Enabling Decision Makers At The Front Line

Dennis Bakke is an American business entrepreneur, and currently president and CEO of Imagine Schools, the largest commercial manager of charter schools in the United States.

He recently wrote a book called The Decision Maker which was reviewed last month by Soundview Executive Summaries, and an extract of this review is below 

Coaches don't play sports. When the whistle blows and the game begins, it's not the coaches who run onto the field or the court, it's the players that the coaches have chosen. In The Decision Maker, author Dennis Bakke returns to this metaphor a number of times: coaches choose the players. The theme of The Decision Maker is that bosses should not be making decisions in a company; they should be choosing the decision makers. The decisions themselves should be made by everybody else — including, and perhaps especially,   the front-line employees.

According to Bakke, benevolent paternalism is the kind of mindset that still defines most of today's businesses. Bosses make the decisions, even though they are less informed than the people closer to the "action" — the people who are actually dealing with customers or making the product. Shouldn't the workers on the assembly line be making assembly line decisions? Shouldn't the techs that transform the ideas of the R&D researchers into prototypes be making decisions about how the prototypes are to be built?

In many companies, they are not making the decisions, and as a result, according to Bakke, they are disengaged, unmotivated, and just working to collect a pay cheque and go home. Treat people like machines and they will act like machines, he writes.

This idea of engaging the decision making power of people at the front line is is a specific focus in FranklinCovey's work on organisational execution, and we consider three levels to achieve optimal outcomes. Firstly in how goals are defined so that they relate to a (compelling) behavioural change element and can be expressed in 'X to Y' terms. Secondly in how goals are translated down through an organisation so that they 'make sense' at each level at the same time as retaining a 'clear line of sight' to the overall organisational objectives. And thirdly, in the way inputs of front line people are invited on the 'how' they can contribute to the 'what' being defined in the goal, with a distinction being made between 'lead measures' and 'lag measures' and a special emphasis being placed on the support and accountability elements which apply.