by Lee Fried, on 29 Jul 2007 08:43 am
The Journey
Quote of the Week
This week’s quote comes from John Seddon and was taken from his new book Freedom from Command & Control. I have enjoyed this book very much. I am currently working with my companies Customer Service Center and the book is rich would great examples and Seddon is spot on when he describes the management systems of service organization.
I chose this quote, because of it’s timeliness. On Friday, I facilitated our mid-year checking meeting with the Model Line Leadership team and I would say that the single biggest change in the conversation since we met last three months ago was how much more the team now knows about the work. Rather then each leader having to try and convince their peers about the challenges within their function most leaders could just state the challenge and their peers knew enough about the situational information to understand. I can’t overstate the importance of leadership understanding the real nature of the work.
“I generally find managers know everything about volumes and activity, but little or nothing about the real nature of the work.”