Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Nano(micro)management

Today, we see nano(micro)management, or the ability of a supervisor to closely monitor and control all actions of all subordinates throughout an organization. This raises three critical questions. Where did nano(micro)management originate? Why is it done? What are its costs?

Major T.S. Sowers' article is HERE.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sowers needs to continue his studies and put his foot down wrt a opinion.

Command isn't what it used to be … accept it and move on.

200 years ago, CAPT Apple, was given a one page set of orders that essentially said " go do something about the Barbary pirates". He didn't see his ISIC again for 18-24 months. Perhaps he received some rudder via hard copy letter a couple times during this period. Today, not only does CAPT Apple get daily email guidance from his seniors (multiple), he also may participate in a Commanders VTC and definitely his subordinates get 'guidance' from various staffs and sustaining maintenance is not performed without input from TYCOM staff & remote contractors. Are things better? If you like the concept of being in Command, eh no. If you want to lift and shift a global force to serve rapidly changing requirements, eh yes!.

Anonymous said...

Sowers needs to continue his studies and put his foot down wrt a opinion.

Command isn't what it used to be … accept it and move on.

200 years ago, CAPT Apple, was given a one page set of orders that essentially said " go do something about the Barbary pirates". He didn't see his ISIC again for 18-24 months. Perhaps he received some rudder via hard copy letter a couple times during this period. Today, not only does CAPT Apple get daily email guidance from his seniors (multiple), he also may participate in a Commanders VTC and definitely his subordinates get 'guidance' from various staffs and sustaining maintenance is not performed without input from TYCOM staff & remote contractors. Are things better? If you like the concept of being in Command, eh no. If you want to lift and shift a global force to serve rapidly changing requirements, eh yes!.

Anonymous said...

Sowers needs to continue his studies and put his foot down wrt a opinion.

Command isn't what it used to be … accept it and move on.

200 years ago, CAPT Apple, was given a one page set of orders that essentially said " go do something about the Barbary pirates". He didn't see his ISIC again for 18-24 months. Perhaps he received some rudder via hard copy letter a couple times during this period. Today, not only does CAPT Apple get daily email guidance from his seniors (multiple), he also may participate in a Commanders VTC and definitely his subordinates get 'guidance' from various staffs and sustaining maintenance is not performed without input from TYCOM staff & remote contractors. Are things better? If you like the concept of being in Command, eh no. If you want to lift and shift a global force to serve rapidly changing requirements, eh yes!.

Anonymous said...

Much of the micromanagement is in place because the new communications technology allows it. Has there been any deliberate thought directed at this trend? Or, have we just bought more and more comms gear because it is available. Are our forces better at fighting? Perhaps. Are decisions at the higher level any more inlightened? My experience tells me NO, a resounding NO, in fact. So, if we boil this down, why can't we exercise some discipline and buy capabilities that improve our ability to fight, and not buy capabilities that hinder our ability to operate efficiently. 29 years ago when I first went on a ship as a young officer, I was told to never be in my stateroom. Be out and about in the work spaces, know your sailors, be available. That was great advice, which I followed. Today, "officers country" is a teaming office environment with staterooms taking the place of office cubicles. Officers peck away at their computers, rather than being out in the work spaces. Why?
If I want to go on a TAD trip, now I have DTS, a nightmare system, and my travel approval chain stretches across multiple commands and echelons of the chain. Do these "approvers" really care, do they really need to approve my travel, do they care that my rental car at Avis is 4 dollars more than the car at Budget? Apparently, they do.
Everytime a Pentagon leader gets a good idea it translates into another "training" opportunity. My yearly training requirement is now up to 15 computer based courses. And my compliance with those linchpins of our democracy is monitored by some bureaucrat in DC on his computer, and I get hate mail when I am late completing one of the courses. Really!
Perhaps if the seniors quit trying to be the work center supervisor for the whole friggin navy and spent a little more time on their jobs, maybe they would get ships built on time, maybe our officers and chiefs would feel empowered to get up from their computers and actually lead their divisions.
Remember "MINIMIZE"? How bout the CNO institute MINIMIZE across the navy and and deliberately examine the reporting requirements our operating forces are faced with.

Navy Grade 36 Bureaucrat said...

The global communication grid allows us to reach back while at sea and overseas to get information that would have taken weeks to months to get otherwise. It has enabled us to bring a massive amount of information to bear on any problem. Anyone who has had to troubleshoot a broken piece of equipment at sea will know that the satellite phone is no longer a luxury.

That being said, just like the signal flag, it can be abused. In more than a few books, British officers wrote about the variety of signals they received using flags, as well as the ones that they deliberately ignored because it went against their better judgement. They ensured that the communications worked for them, but didn't stop them from thinking.

What we as Naval Officers have failed at is recognizing that two-edged sword of information, and how it can both enable and disembowel the initiative of our subordinates. You're never going to get back to the days of the 1-page message for a 180-day deployment. But you can certainly take steps to ensure that what you give your subordinates using all the fancy gear we have is guidance and information that they will WANT to receive and not ignore. They'll appreciate it, and they'll learn to do the same in the future when they move up the ranks.