About management -- actions, principles, essence

Developing a work approach that is adequate to the challenges ahead
a world moving toward new and different futureS

About management: what it does, what it is, seen as a liberal art

All of the following is by Peter Drucker.

My observations: Although it may not be immediately obvious all of the following doesn't happen at one time. All of the following is not limited to one time dimension -- see organization evolution definition.

When successful, management creates new realities which bring about new external conditions that are not limited to the industry in which it originated. The reality created by the success of the automobile are not limited to the automobile industry.

Management is not something that is superimposed on an existing set of products, services, operations or activities so that they are just more efficient. Management is not about coordinating the functions, departments or divisions of an organization.

What management does

From page 249 of “Managing in a Time of Great Change” by Peter Drucker

Because the knowledge society perforce has to be a society of organizations, its central and distinctive organ is management.

When we first began to talk of management, the term meant "business management"—since large-scale business was the first of the new organizations to become visible.

But we have learned this last half-century that management is the distinctive organ of all organizations.

All of them require management—whether they use the term or not.

All managers do the same things whatever the business of their organization.

1. All of them have to bring people—each of them possessing a different knowledge—together for joint performance.

2. All of them have to make human strengths productive in performance and human weaknesses irrelevant.

3. All of them have to think through what are "results" in the organization—and have then to define objectives.

4. All of them are responsible to think through what I call the "theory of the business," that is, the assumptions on which the organization bases its performance and actions, and equally, the assumptions which organizations make to decide what things not to do.

5. All of them require an organ that thinks through strategies, that is, the means through which the goals of the organization become performance.

6. All of them have to define the values of the organization, its system of rewards and punishments, and with its spirit and its culture.

7. In all of them, managers need both the knowledge of management as work and discipline, and the knowledge and understanding of the organization itself, its purposes, its values, its environment and markets, its core competencies.

Management history

Management as a practice is very old. The most successful executive in all history was surely that Egyptian who, 4700 years or more ago, first conceived the pyramid- without any precedent-designed it and built it, and did so in record time. Unlike any other work of man built at that time that first pyramid still stands.

But as a discipline, management is barely fifty years old.

It was first dimly perceived around the time of World War I. It did not emerge until World War II, and then primarily in the United States.

Since then, it has been the fastest-growing new function, and its study the fastestgrowing new discipline. No function in history has emerged as fast as management and managers have in the last fifty to sixty years, and surely none has had such worldwide sweep in such a short period.

Management, in most business schools, is still taught as a bundle of techniques, such as the technique of budgeting. To be sure, management, like any other work, has its own tools and its own techniques. But just as the essence of medicine is not the urinalysis, important though it is, the essence of management is not techniques and procedures.

The essence of management is to make knowledges productive.

Management, in other words, is a social function. And in its practice, management is truly a "liberal art." See below

What is management?

Is it?

Techniques

Tricks

Analytical tools

Its evolution & history teach that it is a few, essential principles

1. Joint human performance

Management’s task

Make people capable of joint performance

Strengths effective

Weaknesses irrelevant

This is what organization is all about

2. Management is embedded in culture

In developing countries, the manager’s basic challenge

Find and identify building blocks that can be used in how they manage

Tradition

History

Culture

3. Direction

Commitment to …

Common goals

Clear

Public

Often reaffirmed

Shared values

Without commitment there is no enterprise, there is only a mob

Objectives

Simple

Clear

Unifying

Mission—big enough & clear enough to provide common vision

Management’s job … those objectives, values, goals

Think through

Set

Exemplify

4. Growth and development

As needs and opportunities change

The enterprise …

Learning and teaching institution

Training and development

Built into all levels

Each of its members

Never stops

5. Communication and individual responsibility

Enterprise is composed of people of…

Different skills

Different knowledge

Doing many different kinds of work

All members need to think through what they …

Aim to accomplish

Make sure associates

Know

Understand

Owe to others

Make sure associates

Understand

Approve

Need from others

Make sure associates

Know what is expected of them

6. Performance

Neither quantity of output nor “bottom line” is by itself an adequate measure of management and enterprise

Built into …

Enterprise

Its management

Measured or at least judged

Diversity of measures (just like human health or performance)

Areas crucial to a company’s performance and survival

Market standing

Innovation

Productivity

Development of people

Quality

Financial results

Continuously improved

7. Outside results

The single most important thing to remember

Results exist only on the outside

Inside an enterprise, there are only costs.

Business

Satisfied customer

Hospital

Healed patient

School

Student learned something

Puts it to work ten years later

Achieving, accomplished managers …

Understand these principles

Function in their light

Management as a liberal art

Management is a technology

Deals with action and application

Its test are results

Management is a humanity

Deals with people & their …

Values

Growth & development

Concern with and impact on …

Social structure

Community

Deeply involved in spiritual concerns

Nature of man

Good and evil

Management is a liberal art

Liberal

Deals with fundamentals of …

Knowledge

Self-knowledge

Wisdom

Leadership

Art

Practice

Application

Managers …

Draw on all the knowledges and insights of the humanities and the social sciences

Psychology and philosophy

Economics and history

Physical sciences

Ethics

Focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results

Healing a sick patient

Teaching a student

Building a bridge

Designing and selling a “user-friendly” software program

Management will increasingly be the discipline and the practice through which the “humanities” will again acquire …

Recognition

Impact

Relevance

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