Business

"Belief in managerial expertise is then, on the view I have taken,very like what belief in God was thought to be by Carnap and Ayer. It is one more illusion and a peculiarly modern one, the illusion of a power not ourselves that claims to make for righteousness."

"Management is defined here as the accomplishment of desired objectives by establishing an environment favorable to performance by people operating in organized groups. Each of the managerial functions (planning, organizing, staffing, , directing, and controlling) is analyzed and described in a systematic way. As this is done, both the distilled experience of practicing managers and the findings of scholars are presented. This is approached in such a way that the reader may grasp the relationships between each of the functions, obtain a clear view of the major principles underlying them."

"The Lord enters into judgment"

"You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington."

"In the home of the religious man, ... those who command serve those whom they appear to rule—because, of course, they do not command out of lust to domineer, but out of a sense of duty—not out of pride like princes but out of solicitude like parents."

"Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same."

"At the present time administration is more an art than a science; in fact there are those who assert dogmatically that it can never be anything else. They draw no hope from the fact that metallurgy, for example, was completely an art several centuries before it became primarily a science and commenced its great forward strides after generations of intermittent advance and decline."

"Administration has to do with getting things done; with the accomplishment of defined objectives. The science of administration is thus the system of knowledge whereby men may understand relationships, predict results, and influence outcomes in any situation where men are organized at work together for a common purpose."

"If management can identify the negatives of its preferred option, the other policies around the star model can be designed to counter the negatives while achieving the positives."

"To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, co-ordinate and to control."

"The administrative function has many duties. It has to foresee and make preparations to meet the financial, commercial, and technical conditions under which the concern must be started and run. It deals with the organization, selection, and management of the staff. It is the means by which the various parts of the undertaking communicate with the outside world, etc. Although this list is incomplete, it gives us an idea of the importance of the administrative function. The sole fact that it is in charge of the staff makes it in most cases the predominant function, for we all know that, even if a firm has perfect machinery and manufacturing processes, it is doomed to failure if it is run by an inefficient staff."

"Without institution there is no management. But without management there is no institution."

"Mission is at the heart of what you do as a team. Goals are merely steps to its achievement. Mission has an eternal quality. Goals are time bound and once achieved, are replaced by others."

"Much is said about scientific management of work. It is a narrow view which restricts the science which secures efficiency of operation to movements of the muscles. The chief opportunity for science is the discovery of the relations of a man to his work — including his relations to others who take part — which will enlist his intelligent interest in what he is doing. Efficiency in production often demands division of labor. But it is reduced to mechanical routine unless workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships involved in what they do, and engage in their work because of the motivation furnished by such perceptions. The tendency to reduce such things as efficiency of activity and scientific management to purely technical externals is evidence of the one-sided stimulation of thought given to those in control of industry — those who supply its aims. Because of their lack of all-round and well-balanced social interest, there is not sufficient stimulus for attention to the human factors and relationships in industry. Intelligence is narrowed to the factors concerned with technical production and marketing of goods. No doubt, a very acute and intense intelligence in these narrow lines can be developed, but the failure to take into account the significant social factors means none the less an absence of mind, and a corresponding distortion of emotional life."

"The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!"

"The causes usually cited for failure of a company are costs of start-up, overruns on costs, depreciation of excess inventory, competition—anything but the actual cause, pure and simple bad management."

"The scientific study of leadership in complex organizations, as an area of enquiry in its own right, is relatively new; hardly more than a decade old. As in any new "science" there is yet no comprehensive framework within which to operate. Unlike medical men after Harvey's great discovery on the circular system of the human body, we have no unifying concepts around which to make further refinements and discoveries."

"Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team."

"You can't manage knowledge – nobody can. What you can do is to manage the environment in which knowledge can be created, discovered, captured, shared, distilled, validated, transferred, adopted, adapted and applied."

"The most effective leaders of companies in transition are the quiet, unassuming people whose inner wiring is such that the worst circumstances bring out their best. They're unflappable, they're ready to die if they have to. But you can trust that, when bad things are happening, they will become clearheaded and focused."

"It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive."

"I compared some passages of articles of [Robert McNamara] in the late 1960s, speeches, on management and the necessity of management, how a well-managed society controlled from above was the ultimate in freedom. The reason is if you have really good management and everything's under control and people are told what to do, under those conditions, he said, man can maximize his potential. I just compared that with standard Leninist views on vanguard parties, which are about the same. About the only difference is that McNamara brought God in, and I suppose Lenin didn't bring God in. He brought Marx in."

