Employees of a certain age have already known different styles and management systems, and also different slogans: total quality, teamwork, knowledge management… Many of us have even lived through times when the initiatives of subordinates were not well received by their bosses; At that time there were no great difficulties in changing jobs, and some young people fled from some companies in search of others more open to their participation and development. Business management has certainly evolved a lot in recent decades, and much more if we go back to the beginning of the 20th century. Behind the now so postulated permanent learning -individual and collective- is the technological advance and the new methods and tools, but above all the increasing specific weight of people in organizations.Already in the 21st century, the changes seem to point to an organizational model that thrives on the intelligent and committed contribution of its people, and is oriented towards an inclusive democratization.
Premodernism
Actually, in business management, today's managers apply -for current- ideas almost as old as the human being himself. But at the same time, they are very attentive to the new postulates and, of course, to the culture and management style of their organizations. 100 years ago things were very noticeably different: they were the dawn of modernism: a kind of premodernism in business management. As is known, at the beginning of this century, the performance of operators and the time dedicated to each task were studied by important production analysts such as Frederick W. Taylor or Frank Gilbreth. No space was left then for the initiative and imagination of the workers, but without a doubt a great door was opened to the improvement of productivity: it was scientific management.Something to which Henri Fayol - perhaps the first European guru - also contributed shortly after, opening new horizons with his 14 principles (division of labor, unity of command, discipline, remuneration, etc.).
The human side of management
It couldn't be long before - already in the 1930s and after Hawthorne's famous experiment on the incidence of environmental factors on productivity - new voices emerged, such as those of Elton Mayo, Mary Parker Follett, and Chester Barnard, pointing to the human side of management. If, on the one hand, scientific management evolved favorably to the most recent postulates - including reengineering - people management, on the other hand, took small steps, increasing the distance between what the experts were preaching and what was really practiced in companies. The practical recognition that companies have in their people's intellectual and emotional capital their most valuable asset is relatively recent; but we have to admit that in the past - and perhaps still in the present,To a large extent, too much submerged intelligence of workers has been wasted, to their frustration and to the detriment of business results.
The second half of the century
The reader will also remember that in the 1950s, thinkers such as McGregor, Maslow and Herzberg, insisted on the potential available to workers and provided valuable ideas on the subject of motivation. At that time -1954-, Peter Drucker published The practice of management, a classic of this literature. In this text, Drucker - gurus of gurus: true prophet of business management - advocated, for example, the importance of marketing and innovation and, among many other good ideas, came to formulate the background of Management by Objectives.
In 1960 another great text appeared: Douglas McGregor's The Human Side of Enterprise. The author formulates here his well-known theories X and Y -aligned the first with Taylorism, and quite revolutionary the second-, regarding the behavior of workers. As is known, Theory Y held an image of capable, responsible and committed worker, which is natural today, but which then caused not a few controversies: perhaps it can be considered the origin of many of the changes we are experiencing today. (Actually, in the 60s and 70s, some of the ideas that are currently topical were already pointed out to some extent: for example, knowledge management, customer orientation, leadership, competence management and organization intelligent). Before the 80s came,thinkers such as those already mentioned and many others - including Likert, Levitt, Kotler, Allen, Mintzberg, Burns, Schon, Argyris and McClelland, but many others more - had already contributed unquestionably to the evolution of management, and continued to do so after.
Quality was preached very insistently in the 1980s: Deming and Juran had already been doing it in Japan in the 1950s, with magnificent results. Western management was beginning to pay more attention to the Japanese model, and this was evident in some interesting books such as Pascale and Athos (The art of Japanese management, 1981) or Ouchi's (Theory Z, 1981). But perhaps what we remember most from that time is the appearance in 1982 of Peters and Waterman's In search of excellence: this work contributed very significantly to the dissemination of this type of literature, and, above all, contributed to sensitizing us to aspects of the management whose importance was perhaps escaping us: attention to customers and staff. Perhaps it is effectively sensitivity that management has been lacking:sensitivity both to the expectations of customers, as to the concerns of workers and their abilities and personal traits. In fact, it is in recent years that open energy, emotional feelings and personal values have begun to be alluded to within organizations. It could be thought that the movement coincides with the explosion of the so-called emotional intelligence, but it also seems to have a solid background in the postulates of previous decades.It could be thought that the movement coincides with the explosion of the so-called emotional intelligence, but it also seems to have a solid background in the postulates of previous decades.It could be thought that the movement coincides with the explosion of the so-called emotional intelligence, but it also seems to have a solid background in the postulates of previous decades.
