Traditional management is over. The internet has killed command and control. Now that everyone can analyse and ridicule their chief executive's every move almost before they've made it, it has become impossible to order people about.
This view is put forward by Carol Bartz, the new head of Yahoo, in The Economist's “The World in 2010”. It sounds pacey and plausible and for a second I was lulled into thinking that perhaps the “Niagara of information” really has changed management for ever. But then I looked around me. I saw lots of people at desks calmly doing what they were paid to do: working.
Command and control is not over and won't ever be. Bosses are still bosses. If mine tells me to do something, I'm inclined to get up off my bottom and do it. If Bartz's employees don't get off their bottoms when she tells them to, there is a problem – and it has nothing to do with the internet.
