The Puritan principles defined by the authors can be abbreviated to Idealism, Craftsmanship, Teamwork and Leadership. They provide what I call the ‘First Metre’ advantage for new style management, minimising failure over the final furlong of any venture. They define the case for ‘management-by-means’ (MBM) rather than ‘management-by-objectives’ (MBO). Frederick Taylor receives severe treatment in this book but a greater injustice was the omission of any reference to British polymath, Stafford Beer (1926–2002). Despite this Stafford would surely have welcomed the central theme of the book.
When Stafford returned from India in 1949 he applied his wartime experience of operational research at Samuel Fox’s steel mills, outside Sheffield, increasing production by 30%. Seeing the essence of his work in print in Norbert Weiner’s “Control and Communication in Animals and the Machine” he visited Weiner who was impressed to see his theory in use. By 1959, Stafford encouraged by Weiner, had written “Cybernetics and Management”.
Throughout his professional life, Stafford’s main interest was the organisation of connections between entities. His concern was to find ways to improve an organisation’s performance by optimising its intrinsic connectivities. This resulted in his viable systems model (VSM). With it coherent action would replace piecemeal tampering.
The fourth Puritan attribute, Leadership, aims to “gather, galvanize and marshal financial, material and human resources to a single purpose” a task laden with complexity that present evidence amply shows to be beyond the scope of old-style management and results-driven target-hunting. Stafford’s work provides a coherent approach to a new-style of management and leadership. I hope that his work can now be given its rightful emphasis in the next edition of this wonderful book. (david.howard@flowmap.net)
Link:http://www.firstmetre.co.uk/UserFiles/File/Beer%20Promotes%20Better%20Management.pdf