"OECONOMY, a certain Order in the Management of a Family and domestick Affairs: Hence the Word Oeconomist, for a good Manager. But Oeconomy may be taken in a more extensive Sense, for a just, prudent, and regular Conduct in all the Parts of Life, and relative Capacities. But as for the Word Oeconomicus (Oeconomist) it was formerly used for the Executor of a Last Will and Testament, and the Person that had the Oeconomy and fiduciary Disposal of the Deceased's Goods."

"... Rockefeller was capable of extraordinary ferocity in compelling submission from competitors. He might starve out obdurate firms by buying all available barrels on the market or monopolize local tank cars to paralyze their operations. Yet Rockefeller didn't apply this pressure lightly and preferred patience and reason—if possible—to terror. He was not only purchasing refineries but assembling a managerial team. The creation of Standard Oil was often less a matter of stamping out competitors than of seducing them into cooperation. In general, Rockefeller was so eager to retain original management that he accumulated expensive deadwood on the payroll and, for the sake of intraempire harmony, preferred to be conciliatory."

"Middle management has always favored underlings friendly to middle management. It’s corruption, all right, but of a minor and probably unavoidable sort."

"Management’s never been interested in really doing the job, not at any point in human history. Management’s true agenda has always been making things more pleasant for Management."

"Managements are frequently more conscious of what numbers they want to report than they are of what has actually transpired in a given quarter or a given year."

"An intelligent man neither allows himself to be controlled nor attempts to control others; he wishes reason alone to rule, and that always."

"Understanding the concept of competency is a prerequisite to understanding his integrated model of management."

"Poor management can increase software costs more rapidly than any other factor. Particularly on large projects, each of the following mismanagement actions has often been responsible for doubling software development costs."

"There are two ways of looking at Senior Management. One is that it’s a tightly integrated team tirelessly pulling together in the service of whatever’s best for the company. The other is that it’s a dog pack of power-hungry egomaniacs who occasionally assist Zephyr as a side effect of their individual campaigns for wealth and status. Nobody believes the tightly knit team theory anymore. Once, a long time ago, it may have been true, but the instant a dog-pack person made it into Senior Management, it was all over. It’s like a fox getting into the chicken house; pretty soon there are only foxes and feathers. If Senior Management ever was ever made up of selfless individuals who put teamwork ahead of self-interest—and this is a big if—they were long ago torn to pieces."

"The departments don’t report the problem because a good manager knows the only reason to call Senior Management, ever, is to deliver good news. People who ring Senior Management with problems do not have much of a future at Zephyr Holdings. Senior Management is not there to hold departmental hands. It is there to dispense stock options."

"You can say this for Senior Management: it knows how to articulate a goal. The strategy may be fuzzy, the execution nonexistent, but Senior Management knows what it wants."

"Supervision is also part of the process of building capacity and transferring knowledge. The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision."

"Poorly managed corporations, disorganized businesses, and badly led service agencies experience crisis daily and most will eventually fail. In contrast, the danger is to well organized, smooth running institutions that may not recognize a building crisis. Too often, sound organizations rely on their normal modus operandi to pull them through a crisis. It might. But at what cost? And what if it does not pull them through?"

"… the consumerist pornography of advertising"

