| - Have leaders skilled in whatever their direct reports are doing. Use them as coaches normally and as spare workers in times of high demand.
I think this is the biggest hurdle for US style management produced from the MBA cookie factories. Their only skill sets are MBA speak, assigning blame, taking credit and granting themselves the largest bonuses possible while telling all the actual workers generating value that "due to current financial conditions, your raise is limited to 2%"
Just wanted to point out that you may be arguing for the article.. IE US style management is heavily inspired by Drucker and resistant to Deming.
Upper management could and should easily detect that.
It doesn't help at all the US union rules make switching from line work to supervisor work a bad thing. If someone with a union job switches to management they have to start from zero - the company cannot count all those years of experience and so you start at the bottom of the ladder again despite your experience, and your former friends now do mean things to you because you "went to the dark side". It isn't just unions that do the above, but it is the worst there.