[LanceH]

> His books are filled with exhortations to trust the workers. This is what American managers could never bring themselves to do.

This is one of the big differences in the military, with far more trust given to the "workers" in the US and generally western countries compared to others.

[auxym]

In case anyone is interested, I enjoyed the book "Turn the Ship Around!" by L. David Marquet, about management lessons applied by the author who was a US Navy submarine captain. It does very much emphasize giving trust, responsibility and accountability to workers (or enlisted personnel, in this case).

[kqr]

One of my favourite techniques from that book is to remove the centralised backlog. People's ideas for improvement shouldn't be everyone's administrative burden. There are too many ideas for that.

Instead, keep a central record of the things that need to be done right now, and if something is important to do later, then someone will probably keep track of it personally and bring it up later when it is more relevant.

[adolph]

Pray we never need statistical process controls for the mass manufacturing of military objectives.

Deming's exhortations exist because they are aspirational, essentially propaganda for his vision of organizational cybernetics. "Deming was part of the Teleological Society with Wiener, Turning, von Neumann, and others during and after the Second World War — one of the groups that was the precursor to the Macy Conferences and worldwide cybernetics movement that also led to the development of the Cybernetics Society." [0]

"[Deming's] view of cooperation stood in stark contrast to business as usual, which emphasized competition, even within one’s own company. Throughout his life, he demonstrated how even competitors working together benefited their respective companies and, more importantly, their customers." [1]

0. https://cybsoc.org/?page_id=1489

1. Willis, John. Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge: How Deming Helped Win a War, Altered the Face of Industry, and Holds the Key to Our Future (p. 164). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[wongarsu]

Which is also a relatively recent thing, all things considered. If I remember correctly it was primarily WWII Germany that pioneered this approach, which was then quickly adopted by everyone else

[sidewndr46]

I've heard this dichotomy in terms of military command presented in many different ages and different ways. It is primarily the difference between communicating the goals of an operation versus communicating how to achieve those goals. Most recently I've listened to accounts that it explains Russia operational failures in the invasion of Ukraine. I've also read analysis suggesting that it was a relevant difference in the battle of waterloo.

[kqr]

Sort of. The word to search the web for is Auftragstaktik. Here's the Wikipedia page on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics

[rawgabbit]

It was practiced by the Prussians during the Franco Prussian war. In WWI, it led to the small team grenade tactics, the Germans deployed to try to overcome trench warfare. It culminated with the blitzkrieg tactics of WWII.