We pay a high price in maintaining bureaucracies that are mistakenly thought to be necessary. Besides the waste of the organization’s funds from added layers of supervision they extract a toll in employee job satisfaction by denying them the minimum decision making powers in the daily performance of their jobs. There is also a financial incentive; before an individual can progress in the organization he must be promoted to the next higher level of management. The more employees he has working for him the higher his salary. The result, unnecessary levels of management are created to reward individual employees for organizational loyalty. The organization becomes less tolerant of employee complaints and nearly all communication is in the form of downward directives. Upward communication is generally interpreted as a disloyal complaint. Employees who are perceived as disloyal are not promoted.

Our goal is to eliminate as many levels of management as possible thus driving down the decision-making processes to the lowest level of effectiveness. Some decisions are clearly the responsibility of a certain level of management. This is the essence of the reform process. A part of the process is the formation of “Work Improvement Teams” (They can be called by any name). These are made up of employees at the lowest level. They are empowered in making low level improvements to the work process and elect their own leaders. We borrowed this Japanese management practice and implemented it at McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Co. When I was on Hal Yost’s staff; then President of the Company back in the 1980’s.

The approach:
First form the Work Improvement Teams one for each organizational function. They should meet at a scheduled time once a week and be moderated by a facilitator until they understand the process and elect their new leader. After a sufficient time has elapsed for the Work Improvement Teams to become successful. The bottom level of supervision is eliminated. It is interesting note how many of the former supervisors were elected as team leaders. All pay increases should be based on merit, usually based on recommendations from the team. Across the board increases should be reserved for cost of living. The second level of management should then be reviewed for its functional requirement and it too may be eliminated. Only this time Work Improvement Teams are generally not needed at this level. It is very rewarding to see employees genuinely excited about their jobs and senior management smiling over the significant savings.

I proposed this method of management to Sandy McDonnell CEO of the McDonnell Douglas Corp. soon after Hal Yost retired and it was used until the late 1990’s when the company was purchased by the Boeing Company. The company was managed by Steering teams for the top management and functional teams in the functional areas.

Up date November 25, 2009
in my Article 116. Private Industry Example of Lean Teams; you will find that the best companies in the US are managed by similar teams. See more details of the process in Article 152. The Process of Replacing Bureaucratic Management With Lean Teams

Other relevant articles:
Article 123. The Case for Long Term Implementation of Lean Teams
Article 124. The Core Features of Innovative Reforms
Article 136. The best Example of Why Work Measurement Should be used by Government
Article 137. Role of Lean Facilitator and Budget Analyst
Article 156. Getting the most out of Lean as used in Government
Article 157. Using Lean to Balance Agency work Loads
Article 160. Minnesota State Government Leads the Nation in Lean