometimes referred to as the seed model,
as small ideas from each employee grow into complex,
organic goals that lead to eventual successes. In a sense,
there is a merging of employees and each of their roles into a
broader focus dealing with the entire company. This forward-
looking approach considers each aspect of a company by
taking in the respective employees’ inputs to make a better
decision for the entire company.
There are many industries that benefit from this holistic style
of business management. These users embody the use of a
pieced together system that creates a more informed,
complex company with targeted goals. Sometimes known as
parsing, businesses analyze a sequence of information in
order to determine its overall function and structure, which
leads to the most comprehensive view of a project. This gives
way to the most appropriate decision. Biologists,
pharmacologists,
Discover and people
a better, more involved in way
collaborative the homebuilding
to manage your
industry
teams and all use small, pointed pieces of a project or company
resources.
to generate a targeted goal. Banking companies in particular,

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like Ernst & Young, use the bottom-up approach to analyze

aspects of their company in comparison to the
microeconomic variables of the economy. These companies
in wide-ranging industries benefit from having a well-rounded
perception before jumping to quick decisions that may not
have a positive affect.
In practice, this approach is extremely successful and results
in many benefits for the companies who utilize it. These pros
of practicing bottom-up communication include the following:

• Increased Company-Wide Communication: When every

employee actively participates in the decision-making
process, the overall communication among members of
the organization will increase significantly.

• Build Morale: All members of the business community will

feel included and valued, which fosters a supportive and
communicative environment where employees can thrive
and grow together.

• Share Solutions: A wide hearth of brain power goes into

the problems of the company as they arise, which will
result in quicker problem solving and more efficient
solutions.

• Increased Collaboration: Employees of all levels are

granted the opportunity to discuss problems, bounce
ideas off of one another, and build trust across
departments.

Despite the benefits of the bottom-up communication style,

however,
Discover there are
a better, somecollaborative
more potential pitfalls:
way to manage your
teams and resources.

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• Bogging Down of Employees: When all employees

participate in larger decisions (that are typically saved for
upper management), they can get bogged down by the
sheer responsibility. Employees can be taken away from
their own tasks and pulled into larger projects, causing
them to lose precious time.

• Slowed Time Creating Plans and Reaching Goals: When

many people with varying ideas contribute to the
company’s decision-making process, conflicts and
disagreements can arise. This can lead to delays in
making plans and reaching goals.

• Inaccurate Reflections of Data: A variety of people

working on the same projects simultaneously can cause
skewed results and inaccurate decisions in the long term.

What Is the Bottom-Up Approach in

Budgeting?
Businesses leverage the bottom-up approach in an effort to
produce the most comprehensive budget plan for all
departments, resources, and employees.
The approach gathers input from all members of the business
and allots a certain dollar value to each department that is
appropriate for their business needs. As a result of this
inclusive approach to budgeting, every aspect of business is
Discover a better, more collaborative way to manage your
considered equally as the budgeting plan is created.
teams and resources.

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What Is Bottom-Up Approach in Project

Management?
The inclusive nature of the bottom-up approach benefits
project management. The open communication and shared
solutions among all employees ensure that projects remain
fluid and goals are achieved in a timely fashion.
As unforeseen events pop up during projects, targets are
shifted through the open line of communication between
business executive and lower-ranking employees.
Collaboration fostered through the bottom-up approach gives
businesses the transparency needed to maintain successful
processes.

What Is Bottom-Up Leadership Style?

Keeping all employees, business processes, and
departments in mind, leaders who adopt the bottom-up
approach encourage input from all areas of the organization.
This leadership style allows for communication and continued
fluidity as they are able to consider a greater number of
opinions when making decisions. Rather than having a
Discover a better, more collaborative way to manage your
singular, overarching leader responsible for decision making,
teams and resources.
ideas are exchanged across a widespread group.

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History of the Top-Down and Bottom-Up

Approach
The development of the top-down and bottom-up approaches
was a result of trial and error in managing, maintaining, and
achieving success in a business. Although there are great
differences in the two styles, both were created by developing
a system that resulted in the most success, revenue, and
employee happiness.
The top-down approach came to be in the 1970s, when IBM
researchers Harlan Mills and Niklaus Wirth developed the
top-down approach for software development field. Mills
created a concept of structured programming that aided in the
increased quality and decreased time dedicated to creating a
computer program. This process was then successfully tested
by Mills in an effort to automate the New York Times morgue
index. Similarly, Wirth developed a programming language,
named Pascal, that relied on the top-down approach to build
this particular system. Wirth went on to write an influential
paper on the topic, titled “Program Development by Stepwise
Refinement,” that detailed the benefits of leveraging a top-
down approach in project management, specifically within the
software development field. From these studies completed by
both Mills and Wirth, the top-down approach evolved into the
popular management style discussed earlier.
The Origins of the Bottom-Up Approach
A moreamodern
Discover better,management technique,way
more collaborative the bottom-up
to manage your
approach
teams developed concurrently with a shift in focus towards
and resources.
Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O). Explained by

