M is for the Myths of Management

I don’t want to shock you, but both teachers in business schools and some practicing managers appear to believe management is a science, replete with proven theories supported by empirical observations.  I know, I know, hard to believe, but there it is.  Some even believe this ‘science’ will give them a basis to make predictions.  As an example, I recently read this summary of some insights on offer right now, drawn from reading several consultants’ websites:

Ken Blanchard highlights coaching, building trust, and listening as the top 3 leadership skills for 2020; and Forbes identifies L&D trends for 2020 including closing the learning doing gap, mobile learning, democratising leadership and alignment to engagement. And could biosensory technologies be the future for leaders? enabling them to understand and regulate their emotions and create insights. Upskilling goes beyond a training course, and needs leadership to enable continuous learning, and BCG reminds us that innovation is a mindset that drives serial innovators. McKinsey finds female leaders can bring insights into broader leadership values in an organisation so it pays to have a mix of men and women in leadership roles. When old ways of working don’t work any more, shift your leadership thinking by trusting others and learning to slow down. Stories reflect more about the observer than the subject so stick to the facts.”[i]

These stunning conclusions are almost beyond comment.  So a management expert tells us that listening and building trust are top leadership skills for 2020:  what about humility, vision, setting goals, effective communication, or actually hearing what people are saying?  Over decades the study of leadership continues to offer a jumble of nostrums from ‘evidence based research’.  You know the kind of thing: a study of 227 managers found that those who listened to their staff (let’s not go as far as to say actually heard –  or made sense of – what the people around them were saying!) were more effective in understanding performance issues; well, actually the data shows that it was true for 37% of them.  Um, so what about the others? [ii]

You have to be impressed by Forbes, suggesting that a trend today is closing the learning doing gap and ‘alignment to engagement’ (which I think is the same thing but using bigger words).  Haven’t we all been trying to do that for years?  No, the two standouts have to be BCG (Boston Consulting Group) and McKinsey, another consultancy.  BCG has reminded us that an innovative mindset drives innovators.  Gosh.  And McKinsey finds female leaders can bring insights into ‘broader leadership values’, so it pays to have men and women in leadership roles.  Diversity is good?  Women might add something?  Please, enough with the shocks already.

For decades now, business school academics have yearned for respectability in the university.  They continue to carry out studies that show weak correlations, small data sets that appear to confirm an idea, and conjure up what, in lofty moments they call theories.  Of course, the dirty little secret is that the real scientists in a university just laugh, but behind their backs.  Business schools are important to universities, mainly because they bring in students paying ‘top dollar’, especially if an MBA course can be marketed as leading edge, the learning valuable.  A cynic might say it’s all about the money.  The university gets the cash, and the students leverage their studies to get  a better job, or at least not get overlooked for a position.  When companies seek MBA qualified staff or job applicants, it’s not for their knowledge of a science, of course; completion of an MBA is evidence of intellectual rigour, commitment and hard work.

A field of study based on science is very compelling.  Allowing for the fact that all scientific theories are provisional, making sense as best we can while conceding there might be a better theory to emerge later, science can be predictive, accurate, and useful.  However, there is nothing to be ashamed of in a subject lacking science as a core.  Many academic disciplines may draw on science based contributions, but they emphasise insights, evaluations and judgements.

A good if surprising example is engineering, especially the sub-disciplines of mechanical and structural engineering.  I first started learning about this field when I was researching the engineering  division of a major UK company.  Though not part of my specific interest, I was fascinated by the people who worked on massive electrical generators.  In simple terms these machines worked by rotated magnets at high speed (a rotor), inducing an electric current in an armature (some do it the other way around, and it is the armature that rotates).

