Management, Peter Drucker famously said, is a liberal art. It may be informed by data and enhanced by technology. But it remains an art, not a science, and one practised by people, not machines. Do you want to be managed by an algorithm or a \u201cplatform\u201d? Me neither.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But, you may object, this is sentimental and out of date. Computer code already influences our lives in all sorts of unseen ways, nudging us into purchasing decisions and co-ordinating our customer experiences. Apps make things happen. They connect passengers with available taxi drivers, or instruct delivery drivers and couriers to bring goods to our offices or our homes. Sophisticated and productive factories and \u201cfulfillment centres\u201d operate with precious few human hands in sight. And those human beings who do remain will be monitored and \u201csupervised\u201d, in the first instance, by technology, not people.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Does the human manager face obsolescence, then, to be replaced by shiny and unflinching machinery? Hardly. Computers process data at miraculous speeds, and are only getting quicker. But do they exercise judgment? Can they actually think? Or do they just do what we, the humans, tell them to do?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Writing for the <\/span><\/span>McKinsey Quarterly<\/u><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> in 1967, Drucker made his view clear. \u201cWe are beginning to realise that the computer makes no decisions; it only carries out orders. It\u2019s a total moron, and therein lies its strength,\u201d he wrote. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Again, technologists may quibble. Fifty years on, \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d and \u201cmachine learning\u201d are held up as a powerful challenge to Drucker\u2019s robust dismissal of supposedly moronic technology. Didn\u2019t IBM\u2019s Deep Blue defeat the apparently invincible Garry Kasparov at chess? And if that wasn\u2019t good enough, how about Google\u2019s AlphaGo, which beat the world Go champion only last year? That was simply not supposed to happen \u2013 Go being an infinitely subtle and varied game that requires the human touch and human insight to play it properly.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The march of the machines is formidable, irresistible, and broadly to be welcomed. The story of the last three hundred years, in compressed and over-simplified form, tells of technological innovation making old ways of doing things redundant, while greater efficiency is achieved, generating greater profits, making people better off and creating a need for new jobs and new kinds of work. (I warned you it was an over-simplified version.) Techno-pessimism is unhelpful and too gloomy by half. The basic fact of what is often called \u201cdigital transformation\u201d or the \u201cfourth industrial revolution\u201d is that new jobs will be created even while others are destroyed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n What is not being destroyed is human life: human beings and their needs. This means that human-oriented goods and services will still be needed, delivered by other living, breathing human beings. And while work is still being carried out by people human managers will be needed, too. Drones and robots cannot do it all.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Consider the growing need for health and social care, demanded by citizens living longer and fuller lives. Robots may have a role to play here, perhaps to supplement and support the work done by people. But could a machine ever truly care for a person in the way that a well trained and managed living employee can? (That verb: to care. If we are using it properly it implies the presence of a living thing, not a robot. Robots may or may not be morons, but they surely do not care.)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Fifty years ago Drucker saw a paradoxical benefit in the arrival of computers. \u201cIt forces us to think, to set the criteria. The stupider the tool, the brighter the master has to be \u2013 and this is the dumbest tool we have ever had,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Computers are dumb no more. They have phenomenal capacity, processing power, and speed. They can learn. They can get better at what they do. They also don\u2019t get tired, don\u2019t complain, and require neither food, holiday, nor payment. They may be some people\u2019s idea of the ideal employee.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But we need to keep the claims of the technologists in perspective. What is grandly labeled \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d may not always be quite as clever as all that. We should not presume that the machine will always come up with the best answer. Coders are human, after all. And as the writer Margaret Heffernan has observed, \u201cArtificial intelligence is unlikely to be the solution to genuine stupidity.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Management does not just mean caring; it means paying attention. Gadgets can monitor and measure how many steps we have taken or how quickly we have completed a task. But machines cannot supervise us in the way that a human manager can. Homo sapiens is not redundant yet.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In that same McKinsey article Drucker also observed: \u201cWe must learn to make knowledge productive.\u201d This remains the fundamental human challenge facing human managers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n About the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n Stefan Stern<\/p>\n Writer\/speaker on business, politics, management<\/p>\n This article is one in a series related to the <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>10th Global Peter Drucker Forum<\/b><\/u><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, with the theme <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>management. the human dimension<\/b><\/u><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, taking place on November 29 & 30, 2018 in Vienna, Austria #GPDF18<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n