Command and Control Isn’t Dead – It’s All That’s Left
// November 24th, 2009 // Information Overload
Writing in the Economist, Carol Bartz of Yahoo suggests that “the online era has made command-and-control management as dead as dial-up internet” because distribution of information can no longer be managed in a traditional hierarchical fashion. In her management blog, Lucy Kellaway of the FT counters this by making the observation – with which I agree - that, in today’s organisations, people are responding to emails from their bosses and ignoring everything else. This behaviour often extends to the compulsive checking of BlackBerrys at all hours, principally to see if the boss or other high-status person has sent a message.
Bartz blurs the internal flow of communication with the external “deluge” of information and rumour that also has to be dealt with but she does not really tackle how you manage the internal issue. I would argue this is one of the leader’s most important roles – to stop the information overload productivity drain and ensure that people are engaging with one another effectively.
