Deciding Among Chaos

The change in management focus from product development to product/process integration, adopted as part of reengineering in many firms, has had a great impact not only on the decision environment but also the decision structure in their organizations. It not only leads from many layered hierarchical to flatter, more responsive decision and thereby management structures, but it also affected the involvement of each individual in the organization. In other words, it induced total involvement at all levels of the organization. This in turn requires everyone to be in the chains of information flow — not just as a recipient of information as directives, but also as evaluators, contributors, and suppliers of information. Everyone should now add to the flow and quality of information and add content as well as interpretation. As a result, information becomes more complete as well as more usable.

Everybody in today's organization must understand the flow of information affecting his or her work or function, its origins, and reliability as well as its format and use. Organizations, to be effective, must assure coordination of information flow, timeliness, standards, and formats. It is important to pass newly obtained and/or generated information backward and forwards rapidly and accurately. This is often termed the Quick Response approach. Today in modern manufacturing and services, capital, labor, management, and energy have lost in importance to information processing. With decisions increasingly delegated to staff or workers actually performing the functions or jobs, middle or operational management is often no longer needed. Business today is increasingly managed and run by information flows. Information not only contributes value, but actually constitutes the life of manufacturing and services. Manufacturing and services rely on information processes that require use of information technology to be truly effective. Modern management systems are based on information gathering, processing, transfer, integration, content, and form. This is very different from past management approaches where only the experience of a few directed the organization in all its activities, with little feedback from and use of the experiences of the people actually performing most of the tasks nor of the customers being served. Similarly, little information was fed forward to permit effective preparation for changes required.