Oftentimes, I found Peter Drucker to be so insightful that I felt like I would be redundant if I just incorporated my own commentary. Sometimes, the best way to do a masterpiece justice is to just leave it alone.
Below, I have underscored all the passages and quotes that should stand proud by its own. See the first part of this series, where I analyzed Drucker’s text here.
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Whoever tries to place a man or staff an organization to avoid weakness will end up at best with mediocrity. The idea that there are “well-rounded” people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses (whether the term used is the “whole man,” the “mature personality,” the “well-adjusted personality,” or the “generalist”) is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence.
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The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management.” He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole.
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But the scientific community for whom these publications were intended stopped reading them. A highly respected university scientist, who had for many years worked closely with the agency, finally told the administrator: “The former director was writing for us; your new man writes at us.”
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To ask, “What can I contribute?” is to look for the unused potential in the job.
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Executives in an organization do not have good human relations because they have a “talent for people.” They have good human relations because they focus on contribution in their own work and in their relationships with others. As a result, their relationships are productive — and this is the only valid definition of “good human relations.” Warm feelings and pleasant words are meaningless, are indeed a false front for wretched attitudes, if there is no achievement in what is, after all, a work-focused and task-focused relationship. On the other hand, an occasional rough word will not disturb a relationship that produces results and accomplishments for all concerned.
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To focus on strength is to make demands for performance. The man who does not first ask, “What can a man do?” is bound to accept far less than the associate can really contribute. He excuses the associate’s nonperformance in advance. He is destructive but not critical, let alone realistic. The really “demanding boss” — and one way or another all makers of men are demanding bosses — always starts out with what a man should be able to do well — and then demands that he really do it.
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But there is a subtler reason for insistence on impersonal, objective jobs. It is the only way to provide the organization with the human diversity it needs. It is the only way to tolerate — indeed to encourage — differences in temperament and personality in an organization. To tolerate diversity, relationships must be task-focused rather than personality-focused. Achievement must be measured against objective criteria of contribution and performance. This is possible, however, only if jobs are defined and structured impersonally. Otherwise the accent will be on “Who is right?” rather than on “What is right?” In no time, personnel decisions will be made on “Do I like this fellow?” or “Will he be acceptable?” rather than by asking “Is he the man most likely to do an outstanding job?”
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The rule is simple: Any job that has defeated two or three men in succession, even though each had performed well in his previous assignments, must be assumed unfit for human beings. It must be redesigned.
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Such a business needs both high effectiveness in field selling — that is, in moving goods — and high effectiveness in advertising and promotion — that is, in moving people. These appeal to different personalities which rarely can be found in one man.
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Another example is probably the international vice-president of today’s large multinational business. As soon as production and sales outside the parent company’s territory become significant — as soon as they exceed one fifth of the total or so — putting everything that is “not parent company” in one organizational component creates an impossible, a man-killing, job. The work either has to be reorganized by worldwide product groups (as Philips in Holland has done, for instance) or according to common social and economic characteristics of major markets. For instance, it might be split into three jobs: one managing the business in the industrialized countries (the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan); one the business in the developing countries (most of Latin America, Australia, India, the near East); one the business in the remaining underdeveloped ones.
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The second rule for staffing from strength is to make each job demanding and big. It should have challenge to bring out whatever strength a man may have.
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The young knowledge worker should, therefore, ask himself early: “Am I in the right work and in the right place for my strengths to tell?” But he cannot ask this question, let alone answer it, if the beginning job is too small, too easy, and designed to offset his lack of experience rather than to bring out what he can do.
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“Your appraisals are concerned only with bringing out a man’s faults and weaknesses. Since we can neither fire a man nor deny him advancement and promotion, this is of no interest to us. On the contrary, the less we know about his weaknesses, the better. What we do need to know are the strengths of a man and what he can do. Your appraisals are not even interested in this.”
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(a) “What has he [or she] done well?” (b) “What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?” © “What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?” (d) “If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?” (i) “If yes, why?” (ii) “If no, why?”
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Effective executives rarely suffer from the delusion that two mediocrities achieve as much as one good man. They have learned that, as a rule, two mediocrities achieve even less than one mediocrity — they just get in each other’s way. They accept that abilities must be specific to produce performance. They never talk of a “good man” but always about a man who is “good” for some one task. But in this one task, they search for strength and staff for excellence.
