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First
written on August 06, 2004
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Revised
and updated Monday July 07, 2008
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Importance
of management systems to the longevity and productivity of a
company ?
" The centurion answered and
said…. I say to this man go, and he goeth, and to another
man come and he cometh, and to my servant, do this and he
doeth it."--- Matthew 8.9
When
I received the topic for writing a small article from the
Business Editor, it set me thinking because the title gives an
impression that if the systems are right than the organization
will not have any problem and it will be smooth sailing to
prosperity. Many people also believe that if the Strategy,
Structures, Systems and Processes are right, the results will
follow. Nothing is farther from the truth and reality.
It
should be remembered that the Leadership, Group
Relations/Dynamics, Systems, Structure and Processes are all
important and do not work in isolation. While the first two
are people related, systems, structures and processes depend
upon the Physical environment, Economic environment and
Technological environment. All need equal and holistic
attention. It would be naïve to ignore any of them. In this
paper we will assume that the leadership and group
relations/dynamics are well addressed and will discuss only
the other components.
We
need management systems to manage any business. The systems
should be simple, predictable and continuous. By system
predictability, we mean an adequate expected response to
managing influence. A reasonable fulfillment of all
expectations of the company's management in both activity and
development aspects means that the system is predictable.
Frequently, this stage of analysis is enough to reveal abuses
and breaks in the company structure.
System
continuity means absence of management extremes during changes
in the ruling forces, in the company's business structure, as
well as in crisis times. However, it does not mean that the
company's management pattern should not change. On the
contrary, the management should apply principles appropriate
for specific time conditions, which is called situational
leadership.
By system regulations we mean a set of rules and management
patterns applied in various management conditions and securing
timely changes of management style in the company. The top
management of the company in its turn should understand the
correlation's between management mechanisms (consensus,
compromise, and authoritarianism) in various situations at
each hierarchy level. This is often called the Culture of the
organization. When you want a Change Management program
implemented, culture change is very crucial. Without culture
change nothing will work.
Consensus
is a Japanese style of decision-making, i.e. keep discussing
until the decision appears and becomes obvious, or until some
participant takes the responsibility for some decision. As a
rule, such management systems are used at the top management
level. Human factor in the given system does not influence the
decision making, because the decision, even though accepted by
one person, is supposed to represent the essence of a
collective product of thinking, because every member believes
in the correctness of accepted decisions. This system of
decision-making is very dynamic, operative and guarantees a
social growth to its participants. This is also unique to the
Japanese society and culture.
Compromise
- "You give me something - I give you something ",
i.e. a decision is accepted at the level of some compromises.
This system of decision-making guarantees a social growth to
its participants. However, this principle cannot always give
the best results due to the subjectivity of both problem
statement and the evaluation of product quality.
This method is strongly subjective, being
dependent on certain key people and used as a rule for
building average management levels.
Authoritarianism
(Command and Control) is the style of management accepted in
the armed forces. The responsibility for accepted decisions
lies at the top level of hierarchy, while the bottom levels of
hierarchy implicitly carry out the orders of the higher ones.
The given system requires strong rules and algorithms for
performance of various actions; otherwise the system stays
idle or carries out false commands. The automated control
systems here should have conservative interfaces and
information fillings, as any failure can ruin the whole
system. If you automate the technological process and forget
about the rules, in course of time the system may stop working
properly and even cause some damage. It is quite clear, that a
skilled manager, using his own experience, applies principles
of management style variation. It is necessary to mention that
while creating management algorithms, it is important to
determine the management concepts accepted in the company. All
the three principles are usually applied in management.
Most
people in organizations suffer from what is known as
functional myopia. Each functional manager looks at the
problem from his or her perspective. No one looks at the
problems holistically. Here lies the tragedy. This is also the
reason for organizations to go on fire fighting from one
crisis to another. When you have leaks in the pipeline,
plugging it at one end does not solve the problem. It starts
leaking at another weak point. You normally change the pipe in
such situations. The same principle applies to organizations
too. Old systems will have to change as otherwise one gets
rolled over. The reason various systems
do not give the desired results is due
to ignoring the human side of enterprise.
Written
by Madhavan T Gopalachary
This
article was prepared for publishing in "The New
Vision", Kampala, Uganda. The edited version was
published by the daily on September 02, 2004. The image of the
actual printed version can be sent by e-mail as attachment to
those interested upon request.
The
views, opinions and interpretations are personal. Sponsorship
does not mean that the sponsors endorse them.
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