Distrust at work

I was fortunate to hear futurologist Dr James Bellini present at the Epicor conference recently, and among the very many snippets that had us all thinking was a challenge to the typical organisational hierarchy. Apparently this is based on a lack of trust in the poor old workers at the bottom, who have charge-hands to mind them, supervisors to mind the charge-hands, foremen to mind the supervisors, and so on all the way up the the Board of Directors. You get the idea - think what a waste of resources that is. No wonder many corporates are taking out swathes of "middle management".

Compare that structure with one formed around a task - such as making a film. Specialists are brought together for the purpose of making a film - director, camera crew, actors, props men, caterers - then disperse once the task is complete. That is accepted practice in that industry - so why not elsewhere? When you implement an ERP system, why not bring in contractors and beef up the team for the duration of the project? When you develop and release a new product, why not bring in a team of technicians, engineers, marketeers and sales people? If we were used to moving from task to task, maybe the mass redundancies we are seeing would be not be necessary -nor would we care. We would just move on to the next project.

www.aspera.co.uk