Peter Drucker in Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas, pages 404-405
[T]he human factors [are] the real stuff of management.
Theories of management can work in individual companies--but only because they suit the way in which individual men like to act.
But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, no two managers are the same, even if they all went to the same business (or cookery) school. You can teach the rudiments of cooking, as of management, but you can't make a great cook or a great manager. In both activities, you ignore fundamentals at grave risk--but sometimes succeed, In both, science can be extremely useful, but is no substitute for the art itself, In both, inspired amateurs can outdo professionals. . . . In both, practitioners don't need recipes that detail timing down to the last second, ingredients to the last fraction of an ounce, and procedures down to the last flick of the wrist; they need reliable maxims, instructive anecdotes, and no dogmatism.
Robert Heller, The Great Executive Dream, pages 7-11
I don't want to quote you the old cliché "Management's an art, not a science," but damnit if it isn't the truth. . . . You have to adapt to personalities or you're finished.
op. cit., page 79
Management is a code of values and judgments.
op. cit., page 89
It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave, This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of the gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge, We are always at the brink of the unknown, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped, Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken".
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, [threatened-of-life by the Nazi regime, as were Max Born, Erwin Schrodinger, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Marc Chagall, Enrico Fermi--in this sharing the threat to Galileo and Socrates by other regimes] I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people. [Each other.]
Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, pages 370-374
It is a truism that human beings who are very strong intellectually but weak in emotional drives and emotional relationships are singularly ineffective in the world at large. Valuable results flow from the integration of the intellectual activity with the capacity to feel and to relate to other people. Until this integration happens, problem-solving is no good, because there is no way of seeing which are the right problems.
Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, page 281, Quoting Sir James Lighthill
On the pedagogic "Tree of Knowledge" the "science" of management is preceded in decency of self-establishment only by the "science" of sociology. Both are too prematurely torn from the trunk/womb of philosophy--thinking about things--and management, in particular, fails to honor and take strength and direction for its growth from both philosophy and social science,
For all the efforts of the logical/scientific positivistic/pragmatic elements of our culture to make management a technical/formula~oriented pursuit, this approach is totally wrong-headed, (The McNamara approach to the management of the Vietnam war is an archetypal example of this. In fact, the thinking soldier despises McNamara's command orientation almost as much as he does "Hanoi Jane" Fonda's behavior, as learned from a lecture by James Bond Stockdale.)
Knowledge is NOT the principal thing a manager needs. A manager requires sensitivity to the human condition/situation, a strong set of PERSONAL values, and even a bit of wisdom. A manager who is not well-read and deeply-thought is a threat to his society, a danger to his organization, and a peril to his subordinates. Assuming that "The Good" truly exists, as has been held since probably the First Thinking Man down to Mortimer Adler, and that "The Universe runs on Truth"--the basic logic of both philosophers and astrophysicists-then everyone, and especially those in charge of others, had best pray and work with all their mind, heart, and soul to get lined up with "The True and The Good."
By analogy, as we teach the six steps of the scientific method, we rarely teach how and where the ideas came from in the first place to which these six steps can be applied. (A Nobel-laureate scientist wrote that "Science is the entire use of the mind, no holds barred.") This we teach not, because we know not. The gift of creativity is the most fascinating and complex of human traits, and many hold that it comes from that link by which which are both individual and whole with some force beyond ourselves. And, as any creative mind knows, passion is a major factor of creativity. (The original definition of passion, from the Greek, is "self-inflicted insanity". ) Yet, we do not teach passion either, and, in fact, in the areas wherein creativity and passion are most needed for our very survival, government and business for example, passion is verboten, as if "stick men in suits, ah, so ever in control" could recognize the light, let alone "see the light." (The Beatles' song "Hey Jude" has a line, something like, "He's a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.")
There is no "trick" to high-quality in leadership and high-productivty in management. There is no "formula," no analogy to "method acting". True leadership and management is a highly creative pursuit. Things change and people change: It requires the effort and skill analogous to a lumberjack log-rolling on a stormy river.
A certain mind-set is necessary. This mind-set is that the manager/leader APPRECIATES the opportunity to better the people and things around him/her. The true manager/leader must work toward the ultimate liberation of people and situations, regardless of how much control is initially required to create straightforward systems and a right-thinking group mind. In this regard, it's like parenting: The job is to work yourself out of a job.
INTEGRITY and TRUST are the nutrients of positive organization and personal growth. In this, the nature of the exercise is to keep any and all bad attitudes, wrong-headedness, politics (internal or external), favoritism, corruption, and general stupidity out of the well in the first instance. As with a literal water well, once the poison is in, one plays hell getting it out--if it can be gotten out at all, ("Watergate" was surely only the "tip of the iceberg," and across the near-future we will come to grasp the terrible wrongs now poisoning this society and culture, for instance.)
In all of this, the quest for TRUTH is the engine. Mortimer Adler, in his summa work, Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought--How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them, begins by quoting his intellectual mentors Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, respectively: "The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold" and ". . . little errors in the beginning lead to serious consequences in the end."
