I used to use what I thought was a word (not an acronym) Snafu to describe those things that had hit a snag.  Later when I discovered it was an acronym born from WWII, I was less willing to use the it.  FUBAR came later and still less willing to use it.  If you don’t know what the acronym stands for Google it, this is a blog not an acronym finder.

Command and control thinking certainly can lead to FUBAR and SNAFU.  It did during WWII and it does today.  The functional separation of work (scientific management theory) is only only the beginning.  Blame Frederick Winslow Taylor if you must, but no one forced you to follow this method that creates sub-optimization and waste.

Separating the decisions from the work came from A.P. Sloan at GM over 50 years ago, yet we still use this thinking today to come up with targets and mandates that almost always assure locking in waste.

The zero-sum mentality of costs and good service where costs must increase to improve service is only exposes the ignorance of command and control thinking.  Worse this thought process leads to increased costs.

Financial and performance targets, the norm for US businesses increases costs, promotes cheating, prevents cooperation, and becomes the defacto purpose of the organization (i.e., meet the target).

Customers are managed to contracts to reduce costs only to increase them with complaints, relationship managers, call centers and mandates in the command and control approach.

Command and control thinkers love to copy and buy IT to automate only to assure that costs will increase and value to customers decline.

A systems thinking organization understands that business cost reduction and business improvement comes from creating systems that satisfy “what matters” to the customer and allows workers to make decisions about the work and managers to manage the system.  No more SNAFU or FUBAR, only a change of thinking is required.

For more on the distinctions of command and control vs. systems thinking click here.