Management

• Good management is more a matter of choosing appropriate incentives and restrictions than one of removing constraints.

• The Peter Principle - When people in a sufficiently large hierarchy are promoted because of their competence, the end result will tend to put everyone into a position for which they are not competent.

• The Dilbert Principle -  the least competent workers are systematically and swiftly moved to the position where they can do the least damage: management. In other words, the persons who least deserve promotion (or most deserve to be fired) will be promoted instead of the competent.

• The Pareto Principle - a large fraction of any problem or benefit is caused by a small fraction of the constituents. Prioritize the important few over the less important many

The Basic Human Laws §

• ¹ establishes a set of basic human laws from the perspective of management.

• Law of Self-Interest. People, not organizations, are self-optimizing. Individuals make their choices in accordance with their preferences or goals. Such goals may result in behavior that is counterproductive yet logical for the individual.

• Law of Individuality People are different. From an operations perspective, this means people behave and perform differently. ²

  • Pushing responsibility for decision making down to the level of the worker will have varying success, depending on the workers.

• Law of Advocacy For almost any program, there exists a champion who can make it work-at least for awhile.

  • To be truly effective, champions must be intimately involved with the systems they are trying to change.
  • The sheer speed with which managers are rotated means that the originator of a program is very likely to leave it before it has become thoroughly institutionalized
  • We should look at the ability to survive the loss of the originator as an important measure of the quality of a new system
  • While champions can be highly influential in promoting change, we should probably strive for an environment in which they are helpful, but not all-important.

• Law of Burnout. People get burned out

  • Use revolutionary ideas sparingly. Not every improvement needs to be presented as a new way of life.
  • Do not skimp on training. If a major system change is necessary, make sure all workers are trained at an appropriate level.
  • Use pilot programs to prototype the effect of a revolutionary change.

• Law of Responsibility Responsibility without commensurate authority is demoralizing and counterproductive

  • Unrealistic targets are demoralizing to people.
  • People should not be punished for things beyond their control.
  • Effective management must be able to distinguish between real performance and noise (variations in this performance due to random chance)
  • Having a clearly defined ultimate authority at all times is essential to making critical decisions on a split-second basis.

Links §

• The 48 Laws of Power
• Social Psychology

Footnotes §

1. Taken from Hopp and Spearman Ch. 11 ↩

2. One good example of how this is applied is the bucket brigade system where workers carry a task downstream until preempted by a downstream worker. This naturally balances work. ↩