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“I can’t spare this man; I’d be in trouble without him.” They have learned that there are only three explanations for an “indispensable man”: He is actually incompetent and can only survive if carefully shielded from demands; his strength is misused to bolster a weak superior who cannot stand on his own two feet; or his strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem if not to conceal its existence.
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Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.
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“The only thing we know is that this spot was the wrong one for the man,” he argued. “This does not mean that he is not the ideal man for some other job. Appointing him was my mistake, now it’s up to me to find what he can do.”
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A superior has responsibility for the work of others. He also has power over the careers of others. Making strengths productive is therefore much more than an essential of effectiveness. It is a moral imperative, a responsibility of authority and position. To focus on weakness is not only foolish; it is irresponsible. A superior owes it to his organization to make the strength of every one of his subordinates as productive as it can be. But even more does he owe it to the human beings over whom he exercises authority to help them get the most out of whatever strength they may have. Organization must serve the individual to achieve through his strengths and regardless of his limitations and weaknesses.
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Contrary to popular legend, subordinates do not, as a rule, rise to position and prominence over the prostrate bodies of incompetent bosses. If their boss is not promoted, they will tend to be bottled up behind him. And if their boss is relieved for incompetence or failure, the successor is rarely the bright, young man next in line. He usually is brought in from the outside and brings with him his own bright, young men. Conversely, there is nothing quite as conducive to success, as a successful and rapidly promoted superior.
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In sports we have long learned that the moment a new record is set every athlete all over the world acquires a new dimension of accomplishment. For years no one could run the mile in less than four minutes. Suddenly Roger Bannister broke through the old record. And soon the average sprinters in every athletic club in the world were approaching yesterday’s record, while new leaders began to break through the four minute barrier. In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. He therefore makes sure that he puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position, the man who has the strength to do the outstanding, the pace-setting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a man and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.
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An organization needs to bring in fresh people with fresh points of view fairly often. If it only promotes from within it soon becomes inbred and eventually sterile. But if at all possible, one does not bring in the newcomers where the risk is exorbitant — that is, into the top executive positions or into leadership of an important new activity. One brings them in just below the top and into an activity that is already defined and reasonably well understood.
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The job is, however, not to set priorities. That is easy. Everybody can do it. The reason why so few executives concentrate is the difficulty of setting “posteriorities” — that is, deciding what tasks not to tackle — and of sticking to the decision.
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That one actually abandons what one postpones makes executives, however, shy from postponing anything altogether.
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Vail’s third decision led to the establishment of one of the most successful scientific laboratories in industry, the Bell Laboratories. Again, Vail started out with the need to make a private monopoly viable. Only this time he asked: “How can one make such a monopoly truly competitive?” Obviously it was not subject to the normal competition from another supplier who offers the purchaser the same product or one supplying the same want. And yet without competition such a monopoly would rapidly become rigid and incapable of growth and change.
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But even in a monopoly, Vail concluded, one can organize the future to compete with the present.
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The big business, Sloan saw, needs unity of direction and central control. It needs its own top management with real powers. But it equally needs energy, enthusiasm, and strength in operations. The operating managers have to have the freedom to do things their own way. They have to have responsibility and the authority that goes with it. They have to have scope to show what they can do, and they have to get recognition for performance. This, Sloan apparently saw right away, becomes even more important as a company gets older and as it has to depend on developing strong, independent performing executives from within.
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Everyone before Sloan had seen the problem as one of personalities, to be solved through a struggle for power from which one man would emerge victorious. Sloan saw it as a constitutional problem to be solved through a new structure; decentralization which balances local autonomy in operations with central control of direction and policy.
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Almost as common is the plausible but erroneous definition of the fundamental problem. Here is one example. • Since the end of World War II the American military services have been plagued by their inability to keep highly trained medical people in uniform. There have been dozens of studies and dozens of proposed remedies. However, all of the studies start out with the plausible hypothesis that pay is the problem — whereas the real problem lies in the traditional structure of military medicine. With its emphasis on the general practitioner, it is out of alignment with today’s medical profession, which stresses the specialist. The career ladder in military medicine leads from specialization to medical and hospital administration and away from research and specialized practice. Today’s young, well-trained physicians, therefore, feel that they waste their time and skill in the military service where they either have to work as general practitioners or become chairbound administrators. They want the opportunity to develop the skills and apply the practice of today’s highly scientific, specialized doctor. So far the military has not faced up to the basic decision. Are the armed services willing to settle for a second-rate medical organization staffed with people who cannot make the grade in the highly scientific, research-oriented, and highly specialized civilian profession of medicine? Or are they willing and able to organize the practice of medicine within the services in ways that differ fundamentally from the organization and structure of a military service? Until the military accepts this as the real decision, its young doctors will keep on leaving as soon as they can.