This truth-business is important all around: the physical and social reality, the bosses, the peers, the staff, and the customers. Yet, there is so much wrong-headedness in the way we perceive and do things! To the extent that management is "ego-suck," it is all too often ego-sucking the boss. The management gurus have argued all along--with Tom Peters now absolutely browbeating on it--that the customer is the one to please. Yet, few argue for the level of intensity required to provide leadership of STAFF.
It has been said that "You can fool the boss, but you can't fool your peers, Ah, the ones you REALLY can't fool are the human beings who comprise your STAFF!
Of all the things which a manager must not feign, it is knowledge.
Of all the things which a manager must abstain, it is pride.
Of all the things which a manager must disdain, it is unnecessary suffering.
Of all the things which a manager must sustain, it is fairness.
Of all the things which a manager must maintain, it is objectivity.
Of all the things which a manager must retain, it is childlike curiosity.
Of all the things which a manager must remain, it is human.
"Being Strategic. Part 2". It's in the Strategic thinking library at www.strategyfirst.net
Is knowledge management an art or science? Is management an art or science? Can knowledge creation and dissemination be viewed as art or science? In my thinking, answers to all these questions have some characteristics of both art and science. Knowledge management is an art, because it requires defining a new way of looking at the nature of organizations, nature of work, nature of information [technology], and the interrelationships thereof. It may also be described as science, because it also encompasses development of truisms that are often represented as best practices with their emphasis is on measurement and replication of findings across contexts and domains.
We have earlier observed and discussed scientific Taylorism and its critique on this discussion forum. The scientific aspects of many 'scientific' disciplines are often geared towards achieving efficiencies… such efficiencies are expected to result in ease of definition, verifiability, replication and measurement… of knowledge. However, such scientific philosophies are also constrained when the needed focus is on effectiveness and not on efficiencies… not on 'doing things right' but 'doing the right thing' and so forth.
Hence, it may be expected that science will always have its place in the definition, postulation and verifiability of 'truth,' however art will be needed to surface and question the assumptions underlying the given 'truths.'…
There is a saying:
The method of science, the aim of religion...
This for me captures the essence of this debate...
Our aims are deep, in terms of our thinking on ethics, wholeness, what basically must be right for ourselves, our businesses, our societies, ultimately the planet...(this in terms of knowledge ecology).
How various types of complex adaptive systems interact and react and emerge, as a part of a larger system itself evolving...
This is the art....
The science is in the approach...rigour, the ability to replicate an experiment, bringing in the discplines of science...
Interestingly...when you take any science far enough it becomes an art. Take pure mathematics/physics/chaos theory as an example...
If you look at the extreme end of these disciplines, there is much philosophy and art AND overlap between the different sciences.
Let me explain why it has evolved to a discipline that usually employs both elements. We’ll begin in the 1880s with Frederick Taylor. Taylor is credited as the first person to study work with an eye toward improving output. Based on the fragmented management styles that existed at the time, Taylor’s unique ideas on how to approach work are considered some of the fundamentals of "Scientific Management" (a name he coined). Taylor proposed that each employee’s work be planned one day in advance. Further, the work should be described in detail with the method used to perform the task written on paper. Each job was to have a standard time assigned by a time study analyst based on the capabilities of a "first rate" employee, who was experienced and could do the job regularly. Each job was broken into small divisions called elements, their collective values used to determine the allowed time.
Among Taylor’s ideas was a simple formula for management:
1. Specify the Task - Analyze the sequence of operations for the whole job.
2. Specify A Definite Method - Indicate how the operation is to be performed.
3. Specify the Time - Determine from stopwatch study the time to complete an operation.
Taylor advocated financial incentives because he envisioned that by compensating extra effort it seemingly would improve worker output. Taylor could not foresee the havoc his ideas would create as he turned people into ever increasingly efficient output machines. Today we realize that "Taylorisms", as his ideas were called, focused more on the technology in businesses than its people. This oversight evolved into the "people problem" we now know of.
It didn’t take long for management to realize that even Taylor’s ideas were limited because workers could produce only so much regardless of how well management planned their workday. Right? No, wrong! Vast, additional production increases could and would come from workers using rather simple ideas that Taylor overlooked.
New ways to increase worker’s output began to surface in the early 1930s. It began with Harvard’s Elton Mayo and his now classic role in the landmark management experiment conducted by Western Electric at its Hawthorne, New Jersey telephone handset assembly facility. Western Electric was committed to experiment with lighting levels as a means to improve worker output. It was thought that if workers could see better they might be able to produce more. As it happened, the rationale appeared to work because whenever lighting intensity was increased, production rose. Yet, when lighting levels were deliberately reduced, production continued to increase. Unable to explain the dichotomy, Western Electric went to Harvard and retained Elton Mayo who had already gained notoriety for solving issues surrounding people at work.
Using the resources of the highly respected Harvard Graduate School of Business, he performed a series of carefully documented studies that established the springboard which human relation’s practitioners follow – to this day. Succinctly, Mayo’s findings concluded that it was the attention Western Electric management paid to satisfying employee’s wants and needs, not the lighting, that yielded the unimagined productivity increases and improved morale.
It wasn’t until the early 1940s that Hawthorne was thoroughly explained. The person to do that was Abraham Maslow, the father of Humanistic Psychology. Maslow theorized that people have ascending wants and needs that always require attention.