You're managing data, documents and people's efforts. No one screens the e-mail. He talks straight to the employees. He also reads hundreds of responses he gets each month and assigns a member of his team to reply to any that need follow-up. Getting people motivated to take on responsibility is not a question of organizational structure so much as organizational attitude.
Digital tools are the best way to open the door and add flexibility.
If the right people can be working on the issues within hours instead of days, a business obtains a huge advantage. In 1996 I decided to look into the ways that Microsoft, a big advocate of replacing paper with electronic forms, was still using paper. To my surprise, we had printed 350,000 paper copies of sales reports that year. I asked for a copy of every paper form we used. The thick binder that landed on my desk contained hundreds and hundreds of forms.