Fable
One foreman and a group of foremen
On Old Zhou's construction site there was a skilled bricklayer surnamed Ma. Master Ma alone could do three things: carry bricks, mix mortar, and lay bricks. Old Zhou gave Master Ma a process sheet: first carry bricks to the designated position, then mix mortar in proportion, and finally lay bricks according to the drawings. Master Ma followed it and built one wall in a day.
As the project expanded, Old Zhou hired two more masters, one specializing in flooring and one in doors and windows. Each of the three had their own specialty, but the work steps overlapped: the mason could only finish the edges after the door and window frames were installed, and the flooring master could only enter after the walls were dry. The three people's work schedules interlocked, and if one person slowed down, the whole line got stuck.
Old Zhou realized the problem. In the past, managing Master Ma alone only required scheduling his own process. Now the three people needed to consult with each other: after Master Ma finished half a wall, he had to notify the door and window master to start installing frames; after the door and window master finished one wall, he had to notify Master Ma to finish the edges; the floor master had to wait until both were done before starting work.
Old Zhou set up a dispatch desk. Every morning at the standup, three people went through the day's process intersections, confirming who waits for whom, who notifies whom, and what the fallback is when someone has a problem. The dispatch desk didn't decide how each person should work; it only relayed signals and resolved conflicts.
One day the door and window master took leave, but Master Ma didn't know and finished the wall as usual, waiting for the frame installation. After two hours no one came, and the flooring master was also waiting idle. Old Zhou spotted this breakpoint from the dispatch desk and made an ad-hoc decision: today Master Ma would skip the edge finishing and go directly to help the flooring master with pre-treatment. Three people became two coordinating, but the work didn't stop.
Later, Old Zhou summarized his experience into two rules. Rule one: managing one person's work is called process orchestration—lay out the steps and execute in order. Rule two: managing multiple people's work is called collaborative orchestration—each person's steps are independent, but starting and ending points must align with others, and consistency in between is maintained through communication.
A new project manager asked Old Zhou whether he could apply Master Ma's process template directly to three people. Old Zhou said: your template has no columns for "waiting for others to finish", "notifying others to start" or "alternative plans"; forcing it on them will only cause everyone to spin idle together.
At the year-end review, Old Zhou drew two diagrams on the blackboard. On the left was a single timeline with arrows; on the right were multiple timelines with horizontal information arrows. He said: taking one more step from left to right is not about producing an extra process chart, it is about building a communication network.