How an Open Door Policy Ought to Work

Want to bypass levels of management, strike fear in the hearts of supervisors, and undermine the authority of your chain of command? Adopt an open-door policythat states that any employee can talk with any level manager about any issue at any time. Isn’t that the point of an open-door policy, you may ask? The answer to your question? Well, yes and no.

In theory, any employee should be able to talk with any level of manager or any other employee about any subject at any time in any place. Philosophically, organizations that operate under the principle that all employees are equal; they just have different jobs, are most likely to adhere to a written or unspoken open-door policy

But, open-door policies, as commonly interpreted by organizations, fail to build the ability of the organization to solve problems close to where the problem occurs…