
Companies Might Be Smarter with Workers in the Boardroom - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-20/companies-might-be-smarter-with-workers-in-the-boardroom
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bediger4000
> Top executives don’t always know what’s going on at the operations level.

How much of this sort of talk is just hot air? Does it really matter that CxO
doesn't know about loading trucks or whatever? I mean, there's a place for the
knowledge, and someone should collect it, but isn't this kind of article just
more of that "eat your broccoli, it's good for you" sort of thing?

I can give something of an example. In the 80s, I worked for an aerospace
company that made satellite launch vehicles. I often went out on the factory
floor to see the parts I had helped design get made. The brake press
operators, welders, lathe operators and others were just artists, doing stuff
by feel that they really shouldn't have had a feel for. But they almost
universally thought what they were building was too strong, over-engineered.
What they were missing was that flight loads designed the rocket's structure,
not manufacturing or transport. In fact, there was a rule that Ground Support
loads should not design any structure. That is, manufacturing, transport and
erection were carefully done so that they imposed much milder loads than
flight did. The workers missed this important aspect of flight vehicle design.

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salawat
That doesn't negate the point. Your example simply demonstrates incomplete
osmosis of information. Ironically, something every CxO I've encountered seems
to embrace and delight in maintaining.

I've not come across a single business problem that cannot be solved by
breaking down knowledge silos. Does the lathe operator need to know from
whence the reqs come? Maybe not. Will he be more likely to crank out stricter
tolerance parts if he knows? My experience says yes.

The issue is one of personality and power however. Perception management is a
tool of VPs/Execs, and they will fight tooth and nail to maintain as tight a
control over their informational asymmetry as possible.

In each of the several companies I've worked Quality management at, I've
managed to streamline operations and improve the Quality of the end product by
punching holes in every knowledge barrier I encounter. Generally, you end up
with a small network of tribal knowledge keepers/emitters. Without fail,
though, this practice tends to lead counter-intuitive pictures of the health
of the company not painted or represented well by the metrics most management
track people seem to focus on. I end up demonstrating to at least one CxO that
what they're getting fed in the form of spreadsheets is nothing like what's
actually been going on on the working floor.

The effect of out of touch management pales in comparison, however, to
outright malicious management, who are just out to make a mark without sitting
down and really thinking through what a company needs. These are your VP's
that come with their own posse and promise the world, come in and break
everything for 6 months to a year, and then leave the company treading water
trying to recover in the wake of alienated or laid off employees caused by
their mismanagement. There is no greater threat to malicious management than
an employee that is connected enough with the internal knowledge network that
is the company that to call them on their shenanigans. Unfortunately, this
tends to run into hierarchy issues, where the people most effective at
punching through silos and integrating what they find in order to streamline
the day-to-day are infrequently in management positions. Most of the impetus
to do such a thing tends to come from wanting to get something done within the
system as it exists. Managers (or at least the one's I've had) tend to be a
bit more reserved in such things based on the politics around their position.

Therefore you can end up in the unenviable position of the person outing the
Emperor's New (lack of) Clothes. I've made the personal decision to value my
integrity over the job before, and called a spade a spade, and I'd do it
again.