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Where we engineered to make cars safe when used right, we also have to engineer to make cars safe when used wrong. This, however, the automobile industry failed to see. This example shows why the incomplete explanation is often more dangerous than the totally wrong explanation.
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The effective decision-maker, therefore, always assumes initially that the problem is generic. He always assumes that the event that clamors for his attention is in reality a symptom. He looks for the true problem. He is not content with doctoring the symptom alone. And if the event is truly unique, the experienced decision maker suspects that this heralds a new underlying problem and that what appears as unique will turn out to have been simply the first manifestation of a new generic situation.
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He builds the public regulatory agency into a deliberate “third way” between the Scylla of irresponsible private enterprise unchecked by competition and the Charybdis of equally irresponsible, indeed essentially uncontrollable, government monopoly.
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Just as the Times went to press (so at least goes a widely told anecdote) the executive editor and three of his assistants started arguing how to hyphenate one word. This took them forty-eight minutes (so it is said) — or half of the available press time. The Times, the editor argued, sets a standard for written English in the United States and therefore cannot afford a grammatical mistake. Assuming the tale to be true — and I do not vouch for it — one wonders what the management thought about the decision. But there is no doubt that, given the fundamental assumptions and objectives of the executive editor, it was the right decision. His boundary conditions quite clearly were not the number of copies sold at any one morning, but the infallibility of the Times as a grammarian and as Magister Americae.
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Above all, Sloan designed a U.S. company; and though it soon acquired foreign subsidiaries, it remained a U.S. company in its organization and management structure. But General Motors is clearly an international company today. Its great growth and major opportunities are increasingly outside the United States and especially in Europe. It will survive and prosper only if it finds the right principles and the right organization for the multinational company.
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A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong” — but much more often a choice between two courses of action neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.
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The great majority of all accidents occur in one or two places in the plant. The great bulk of absenteeism is in one department. Even illness resulting in absence from work, we now know, is not distributed as an average, but is concentrated in a very small part of the work force, e.g., young unmarried women. The personnel actions to which dependence on the averages will lead — for instance, the typical plantwide safety campaign — will not produce the desired results, may indeed make things worse.
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• Alfred P. Sloan is reported to have said at a meeting of one of his top committees: “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
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Every one of the effective Presidents in American history had his own method of producing the disagreement he needed in order to make an effective decision. Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman — each had his own ways. But each created the disagreement he needed for “some understanding of what the decision is all about.” Washington, we know, hated conflicts and quarrels and wanted a united Cabinet. Yet he made quite sure of the necessary differences of opinion on important matters by asking both Hamilton and Jefferson for their opinions.
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The only way to break out of the prison of special pleading and preconceived notions is to make sure of argued, documented, thought-through disagreements. Second, disagreement alone can provide alternatives to a decision. And a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw, no matter how carefully thought through it might
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When the plan fell to pieces, no one had an alternative to fall back on.
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But they do not assume that the man who disagrees with what they themselves see as clear and obvious is, therefore, either a fool or a knave. They know that unless proven otherwise, the dissenter has to be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and reasonably fair-minded.
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But the effective decision-maker does not wait long — a few days, at the most a few weeks. If the “daemon” has not spoken by then, he acts with speed and energy whether he likes to or not.Only executive effectiveness can enable this society to harmonize its two needs: the needs of organization to obtain from the individual the contribution it needs, and the need of the individual to have organization serve as his tool for the accomplishment of his purposes. Effectiveness must be learned.
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Only executive effectiveness can enable this society to harmonize its two needs: the needs of organization to obtain from the individual the contribution it needs, and the need of the individual to have organization serve as his tool for the accomplishment of his purposes. Effectiveness must be learned.
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See the first part of this series, where I analyzed Drucker’s text here.
If this provided any value for you, please share with a friend! If you’re looking for another book review, check out my other articles; I’m publishing one a day! Also let me know if there’s any particular book you want me to cover, and I’ll try to do that!
