Cell Phones: Asset or Liability????

[Jim Johnson]

Where are our next managers coming from? Every Plant Manager, Department Manager, and Supervisor has a cell phone on their person. That is no problem, but I also notice that they will not make a decision without calling the next level of management. How are we ever to develop managers if we do not make them make decisions without the blessings of the next level first. This also works in reverse for the managers are phoning into the plant wanting to know what is happening.
I have always felt that you should develop a replacement so that you could be away from the plant for six weeks without a blip in the operations. With the managers of today I doubt they can make it through the night without a call.

[kfranklin]

From my experience the cell phones are probably not the root cause of this problem. If middle managers feel the need to check every decision with the next level of management, it is most likely the senior management style of micro-managing and intolerance for any "blips" that disempowers their line managers. Just like teaching a child to ride a bike, we have to be tolerant of the occasional falls, bruises and mishaps. Take the cell phones away in this environment and it just slows down the pace of decision making, calls will still need to be made on land lines or via e-mail to avoid career ending responsibility for misjudgements and mistakes.

[Abogle]

Cell phones are both a blessing and a curse. Its hard to imagine just a few short years ago that we got along just fine without them.

In the example above about the middle managers always needing to phone up for decisons might suggest that the organization could benefit from cutting out the middle man and becoming more horizontal, because it seems these middle managers are simply a communication conduit and not adding any value to the process.