Having some interest in science, I would talk to the engineers.  Some generators I saw were huge, with an extremely heavy rotor, often weigh hundreds of tons, and 30 feet long or more.  When I asked about design, an engineer explained, “Well”, he said, “it’s not exactly science.  We build a generator, and it works.  Then we’re asked to build one to generate twice as much power, and this second uses the same underlying design but bigger. Now, most times that works, but the centrifugal forces may reach the point where the rotor disintegrates.  We go back to the drawing board, and try a different design which we hope will fix the problem.  I’d like to say we were able to design rotors based only on the science of large rotating objects, but a full understanding of a complex massive rotor is beyond what science can fully explain today. Instead we simply use rules of thumb.”  That was then: I wonder if the science is more comprehensive now?

Rules of thumb.  A rule of thumb is a practical procedure or principle, readily learnt, one based on experience rather than derived from scientific theory.  It is claimed that the idea came from tradesmen in the 17th Century who would make measurements based on the width or length of a thumb, rather than using a ruler.  Rough and ready, but it was adequate most of the time.  As I see it, management textbooks are collections of rules of thumb, based on years of good practice, with some dressed up to look like scientific principles.  The real problem is, of course, one expert’s rule of thumb may not be the same as another’s:  thumbs, and experience, can differ!

I started with leadership, a classic area of interest with books being published by the dozen every month.  Studies of leadership tend to be of two types.  One category is the “I did it my way” school, where an executive, most often a CEO, explains to the rest of the world why he was so successful (these books are usually written by men, just before they are moved aside, or, in other cases, afterwards, as a justification as to why they were actually brilliant, but the board just didn’t get it).  It you want excellent example, Jack Welch’s book Straight from the Gut, was published the year he stepped down from GE, and Winning, came out four years later.  By the way, his second book was carefully tailored to support his new business as a leadership guru. [iii]

These personal accounts are always fascinating, revealing about the person behind the position, while often uncovering the author’s lack of insight into why he or she has been successful, or why the experiences outlined might not be transferable.  Jack Welch was demanding, financial focussed, and unrelenting in his pursuit of his goals.  He contrasts rather nicely with another CEO who was equally successful over the same twenty year period, Reuben Mark, but whose approach to leading was centred around what he described as the human touch.  “It comes down to manifesting an interest in people” to which he added integrity, caring for others, and a willingness to really listen. [iv]  Welch and Mark were both very successful, and very different from one another.  Each did it ‘his way’, as much in adopting a style that was aligned with their personalities as anything, and just two of the many examples of differences leaders can reveal.

Reuben Mark illustrates the second approach to leadership, too, not writing a book to market ‘his way’, but encouraging an approach which is more collaborative, working with others to find principles and useful rules of thumb (‘our way’ not ‘my way’).  One classic, the title saying it all, is Max De Pree’s Leadership is an Art. [v]  A wonderfully wise and thoughtful book, it makes clear there isn’t a science of leadership, but rather an art, one to be felt, experienced and explored.

Another topic that has launched a thousand business books is strategy.  Strategy has a long history, not surprising since it was a matter of concern even before historians wrote about armies and battles.  Back 2,500 years ago, Thucydides completed a History of the Peloponnesian War, a classic study of military strategy and tactical practice, one of the first drawing on facts rather than speculation.  In China, and at around the same time, Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War.

These two great writers established the important difference between tactics (practice) and strategy (approach).  Thucydides covered both, exploring the intentions of the Athenian and Spartan generals, as well as day-to-day actions during conflicts.  In the last two millennia, he has remained famous as a historian, though his insights into strategy have been largely set aside.

Sun Tzu was one step back from tactics, and concentrated on establishing what we might call strategic options, most of which were based on avoiding ‘undesirable outcomes’: in other words, trying to win without ever having to fight, since battles were costly to everyone.  His influence has been considerable, especially in Japan, where the book was used over the centuries, and later in Europe, following its translation by a French Jesuit in the late 1800s.  Late to learn of it, it only appeared in English at the beginning of the 20th Century.

