“From the commencement of my management I viewed the population, with the mechanism and every other part of the establishment, as a system composed of many parts, and which it was my duty and interest so t0 combine, as that every hand, as well as every spring, lever, and wheel, should effectively co-operate to produce the greatest pecuniary gain to the proprietors. ”
——Robert Owen, “An Address To the Superintendents of Manufactories”
Management: Then
In the beginning— it was all about the "Winning Combination"
Management in the end is trying to convert resources into results, and doing so by getting it done through others. Though it may sound easy enough, anyone who has tried to manage knows that management is never simple, is only sometimes effective, may or may not be done right the first time, and can it never happen fast enough. Management is complex——management thought does not develop in cultural vacuum. -1 <cross-cutlural management>）Managers has always found their jobs affected by the existing culture. (“Software of the Mind”, Mindray Cases studies). That means managers have always had to think about current norms before moving forward.
Robert Owen, a Scottish textile manufacturer, was consciously managing the Industrial Age. He talked excitedly about the wonders of a well-oiled manufacturing machine. He was well aware of the potential profits from an investment in new technology. For him it was ‘money expended for the chance of increased gain.’
For Robert Owen (and most of his industrial contemporaries), people working in his manufacturing facilities were equivalent to "living machines" . "[W]ill you not afford some of your attention to consider whether a portion of your time and capital would not be more advantageously applied to improve your living machines. " For him, a healthy synergy of workplace conditions (including state-of-the-art technology) and workplace humanism("care and attention to the living instruments")-2 work-life balance<A Full-spectrum Life-Women in Leadership> would yield unheard-of profits. He even promised his fellow manufacturers that, by following his advice, they too would see returns of "not five, ten, or fifteen per cent, for your capital so expended, but often fifty and in many cases a hundred per cent".
After Owen, management gurus like Winslow Taylor (The Principles of Scientific Management), Henri Fayol (General Principles of Management) and Mary Parker (Freedom and Co-ordination) all set the essential challenge for all managers thereafter with Robert Owen’s elevation of three distinct issues: technology, people and profits.-3 techno-marketing
How do we balance these three elements into the best combination, the most productive combination, the longest sustainable combination: in short, a winning combination?
“In 1981… I said I wanted GE to become “the most competitive enterprise on earth”… In the end, I believe we created the greatest people factory in the world, a learning enterprise, with a boundary-less culture.”
——Jack Welch, “Jack: Straight from the Gut”
Management: Now
There are numerous bestselling management authors (from thinker Rosabeth Moss Kanter to real-life manager Jack Welch) who often present an overall picture of corporate management doing things exceedingly right.Those stellar managers, as presented in some books, have balanced the complexities of technology, people, and profits into distilled and potent commercial certainty. Bookstore shelves teem with such tomes; the more cynical readers consider such works "fad books", designed to spawn yet another program du jour inside the corporate world. It was as if managers in any company would need follow only a few nicely jotted bullet points to guarantee success.
However successful these companies and the people working in it may be portrayed in publication, it is still a dubious proposition to assume such sweet balance between technology, people and profits is actually achieved. Throughout "The Working Life",Joanne Ciulla raises some touch issues; she comments that too many people ‘can’t choose when to go to work and what to do at work. They do not deliberate on management policies or decide how to do the task at hand. Worst of all, many still can’t plan for the future because they don’t know if they will have a job. ’ Richard Donkin in his landmark work "Blood, Sweat & Tears" on the same subject says: "The more I write, the more I ask myself this recurring question: Why on earth do we do it? " Donkin points out, as do others, that management has become such a prized profession that, with salaries and bonuses, some of top executives now easily earn "150 times more than their lowest paid employees". However, his introduction relates how he once sat beside "a FTSE 100 company chief, fishing by the riverbank…listening to him giving instructions [to his office] on his mobile phone". Says Donkin: "The craziness is that some of these highly paid individuals are working such long hours they rarely have the opportunity to step outside their jobs and enjoy a moment’s leisure. "
With 150 times more pay, there comes the burnout-at-both-ends-4 <Burnout Assessment>.
Psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter believe that burnout affects far more than tired top execs. "Burnout is reaching epidemic proportion among workers today. It’s not so much that something has gone wrong with us but rather that there have been fundamental changes in the workplace and the nature of our jobs. The workplace today is a cold, hostile, demanding environment, both economically and psychologically… People are becoming cynical, keeping their distance, trying not to let themselves get too involved.-5 psychological safety <psychological safety at MS & other companies>"
It is a questions worthy of considerate thoughts that what the workplace is like and what it should be like. It may be the time we need to stop thinking about organizational productivity and start thinking about personal productivity. -2 work-life balance<A Full-spectrum Life-Women in Leadership> We all need to stop focusing on things like operational excellence and tune into"radical simplicity", an awareness of what people really need to get their work done. In a word, it’s a time to think about Work 2.0 world, he stresses that people are "business units of one".