The quality, the leadership, the innovation, the team spirit or even the empowerment, are not really novelties of the 80s, but it is in this decade when these postulates are deepened and they begin to talk about all of this with some intensity: Today they are still authentic buzzwords, when it comes to cultural changes in companies. Already in those years there was considerable receptivity to the ideas held by Drucker, Peters, Bennis, Belbin, Hersey, Blanchard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Schein, Porter, Handy and other experts, although there were also logically different skepticisms and points of view.
Peter Senge insisted in the early 1990s on the concept of learning organization in his important work The Fifth Discipline: a text that very convincingly postulates the need for systemic thinking and collective learning within organizations, and which can be said to have fueled to a large extent the debate for the benefit of management evolution. Shortly after, Champy and Hammer told us about reengineering: something that has also given a lot to talk about. But perhaps one of the topics most addressed by experts in the 90s is that of strategy. Almost 20 years after Ohmae alerted to the need to launch a new form of strategic thinking, other authors have returned to the fray in recent years. For example, Hamel and Prahalad in their book Competing for the future (1994);Mintzberg has also continued writing on the subject. And other authors: for example Norton and Kaplan in their The Balanced Scorecard: Translating strategy into action.
Many experts have contributed to enriching the science - or art - of obtaining the best results from people in their organizations. Perhaps there has been a step backwards, but many steps forward, in the evolution of management. In recent decades, many voices have been raised to guide executives and managers in their very difficult task: they are messages that point very directly to the weak points that are still detected in the exercise of management.
Weekend panorama
At the end of the 20th century, it was recognized that Senior Management defined the strategy, but did not always explain it well to the workers; that there was a certain obsession with measuring, but perhaps what was most difficult to measure was neglected; that action plans were frequently breached; that managers focused mainly on the short term; that customer orientation was preached, but president orientation was more practiced; that good ideas were often misrepresented in application; that perhaps self-criticism was lacking; maybe there was plenty of complacency; that criticism - even constructive criticism - of employees was repressed; that we were concerned almost more with the explanations to give than with the results to be obtained; that meetings were abused; that we were developing under too much pressure;that it was mainly attended to the marker (financial indicators) and to a lesser extent to the field of play… There was decidedly material to continue writing books.
And we should not forget, by the way, the flawed behaviors reported by Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle. But we do not want to imply that the keys are in the books, as we very well know. The books tell us what is happening, what is likely to happen, or what should be done or avoided. Then each company needs a tailored solution. Management evolves to adapt to the times and, perhaps more specifically, to overcome the new obstacles and difficulties that appear.
21st century management
If we look at some of the most repeated postulates today, we can see that they constitute a kind of redirection of certain practices, which no longer bore the desired results. Management by competencies is making headway because there were indeed people whose profiles did not fit entirely into the positions they occupied. Knowledge management is imposed because, being increasingly valuable (it is accepted that we are already in the knowledge era), knowledge does not flow sufficiently through the organization. Circular or multi-source feedback is beginning to be practiced because there were surely opinions of interest that were being ignored or ignored. Team spirit seems to be an irrefutable value, because traditionally each one went a little to his own and, especially in large organizations,Astemic thinking was prevailing. Leadership is perhaps one of the most incontestable postulates, because a good part of the managers of the previous decades neglected the development of their collaborators and collective learning, and wasted the available emotional capital. Empowerment, because it comes to be the appropriate complement to leadership and, in a way, comes to recognize the age of majority of workers, whose integration into the company project is already essential. Attention to values (PPV, included) because, to put it briefly, a religion has always been very useful. The Balanced Scorecard, because daily management was misaligning with strategy. Innovation, because competitiveness demands it. Sensitivity to beliefs and mental models,because synergy requires it. Conversational skills because collective intelligence must be nurtured. The intelligent organization, in short, because the north to direct the ongoing cultural changes and eliminate the traditional awkwardness must already be specified. Now we can see the change as the path that starts from the traditional organization and approaches the concept of intelligent organization that Peter Senge already suggested to us: the organization that not only does things well, but knows well what to do.Now we can see change as the path that starts from the traditional organization and approaches the concept of intelligent organization that Peter Senge already suggested to us: the organization that not only does things well, but knows well what to do.Now we can see the change as the path that starts from the traditional organization and approaches the concept of intelligent organization that Peter Senge already suggested to us: the organization that not only does things well, but knows well what to do.
And when speaking of the direction of change, one would have to wish that the changes were well explained by the managers of the companies, so that they were desired and assumed. By understanding things and finding them reasonable, we workers would have avoided many perplexities and discomforts in the past. We must rely on better training, information and communication within companies so that new generations work, in the 21st century, with greater effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Information, knowledge, strategies and ideas will surely flow better and better within organizations, for the benefit of the results and to the satisfaction of all. The managers will have to sacrifice a part of their ego and the workers will have to improve their commitment and contribution, because - if not in their liturgy,yes in its spirit-, some democracy must reach the business world.