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the American Psychological Association (APA), I/O is defined

as “the scientific study of human behavior in organizations
and the workplace.” As I/O came to be a more widely-
recognized study, there was a significant trend upwards in the
use of bottom-up management. The field of I/O encourages
employers to consistently value their employees and make
their contributions to the company a top priority. This
approach caused upper management to lessen their hold on
decision-making power, and instead, allowed for lower
ranking employees to contribute more frequently.
The Hawthorne Experiments, completed as early as 1924,
found that employees who were given brighter lights at their
work station were more productive than those who received
dimmer lights. The belief behind this correlation was that
employees were more likely to contribute more to the
company when they felt cared for and valued. An advocate
for the I/O movement and the bottom-up approach, Elton
Mayo added to the human relations movement happening
during the mid-20th century. Mayo believed that by improving
the social aspects of the workplace, the company would
ultimately benefit. Eventually, this led to the development of
human resources (HR) departments
(https://www.smartsheet.com/human-resource-management). HR
departments dedicated themselves directly to this newfound
engagement to employees and their investment in the
company. Even more radical divisions of bottom-up
management have come to the surface in later years. One
such approach is holacracy, which fully leans in to the
bottom-up policy and is founded on ideas like transparent and
moveable roles in a company, and a circular structure of
authority instead of a vertical platform.
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teams and resources.

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Industries that Use Top-Down and

Bottom-Up Approaches
The top-down and bottom-up approaches have gained
traction in certain sectors of the workforce. Sometimes a
highly authoritative upper management and a delegation of
tasks is better than employees with fluid roles and a large say
in the decisions of a company, and vice versa. Below is a
conclusive list of the industries that embody certain
management styles over others.

• Investing/Banking: The top-down approach of banking

focuses on how macroeconomic factors of the economy
drive the market and stock prices, and then make
business decisions accordingly. This approach is
sometimes referred to as the big data bottom-up
approach because of the large influx of numbers used to
make company-wide decisions. The bottom-up approach
in banking deals with microeconomic factors, focusing
less on market cycles and more on an individual
company’s performance in comparison to the larger
market. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis,
and there is no dependency between companies.

• Nanotechnology: This industry utilizes both approaches

for different purposes. The top-down approach is
leveraged when developing molecular manufacturing
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strategies, more the
whereas collaborative way to is
bottom-up approach manage
ideal for your
teams and resources.
developing conventional manufacturing strategies. In

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1989, the Foresight Institute first applied bothy styles to

the nanotechnology field.

• Neuroscience & Psychology: The ways in which people

process information, and how they consequently analyze
it, is part of both the top-down and the bottom-up
approaches. Sensory input is thought of as a bottom-up
approach because someone takes in information from the
environment in order to make an informed decision.
Comparatively, higher cognitive processes are thought of
as a top-down procedure because these functions are
done with little voluntary thought or outside influence.

• Public Health: The top-down approach in public health

deals with programs that are run by whole governments
of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that aid in
combating worldwide health-related problems. HIV control
and smallpox eradication are two examples of top-down
policies in the public health sphere. The bottom-up
approach is more plausible when combating local issues,
like access to health care clinics. This approach invites
the input of community members to deal with issues that
affect people in closer proximity.

• Architecture: This category can be broken down based on

two schools of art: the Ecole des Beaux-Arts School of
Design and the Bauhaus. The former begins designs with
a basic drawing plan that outlines a project in full, lending
itself to a top-down approach. The latter starts by
developing
Discover a better,a small-scale system thatway
more collaborative will eventually
to manage your
teams and resources.

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become a larger, more architectural piece, making it a

bottom-up approach.

• Ecology: There are top-down and bottom-up structures

that are part of our natural world. In some ecosystems,
top predators control the structure of a population. This is
an example of a top-down approach. In comparison, other
ecosystems exist on a bottom-up approach. These
ecosystems, like some marine ecosystems, rely on the
productivity of the primary producer at the lowest level to
maintain the functionality of the rest of the population.

Manage Top-Down or Bottom-Up

Business Processes with Real-Time
Work Management in Smartsheet
Whether your company employs the top-down or bottom-up
approach to make decisions, it’s imperative to have a tool that
allows you to track goals and gauge how efficiently a
business is running. Smartsheet is an enterprise work
management platform that is fundamentally changing the way
businesses and teams work. Over 74,000 brands and millions
of information workers trust Smartsheet to help them
accelerate business execution and address the volume and
velocity of today's collaborative work.
Discover a better,
The familiar more collaborative
Smartsheet interface that is way to manage
designed for how your
teams andactually
people resources.
work leads to rapid and broad adoption

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Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approach | Smartsheet Page 17 of 18

across your organization. Use self-service reports and

dashboards in Smartsheet to provide real-time visibility into
resources, status, and performance, so you can rapidly align
operations with strategy.

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teams and resources.

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