Command and control elicits compliance to enforced processes through management by policy. Focusing on process fixates management on the means rather than the result. Emphasis is placed on building hierarchies, formalizing roles, and people are viewed as resources. All this amounts to bureaucracy and adds no value. Hierarchies introduce protracted decision-making. Decisions made up the hierarchy typically don’t involve the people who will be tasked with fulfilling the decisions. And consequently, the support from these people for the decisions is absent. These decisions aren’t easily reversed. All this nonsense doesn’t exactly set the project up for success. I can’t think of a better way to demotivate people and reduce productivity.
Work that is fun and people-oriented is the most powerful motivator I have encountered. So why not empower people working at the coal-face? Provide facilitation and let them self-organize and decide how they will get things done. Decisions made at the coal-face can be made quickly, allowing them to be delayed until the latest responsible moment when more information is available. When a decision doesn’t work out, it can be reversed quickly and an alternative decision taken based on the feedback.
Encourage people to communicate honestly and share information openly by making everything immediately public and visible. Through frequent self-inspection, encourage learning and continuous improvement through adaptation. Don’t use a project manager to drive the project using a project plan. Instead, have the customer steer the project through continuous collaboration and regular feedback. Have everyone focus on productivity and delivering results by making public commitments, agreed by consensus, to deliver agreed value to the business.