"Up until the early twentieth century, marketers focused on functional differentiation. The effectiveness of their work was largely contingent on its ability to ‘spotlight’ functional reasons to buy specific products when people needed them. In essence, the role of marketing was to connect functionally differentiated products with willing buyers. As markets matured, however, competition intensified, and businesses looked to find better ways to differentiate themselves beyond the purely functional. Around this time, Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, began experimenting with his uncle's psychoanalysis work to develop techniques for widespread behavioural manipulation. Bernays later termed this The Engineering of Consent, describing it as the ‘use of an engineering approach – that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs’. Bernays successfully commercialised his work and is commonly regarded as one of the founders of the public relations industry. This novel approach, along with others developed in advertising agencies around the globe, proved highly influential on the way products were marketed and sold to consumers. Suddenly, marketing effectiveness was no longer determined by its ability to ‘raise awareness’ or harvest existing demand but by its ability to deepen and diversify the needs and wants that could be met through personal consumption. This paradigm shift meant that business growth was no longer constrained by people's mere biological requirements, it could instead be unlocked by attaching greater meaning to an effectively infinite number of market offerings. In this brave new world of unchecked business growth, multinationals were no longer marketing hygienic toothpaste, but a mint-flavoured confidence boost – a maintenance purchase was suddenly something that could make you feel more attractive. Cars were no longer being sold based on their functional superiority (i.e. space, speed, comfort, price), but by what they suggested about you as a person (i.e. status, sexiness, rebelliousness, appetite for adventure). In an era saturated by brands and marketing, consumption has become less reflective of our physical needs and more reflective of our runaway psychology. For example, we may buy to boost our mood, reinforce our identity or elevate our social status above others. The targeting of consumers has become increasingly effective through the collection and use of data and analytics. The collection and sale of individuals’ personal data is rampant. Unsurprisingly, tech giants like Google and Facebook are amongst the most active in this space. These companies track and sell not only what consumers view online but also their real-world locations through what is known as RTB (Real-Time Bidding). In the US, users’ personal online data is tracked and shared 294 billion times each day (for your average American, that's 747 times per day). In Europe, that figure was found to be 197 billion times (Google alone shares this personal data about its German users 19.6 million times per minute). Combined that's 178 trillion times per annum. All this leads to incredibly detailed data about individual user behaviours and preferences. In fact, a 2017 report found that by the time a US child reaches 13 years old, Ad Tech companies hold an average of 72 million data points on that child. The subsequent egregious overconsumption, which in combination with the resulting creation of waste, disproportionately multiplied by population, gives the wealthy a far greater negative environmental impact than the poor. Individuals with incomes in the top 10% are now responsible for 25–43% of environmental impact and 47% of CO2 emissions, while the bottom 10% contribute just 3–5% of environmental impact, and the bottom 50% contribute only 10% of CO2 emissions. A recent report found the top 20 wealthiest individuals on Earth produce 8000 times the carbon emissions of the poorest billion people. For sustainability, reductions in FF and material consumption between 40% and 90% are necessary. This may seem unattainable without a proportionate loss in living standards; however, affluent countries exist far beyond sufficiency. In fact, ‘the drastic increases in societies’ energy use seen in recent decades have, beyond a certain point, had no benefit for the well-being of their populations – social returns on energy consumption per capita become increasingly marginal’. As such, multiple studies now demonstrate per-capita energy consumption in many affluent countries could be decreased substantially and quality living standards still maintained."

"The huge success of agriculture and mechanisation, has lead to almost no human being involved in the production of the food that keeps us alive, so we’ve had to invent other ways to kill our time. We now have a huge variety of products and services to help us kill our time before we die. Some of it is pleasurable so we want to do more of it and invent new ways to live. All the time, killing more of the rest of life. But getting here was inevitable because we are a species and don’t have free will to counter [our] inbuilt drives."

"… our current prosperity could be that we entered a period of prosperity due to the easy abundance of fossil fuels and the scarcity imposed upon us by their end could play out similar to the scarcity imposed by the onset of colder weather at the end of the high middle ages."

"As economies expand beyond subsistence level, a larger fraction of the total activity can go to “frivolous” elements, such as art and entertainment. The intensity of such activities can be quite low. An art collector may pay $1 million for a coveted painting. Very little energy is required. The painting was produced long ago. It may even remain on display in the same location—only the name of the owner changing. Financial transactions that require no manufacture, transport, and negligible energy are said to be “decoupled” from physical resources. Plenty of examples exist in society, and are held up by economists as illustrating how we can continue to expand the economy without a commensurate expansion of resource needs."

"As soon as we take control of who lives and dies (crops, weeds, pests, animals), decide that we can “own” land, accumulate a lot of “things,” commodify food, and transform living beings into property, we have stepped deep into dangerous territory. It is no surprise that such a culture would develop an ingrained sense of human supremacy. […] General-purpose money—exchangeable for practically anything of value—is an outward manifestation of this objectification and arrived as a seemingly inevitable partner to our objectifying, agricultural ways. This construct facilitated and accelerated the pace of unfortunate, exploitative decisions."

"People want stuff. We’re like ravens: “shiny” stuff appeals. Ultimate success means a truly sustainable lifestyle, which could well be materially poorer than today’s life, depending on population. How would we mitigate intrinsic individual desires to acquire more stuff (and power)? It may be a fundamental incompatibility in that evolution prepares self-motivated organisms looking out for their own prosperity. If a species develops “unfair” power advantages that were not part of the evolutionary script, the result may be destined to end poorly as that species uses its discovered power to damage ecosystems beyond repair—ultimately only harming themselves."

"We all are a product of our times where new, shiny, better, and "more, more, more" seem normal, but that’s only a reflection of the abnormal period of the last century or so, as we spend down our earthly inheritance."

