The Daily Drucker: February 21 - Failure of Central Planning

Any society in the era of new technology would perish miserably were it to run 

an economy by central planning.

The new technology will greatly extend the management area; many people now considered rank-and-file will have to become capable of doing management work.  And on all levels the demands on the manager's responsibility and competence, her vision, her capacity to choose between alternate risk, her economic knowledge and skill, her ability to manage managers and to manage worker and work, her competence in making decisions, will be greatly increased.

The new technology will demand the utmost in decentralization.  Any society in the era of the new technology would perish miserably were it to attempt to get rid of free management of autonomous enterprise so as to run the economy by central planning.  And so would any enterprise that attempts to centralize responsibility and decision making at the top.  It would go under like the great reptiles of the saurian age who attempted to control a huge body by a small. centralized nervous system that could not adapt to rapid change in the environment.

ACTION POINT:  DO you micromanage your employees?  Start empowering them by making sure that are trained properly to do their jobs, and then give them responsibility to do it.  Provide room for failure.

                                                                                                                The Practice of Management

Quoted from The Daily Drucker: 21 February, page 57