And what does this famous, deservedly influential book have to say?  In thirteen chapters its sets out a series of strategic principles.  They appear simple, which is in fact their strength: they range from the importance of managing supply lines to the danger of direct confrontations, and even include such topics as varieties of battlefield positions and possible and flexible ways to respond to unanticipated changes.  It is a collection of rules of thumb and their use, emphasising that the general has to focus on making plans based on judgements about the situation an army faces, the terrain, what is known about the enemy, and what are the soldiers’ and generals’ capabilities.

A business leader with a good understanding of The Art of War has available a solid basis for good strategic thinking.  Understand the terrain (the business environment), determine the position, strength and weaknesses of the enemy (which today we might call the competitive environment), and examine possible ways to engage with the enemy and the likely consequences of each (the strategic possibilities).  He would also understand good information is important, as is the need to manage supply lines (both for suppliers and customers in today’s thinking), finding ingenious ways to win without getting into conflict (slipping unnoticed by competitors until it is too late for them to respond), and avoiding costly turf wars if at all possible.  You might think a great deal of this is commonsense, and it is, but Sun Tzu gave a framework to organise thinking.

Business strategy as taught in management schools often dresses all this up in a form of pseudo-science.  We have the five forces model, value chain analysis, innumerable kinds of matrices to identify possible choices, and old favourites like SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to help create a list of alternative responses.  It is easy to understand the comfort that comes from finding there is a clear, stepwise approach to developing strategy.  You can imagine university administrators asking business school staff to use the approach: please ensure we have competitive advantage, and we’ll be able to increase our future profits!

What is this path to success? In today’s strategy speak you should determine what your business wants to achieve, which is usually broken down into mission (what we are about); vision (where we want to be at some point in the future), and objectives (how we will show our achievement).  Next, assess the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal issues (PESTEL analysis); and consider how these may change (trend analysis and scenario analysis).  Also, examine the competitive environment in terms of competitive rivalry, the threat of new business entrants, or substitutes for your product of service, and the power of both your suppliers and your customers.  Put all this together determine how to overcome threats, grab opportunities, protect strengths and overcome weakness, and choose the path to go forward.  Despite an opaque terminology, these are good issues to think about.  However, in recent years this stepwise model has become complicated by a greater focus on customers, asking what the business is going to do for them as they see it, not as they have been told.  Design thinking is central, clarifying what should always have been an iterative process, both to identifying needs and to exploring, testing and evaluating potential responses.  Increasingly, advocates agree the core of strategy is thinking, with intuition and imagination alongside. [vi]  Strategy’s not linear, strategic thinking is complex.

Abandoning the view that strategy is a science (though data can be helpful in making decisions), I suggest a better image for the strategic thinker is the ‘bricoleur’, a person who puts together ideas from a diverse range of insights.  Bricoleurs use rules of thumb, drawing on experience, using their knowledge of resources and their understanding of people, careful observation and listening, testing ideas and solutions, imagining, developing proposals and structures, always rethinking and monitoring feedback.[vii]  Sun Tzu had it right.  Management is not a science.

Managers are practical thinkers, problem solvers, using rules of thumb drawn from years of practice, as well as ideas and insights handed down from one wise practitioner to another.  Let’s abandon the myths of ‘scientific’ management and focus on the real skills.

[i] Internal company document.  To be clear, my observations exclude areas like OR, inventory management etc.

[ii] Yes, I made that study up, but it is an accurate reflection of research in management

[iii] Jack Welch and John Byrne, Straight from the Gut, Grand Central Publishing, 2001, and Jack Welch and Suzy Welch, Winning, Harper, 2005

[iv] Reuben Mark was famous in never saying ‘I’ but always talking about his team, what ‘we’ did.  See  knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/colgate-palmolives-reuben-mark-on-leadership-and-moving-the-bell-curve/

[v] Michigan State University Press, 1987, republished  by Doubleday in 1989

[vi] E.g. Mintzberg, H. 1994 ‘The fall and rise of strategic planning’, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb, pp.107- 14.

[vii] Karl Weick, Making Sense of the Organisation, Wiley Blackwell, 2000

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