The Bee Hive

In the present fast paced world, where almost every organization and business firm employs educated personnel and a trained workforce, there hardly seems to be an urgent need for managers. On the contrary, instead of managers supervising the employees, it is much better to hire coaches who train and provide the employees with the required solutions and appropriate directions. Rather than following the traditional job of supervising and monitoring, a manager needs to shift his focus on how to appropriately coach the workforce.

A recent rerun of the HBO television series “Band of Brothers,” the story of an infantry division in World War Two, got me thinking in new directions. What impressed me the second time I saw the show was how well the men of Easy Company came together and were willing to commit to doing their duty. also evident was their unwillingness to accept poor leadership, as demonstrated by the first line supervisors resigning from the company to force higher command to address the issue of an incompetent company commander.

Successful organizations resolve their cross-functional business issues using project teams with specific objectives and deliverables. Such project teams focus on subjects like introducing new products, resolving perennial production issues, achieving greater customer satisfaction, and so on. They may be calles a task force, SWAT team, productivity team, or anything else that infers an aggressive approach to problem solving.