Why Management Science Fails to Perform, according to Peter Drucker

Parts exist in contemplation of the whole.

There is one fundamental insight underlying all management science. It is that the business enterprise is a system of the highest order: a system whose parts are human beings contributing voluntarily of their knowledge, skill, and dedication to a joint venture. And one thing characterizes all genuine systems, whether they be mechanical like the control of a missile, biological like a tree, or social like the business enterprise: it is interdependence. The whole of a system is not necessarily improved if one particular function or part is improved or made more efficient. In fact, the system may well be damaged thereby, or even destroyed. In some cases the best way to strengthen the system may be to weaken a part–to make it less precise or less efficient. For what matters in any system is the performance of the whole; this is the result of growth and of dynamic balance, adjustment, and integration, rather than of mere technical efficiency.

Primary emphasis on the efficiency of parts in management sciences is therefore bound to do damage. It is bound to optimize precision of the tool at the expense of the health and performance of the whole.

Landmarks of Tomorrow
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Why Management Science Fails to Perform, according to Peter Drucker

Organization Design: “All the elements interact in a system”

Organizations, like individuals, can avoid identity crises by deciding what it is they wish to be and then pursuing it with a healthy obsession.

Some organizations do indeed achieve and maintain an internal consistency. But then they find that it is designed for an environment the organization is no longer in. To have a nice, neat machine bureaucracy in a dynamic industry calling for constant innovation or, alternately, a flexible adhocracy in a stable industry calling for minimum cost makes no sense. Remember that these are configurations of situation as well as structure. Indeed, the very notion of configuration is that all the elements interact in a system. One element does not cause another; instead, all influence each other interactively. Structure is no more designed to fit the situation than situation is selected to fit the structure.

The way to deal with the right structure in the wrong environment may be to change the environment, not the structure. Often, in fact, it is far easier to shift industries or retreat to a suitable niche in an industry than to undo a cohesive structure.

Essentially, the organization has two choices. It can adapt continuously to the environment at the expense of internal consistency—that is, steadily redesign its structure to maintain external fit. Or it can maintain internal consistency at the expense of a gradually worsening fit with its environment, at least until the fit becomes so bad that it must undergo sudden structural redesign to achieve a new internally consistent configuration. In other words, the choice is between evolution and revolution, between perpetual mild adaptation, which favors external fit over time, and infrequent major realignment, which favors internal consistency over time.

–Henry Mintzberg, 1981
Organization Design: Fashion or Fit?

Organization Design: “All the elements interact in a system”

When is a system complex?

“Flocking birds, weather patterns, commercial organisations, swarming robots… Increasingly, many of the systems that we want to engineer or understand are said to be ‘complex’. But what does this mean? How do these so-called ‘complex systems’ differ from the more easily understood systems that we are familiar with?”

Visit: http://complexityprimer.eng.cam.ac.uk for more on complexity and modularity.

When is a system complex?

They’ll have your attention…

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information resources that might consume it.

In an information-rich world, most of the cost of information is the cost incurred by the recipient. It is not enough to know how much it costs to produce and transmit information: we much also know now much it costs, in terms of scarce attention, to receive it. I have tried bringing this argument home to my friends by suggesting that they calculate how much the [news] costs them, including the costs of [consuming] it. Making the calculation usually causes them some alarm, but not enough for them to cancel their subscriptions.

–Herbert A. Simon
“Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” (1971, PDF)

They’ll have your attention…

Do children and money really bring happiness?

The belief-transmission game is rigged so that we must believe that children and money bring happiness, regardless of whether such beliefs are true.

This doesn’t mean that we should all now quit our jobs and abandon our families. Rather, it means that while we believe we are raising children and earning paychecks to increase our share of happiness, we are actually doing these things for reasons beyond our ken.

We are nodes in a social network that arises and falls by a logic of its own, which is why we continue to toil, continue to mate, and continue to be surprised when we do not experience all the joy we so gullibly anticipated.

Daniel Gilbert
Stumbling on Happiness (find in a library)

Do children and money really bring happiness?

Handling complexity

Under conditions of true complexity–where the knowledge required exceeds that of any individual and unpredictability reigns–efforts to dictate every step from the center will fail. People need room to act and adapt. Yet they cannot succeed as isolated individuals, either–that is anarchy. Instead, they require a seemingly contradictory mix of freedom and expectation–expectation to coordinate, for example, and also to measure progress toward common goals.

–Atul Gawande

Handling complexity

Simple, Complicated, and Complex

Brenda Zimmerman and Sholom Glouberman have proposed a distinction among three different kinds of problems in the world: the simple, the complicated, and the complex.

Simple problems, they note, are ones like baking a cake from a mix. There is a recipe. Sometimes there are a few basic techniques to learn. But once these are mastered, following the recipe brings a high likelihood of success.

Complicated problems are ones like sending a rocket to the moon. They can sometimes be broken down into a series of simple problems. But there is no straightforward recipe. Success frequently requires multiple people, often multiple teams, and specialized expertise. Unanticipated difficulties are frequent. Timing and coordination become serious concerns.

Complex problems are ones like raising a child. Once you learn how to send a rocket to the moon, you can repeat the process with other rockets and perfect it. One rocket is like another rocket. But not so with raising a child, Zimmerman and Glouberman point out. Every child is unique. Although raising one child may provide experience, it does not guarantee success with the next child. Expertise is valuable but most certainly not sufficient. Indeed, the next child may require an entirely different approach from the previous one.

And this brings up another feature of complex problems: their outcomes remain highly uncertain.

Yet we all know that it is possible to raise a child well.

It’s complex, that’s all.

Atul Gawande
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (find in a library)

Simple, Complicated, and Complex

There is no self-sufficient cause

It is obvious that effects depend upon causes, but causes also, in a subtle sense, depend upon effects. Every cause itself is an effect of its own causes, which preceded it, and therefore arises in dependence upon its respective causes…effects arise in dependence upon causes. Here cause and effect are in a temporal sequence, an effect occurring after its cause.

Because the designation of something as a “cause” depends upon consideration of its effect, in this sense a cause depends upon its effect. Something is not a cause in and of itself; it is named a “cause” in relation to its effect. Here the effect does not occur before its cause, and its cause does not come into being after its effect; it is in thinking of its future effect that we designate something as a cause.

Agent and action depend upon each other. An action is posited in dependence upon an agent, and an agent is posited in dependence upon an action. An action arises in dependence upon an agent, and an agent arises in dependence upon an action. Nevertheless, they are not related in the same way as cause and effect, since the one is not produced before the other.

How is it that, in general, things are relative?

How is it that a cause is relative to its effect?

It is because it is not established in and of itself. If that were the case, a cause would not need to depend on its effect. But there is no self-sufficient cause, which is why we do not find anything in and of itself when we analytically examine a cause, despite its appearance to our everyday mind that each thing has its own self-contained being.

Because things are under the influence of something other than themselves, the designation of something as a cause necessarily depends upon consideration of its effect.

—Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

There is no self-sufficient cause