In "The Wealth of Knowledge", Thomas Stewart wrote: "The modern corporation, like modern art, is over. The postmodern corporation is different. It’s more accurate—and more useful—to think of employees in a new way: not as assets but as investors. -2 work-life balance<A Full-spectrum Life-Women in Leadership>Shareholders invest money in our companies; employees invest time, energy, and intelligence. "
Arie de Geus, drawing from his long career at Royal Dutch/Shell, argues that management may be suffering a crisis of vocabulary. "Companies have become trapped in the prison of economic language, which is why so many companies suffer premature deaths…Companies tend to die early because their leaders and executives concentrated on production and profit, and forget the the corporation is an institution… a community of human beings. -2 work-life balance<A Full-spectrum Life-Women in Leadership>"
Fons Trompenaars argues that, since "culture" today must be defined globally, the basics job of a manager is overdue for a radical redesign. "Just because people speak English does not mean they think alike, " he argues. "The international managers needs to go beyond awareness of cultural differences. He or she needs to respect there differences and take advantage of diversity through reconciling cross-cultural dilemmas. -1 <cross-cutlural management>
Employees are not merely "machines". Just as what Douglas McGregor’s mournful challenge to the management profession in the closing paragraph of this landmark 1960 work, The Human Side of Enterprise, concluding: "Fads will come and go. The fundamental fact of man’s capacity to collaborate with his fellows in the face-to-ace group will survive the fads and one day be recognized. Then, and only then, will management discover how seriously it has underestimated the true potential of its human recourses."
Management: Tomorrow
Every manager today has both new and old questions to answer. Management tomorrow has to find an answer to the question that, at heart, also bothered Owen almost 200 years ago. At the root of the conflict between the humanisticand the scientific are two warring images of the business organization and its purpose in …society: one sees the corporation as a pivotal institution of democracy with complex responsibilities to a host of constituencies, including its employees, its customers, and the community. The other, much more utilitarian, view recognizes one primary corporate constituent—the shareholder—and a single purpose—profit making.
Technology is now proceeding at a pace that may quickly outstretch management’s ability to decide what to do with what we are so rapidly learning how to do. The very real prospect arises that many will simply conclude that life and business, both, are irrefutably un-manageable. Robert Owen feared that technology would overpower the human being; Deming feared that human myopia about issues like quality would overpower an organization’s technological capability to deliver excellent products. Today, some fear that the push for profit could throttle both technology and humanity. And Charles Handy, who calls himself "a reluctant capitalist", talks about "elephant" (large companies) and "fleas"(individuals or small groups with innovative ideas), conceding that "Many observers think that the big corporations are now both richer and more powerful than many nation states…The elephants, people feel, may be out of anyone’s control. "
And yet —- Return to People
Essential Manager’s Manual: "A full understanding of what makes people perform well and of the problems that may affect performance in the workplace is therefore essential for any manager. He or she will need to employ a wide range of skills, both interpersonal and professional, in order to resolve these problems.-6 Managerial Role Awareness (Leadership Awareness & Structural Influence) "
The practice of management, through both its scientific standards and its artistic renderings, remains the best way yet to channel the raw energy of human minds, the brute force vast capital, and the quixotic capability of new technology to transform people by reshaping their perceptions of what’s possible on this planet, and ultimately, even beyond. Accounting, information, logistics, marketing, manufacturing, organizational culture, research and development, sales, social policy—pick any discipline within the profession of management, and you’ll find intense debate about the questions that matter most to each particular realm of the corporate world. It is as it always was. It is as it should be .
Businesses do not prosper because of their strategic planning: they succeed because of their strategic execution and because of the extent to which they cane attract both investors and customers to share their strategic purpose. And achievement is very much an exercise in managing for the future.
Management and human enterprise have brought mankind a long way. We travel fast, communicate easily, shop globally, and learn rapidly. Yet, judging mainly by what management has accomplished in the past (and what hasn’t), we can be quite sure that its study will never become passè. We need not quake over the prospect that the study of management will no longer be needed because its best practices have accomplished everything that needed to be done. We need not fear terminal success. Whenever enormous problems involving work, people, and organizations crop up, this question all imminently bubble up too. How do we manage this problem? This list is endless but undoubtedly starts with…
Some executives do achieve long-term business success. Yet we really don’t know how to replace that executive with one just as capable in order to keep the good corporate times going—-nor do we know how to transfer an excellent manger’s expertise to another company or another industry. We in management own that problem. -7 < Levels of Consciousness Applied in Personal and Professional Transition>
The power of large corporations rivals many nations; their top managers are often more widely known than presidents or prime ministers. Yet corporates don’t really know how to wield that power in ways that do not devastate some communities while disproportionately blessing others. We in management own that problem.
Corporate no longer have to be mega in size to leverage global connections; 24/7 workdays and Internet communication make it a reality, not just a possibility, that for many, the worker ‘at the next desk’ will be thousands of miles away. Yet few companies have meshed the unique cultural perspectives of a multi-national workforce into a coherent, collaborative team. We in management own that problem.
Advanced technology has made it possible to fly to outer space and return safely. Yet, all over the globe, people today are struggling with how to fly or drive millions of miles without facing overt terrorism or risking the less obvious terror of enviro-toxic byproducts corrupting the atmosphere permanently. We in management own that problem. -8<New Economy in 0 Carbon>
Even in the most heralded companies boasting a badge of merit that says they are ‘wonderful’ places to work, employees and managers slink to work each day uninspired, even desperate—incapable of connecting the mission of the company with their own mission in life. We in management own that problem. -9<Personal IP Branding, Attracting Your Customers at an Early Age>
Management in the 21 century is incomplete, imperfect, and quite often insufficient to meet pressing needs. That makes management tomorrow as exciting as ever, an exhilarating subject to study and a dynamic profession to practice. In almost any corner of your life, your workplace, your community, or your global marketplace, there are problems that simply won’t be addressed unless someone in management owns them.
Therefore today—right now!—the most important unanswered question in management comes down to four words:Might that be you! Join Us