Sublime

In sum then, the whole picture of coordination in 1925 and for a number of years thereafter was as follows: The interdivisional-relations committees gave a measure of coordination to the functions of purchasing, engineering, sales, and the like. The Operations Committee, including the general managers, appraised the performance of the divisions.

Good management starts by defining what outputs someone needs to produce.

Meanwhile, we had a growth strategy we could follow indefinitely. We could grow just like the Chinese firecracker factory—getting big by staying small. We could divide up into huts. We could take our best young managers and let them build their own businesses from scratch. They’d get a new challenge, an opportunity to learn and grow, and SRC would

The value that the higher layers need to provide is considerable, because having a level above the front line will automatically and unavoidably add two costs to the front line. First, there will be costs of coordination: those at the front line won’t be in a position to make important decisions on their own without checking with the next level.

Unhindered communication was key, no matter what your position.

A closer look shows that the hierarchies are constructed on a “building block” principle: subsystems at each level of the hierarchy are constructed by combinations of small numbers of subsystems from the next lower level.

First, break the plane’s design into essential units and make a separate production layout for each unit. Next, build as many units as are required, then deliver each unit in its proper sequence to the assembly line to make one whole unit—a finished plane.

If one believes, as I have argued at many places in this book, that creativity comes from individuals and not from structures or processes, then a central question facing the software manager is how to design structure and process so as to enhance, rather than inhibit, creativity and initiative. Fortunately, this problem is not peculiar to software