Peter F. Drucker Boxed Set (8 Books) (The Drucker Library)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Twilight of the First-Line Supervisor?

NO JOB IS GOING TO CHANGE more in the next decade than that of the first-line supervisor in both factory and office. And few people in the work force are less prepared for the changes and less likely to welcome them.

Automation is one of the forces drastically altering the supervisor’s role. In an automated process, workers cannot be “supervised”; each worker has to be pretty much in control of the process, has to understand it, know how to program the machines he is responsible for and reset them. In an automated process, the worker switches from being an operator to being a programmer. Instead ...