Management is about controlling, administering, and planning. It is a centuries old discipline derived from the need to control a predictable process based on production where the parameters of the market and environment move slowly. It came to its peak in the last century with the rise of the machine. Machines fed the management mindset of control and predictability, and most fluctuations in desired results were put down to the problem of having to employ people to operate the machines. People are not machines Huge amounts of effort have been expended in trying to control the unpredictability of people and make them more like machines. Latterly, there has been a realisation that people don’t function […]

Why does it seem that the big corporations always get away with it? How do they sleep at night, given some of the missteps causing such problems to the rest of us? Not our problem It seems like it’s no-one’s problem, always somewhere to pass it up/along/down the line so there’s no individual responsibility. Hence no action until a customer gets a real problem. The latest example is BMW’s delay in making a product recall on some of its cars, although knowing the electrical system could completely fail at any time. Someone has now died, and while the problem was identified by BMW (and the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Safety Agency) no-one took action. Reports […]

The word is overused and misused. I’ve already commented after the last Forum that a session used entrepreneurs and their impact as being the answer to many of our ills, which is at best unlikely. The great majority of businesses have little entrepreneurial characteristics but still should have a valuable place in a modern society. My empirical data, from 30+ years of working with UK SMEs divides business owners into 4 main groups: Type Description Percentage of Businesses Survivors Low income goals, not risk takers, poor management capabilities and poor decision takers. Hungry for advice, seldom implement. 50 Low Growth (LG) Significant income ambition. Potential limited by control. Superb doers, risk-oriented. Poor people managers and […]

IN AN AGE OF INCREASING DIGITALISATION AND AUTOMATION WHERE DO MANAGERS FIT INTO THE WORKFORCE, AND HOW WILL MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES HAVE TO ADAPT TO THE NEW WORKING LANDSCAPE?   So are we managing, or just coping, in the fast-emerging digital age?   Bloggers have brought visions of dystopic societies where we are ruled by machines; worries concerning the disenfranchisement of vast swathes of the workforce when machines take away jobs; and questions regarding how developing countries may suffer most from the loss of low skilled jobs to autonomous contraptions.   These are reasonable concerns, and mirror the worries that many had during the rise of the Industrial Age, with Victorian machines changing the face of the countryside; […]