Managing a command and control organization depends on telling the workers what to do, then seeing that they do it.
It was easy to measure output and quality with a tangible product. Easy also to see if a manual worker was working hard or slacking.
But how do you supervise knowledge workers? If a designer or programmer is staring into space is he or she thinking about a work problem – or planning a holiday? How do you even measure the output or quality of the work as it is being done?
So, of you cannot control knowledge workers, can you command them?
Perhaps but only in broad terms, because the knowledge worker will b e closer to the action and therefore often knows better than the supervisor what needs doing.
Knowledge workers cannot perform well in the secrecy and mistrust of a traditional command and control environment.
They are best motivated by being given the problem and trusted with all the available information, then left to find a solution.
Instead of trying to command and control them, it is better to make sure you hire the right people, then inform and entrust them.
This is not an easy message to sell to chief executives, many of whom feel they are paid to call the shots, and there are still plenty of organizations with scope for better management of their knowledge workers.
However, there is also a growing band of new style organization that have abandoned the command and control model and the multilayer hierarchy.
The Information Age
