This speech by the boss of Tesco (the UK's largest supermarket chain) reported in the Grauniad is very interesting, especially for those people who think a state healthcare system is a good idea. Indeed I would say it should be required reading for anyone who thinks that any sort of command society can work. There are so many good things mentioned in this article that it is hard to break it down but, if one wanted to summarise, I'd say the most important statements were that all individuals can be trusted to make choices and that organizations thrive if they listen to feedback from their customers and from their lowest tier of employees.
...[P]erhaps I could briefly address a couple of criticisms of consumer choice.
The first is that too much choice is confusing and wasteful and misleading.
In fact, in my view when you look closely at examples, the problem is not usually that there is too much choice. The problem is that the choice is badly offered. There is poor information, poor presentation, poor execution.
In their different ways, Microsoft and Google have demonstrated that it is possible to navigate someone through a bewildering series of choices and possibilities. I accept that there are those in a supermarket context who say "why on earth do we need a choice of 8 hand-pressed Italian olive oils?" But I think we are quite a long way from reaching that point with our public services.
The second criticism you hear is that customers are unable to choose what they need because they lack the expertise. In some areas that must be so. Medicine would be an obvious example. But I have to say, I would set the test very high. I've found in my work that people have extraordinary insight into what's in their best interests. In my view, the fact that they don't always act on it is another choice they make, rather than proof that they don't understand the issue.
So I would try very hard to exhaust the possibilities of providing information to help people choose. Again the Internet provides some support and evidence for this approach.
Fundamentally the command system doesn't scale and therefore successful organizations, be they Tesco, the US Military or the NHS delegate responsibility for local tactical actions down to the people that have to do them.
At Tesco, we have very few demarcation lines - jobs are interchangeable. A shelf stacker can aspire to do my job (and every year for a week I do a shelf stacker's job). ...
...But, as I said, it's not command and control. We don't have a global blueprint or management by slide-rule. We don't attempt to run our stores in Bangkok from Cheshunt - or for that matter our stores in Birmingham. We don't have one Leader and Chairman Terry's Little Red Book. We have thousands of Leaders. What we also have is Tesco values which provide the framework within which everyone works.
The strong unified framework actually allows a lot of freedom at the point of delivery in the branch. The person in charge is the person on the ground doing the job.
People feel they have the authority and support to do what's necessary to serve a customer or solve a problem and there's a lot of flexibility to bring the right mix of skills together to do something.