I have lamented much over the past month of the inability of management to break free of the chains that bind them.  Hierarchy gives comfort to those that buy into such thinking and important decisions are too often made without knowledge.  For management, assumptions rule.  But for the worker that has long been lost in this cycle of thinking - systems thinking offers hope.

I get great enjoyment in seeing front-line workers grow.  Too many managers have long discounted workers as having too little confidence, information, tact and whatever other idiosyncrasies may fit the argument of why not to rely on the worker. 

Low expectations are seen played out by the use of information technology, scripts, rules, procedures, etc. to dumb down the worker.  Yet, time and again I have witnessed the worker exceed low expectations set by management . . . when given the chance.  Too few do, and pay for it in reduced efficacy.

There is a cost to command and control management and as good as the US has become at it.  The last major success it had was WWII.  Since then command and control management has been soundly been trounced by better thinking.  W. Edwards Deming started this thinking and Taiichi Ohno refined it.

However, this new thinking doesn’t stop there.  Advancements in systems thinking help leverage the power of better thinking to change minds about the design and management of work and the role of the worker and manager.  Different roles create a respect for the work and not the hierarchy.

Armed with an understanding of customer purpose, workers get clarity of what matter to customers and achieve business improvement by experimentation with method.  Focus on purpose gives the organization an outside-in view that trumps functional finger-pointing and hierarchy bringing to bear the validity of changing the work.  Organizational change management with innovation emergent from those that understand the work leaving those without understanding no place to hide.

Business cost reduction can be something that can be a simple step . . . simple as benefiting from engagement of a front-line that can improve the work without traditional shackles.

Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion!  Click on comments below.

Make the new decade a profitable and rewarding one, start a new path here.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about how to get started at tripp@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

Tripp Babbitt is a columnist (Quality Digest and IQPC), speaker, and consultant to private and public service industry.