"Overshoot is a product of both excessive numbers and rising affluence. Access to the things that create what we call quality of life, like indoor lighting and temperature controls, especially air conditioning; more diverse dietary choices, especially meat; and greater access to transportation, especially air travel — all signs of rising affluence, all delightful if you are a human, yet all demand more energy and material inputs that involve scouring and denuding more wildlands and animal habitat to feed, clothe, house, and energize burgeoning humanity."

"…consumption cannot happen without production and cannot happen without extraction from the environment. On the other side, there’s pollution, emissions waste, and, obviously, greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, carbon emissions are the—fun fact—largest waste, largest pollutant, by weight of industrial societies… so much larger than solid waste, for instance. When we consider the whole system, consumption is often viewed as the driver. Sometimes people call production the driver of consumption itself. But consumption is not equally distributed. So almost all environmental impacts can be traced to consumption activities. But those consumption activities themselves can be associated with different income classes around the world. And so one of the things we can see, now that we have much higher resolution data, is that we can really see that high affluence. Income and wealth are always tied to higher levels of consumption, much higher levels of environmental impact. So complete—disproportionately high, in fact—because we see that affluent populations consume more energy-intensive and resource-intensive goods, particularly in the form of transport, than less affluent ones."

"The latent fear that civilization is living on borrowed time has also spawned a counter-market of “happily ever after” optimists who desperately cling to their belief in endless progress. Popular Pollyannas, like cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, provide this anxious crowd with soothing assurances that the titanic ship of progress is unsinkable. Pinker’s publications have made him the high priest of progress. While civilization circles the drain, his ardent audiences find comfort in lectures and books brimming with cherry-picked evidence to prove that life is better than ever, and will surely keep improving. Yet, when questioned, Pinker himself admits, “It’s incorrect to extrapolate that the fact that we’ve made progress is a prediction that we’re guaranteed to make progress.” Pinker’s rosy statistics cleverly disguise the fatal flaw in his argument. The progress of the past was built by sacrificing the future—and the future is upon us. All the happy facts he cites about living standards, life expectancy, and economic growth are the product of an industrial civilization that has pillaged and polluted the planet to produce temporary progress for a growing middle class—and enormous profits and power for a tiny elite."

"Yet built-in conflict looms. Growth, both material and economic, simply cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet. Economists—supported by only a short period of empirical evidence—have argued that substitution and decoupling are mechanisms that can allow for indefinite growth. Plenty of examples from the past bolster such arguments. On substitution, the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones, one pithy argument goes. On decoupling, trading fine art has a tiny energy-to-monetary ratio. But the overall evidence does not support the idea that the basic operation of the modern economy can happen without massive material and energy throughput. In practice, efficiency gains are largely erased by further growth. Remember that all such past examples from the industrial era have taken place in the context of unsustainable exploitation of finite resources. The future need not look like the recent past—in fact, cumulative irreversible impacts mean that it can’t."

"Simply stated, people want (and are encouraged to want) goods and services beyond their base needs, and markets are happy to oblige. A common recipe for countries to achieve high standards of living has been the combination of democracy and capitalism. For the most part, people vote for policies that will improve their circumstances, and corporations make decisions aimed at maximizing profits/growth. Politicians and financiers celebrate strong growth numbers (grumbling only when an overheated market might signal runaway inflation) while bemoaning weak quarters, and practically panicking at the prospect of a recessionary period. Today the financialized capitalist economic system dominating human activity is predicated on growth and the expectation of a bigger future, witnessed in interest rates, loans, investments, massive public and private debt, and the outsized role of the banking system. Growth is thought to be such an unarguable good that the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goal #8 actually calls for growth rates of 7% in less developed countries. While this rate is intended to address the inequitable distribution of wealth across nations, the goal is still based on a business-as-usual, fossil-fuel-based economy."

"The so-called ‘environmental crisis’ has little to do with the ‘environment’ and everything to do with excess human demands on natural systems. For several decades, H. sapiens has been in a state of ‘ecological overshoot’—our species is exploiting even renewable resources faster than species and ecosystems can regenerate and dumping (often toxic) waste at rates well beyond nature’s assimilation and recycling capacities; think plunging biodiversity, collapsing fish stocks, desertification, soil depletion, tropical deforestation, ocean pollution, contamination of food supplies, rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, resultant climate change, etc., etc. By 2016, H. sapiens was 68% in overshoot—i.e., acting as if Earth were 68% larger or more productive than it is."

"...it is not just population that has bloomed. Since 1800, propelled by a 28-fold increase in primary energy use, mostly fossil fuel, real global GDP has increased over 100-fold. World average per capita income (consumption) is up by a factor of 13, rising to 25-fold in the richest countries. As famously observed, Earth is being asked to accept not only more people but ever larger people."