Decentralized Context Management

principle — attributed to Colja Dams

The person standing in front of the customer must have the authority to make the decision in real time, because the moment they refer back up the chain, the customer experience has already degraded. Dams named this principle decentralized context management in his first year running the agency and has not revised it in twenty-seven years. He learned it not in a business school but in a Chinese restaurant in Florida where a teenage busboy from Wuppertal was the entire customer-facing operation.

Operations / Decision Authority

decentralized management, customer experience, real-time judgment