1 Inertia

Deep Dive Leadership & Culture with iCoachAndrew

The command and control framework used by religious and military organizations for many centuries is still the most reliable way to unite individuals based on hierarchy—meaning obedience—and skill. How relevant is command and control for business in this digital economy, when agile innovation can be vastly more urgent than optimization, or doing more better?

Examine the strengths and trade-offs of the four key features of command and control, their strengths and the respective trade-offs.
Those trade-offs cause inertia. You're still profitable, no doubt, but you're getting less than the optimum. And you're aware of it. To remedy the trade-offs, you turn to some of the more popular management approaches and techniques.
The sustained use of those management approaches and techniques implies that the time and resources invested in them are justified. However, our decades of management consulting work in large organizations continue to show that they deliver only incremental relief from treating symptoms, and do not provide permanent relief.
What is the remedy for inertia induced by hierarchical, power-based work relationships between individuals who report to different function bosses. From people who work to achieve and get rewarded on the basis of meeting often unsynchronized function goals and standards? From people who have to wait for top management meetings to confront issues that had accumulated during the prior month or week?

Where can we find that elusive remedy?