3

I know I am not getting through, that I am trying to unwind 140 years of corporate habit and that in a complex world people want simple answers to complex problems. So what? I genuinely believe that our future is at risk and that unexamined thinking, policies and structures in the western business world are at the very foundation of our failing schools, health care system, infotainment consumeristic society that can't seem to agree on anything except that evil people (definition: anyone who doesn't agree with me) are destroying us.  It is clear that the western corporate system is actively, though largely unconsciously, engaged in destroying civil society and the customer base that is formed by that society. Or, to put in the blunt language that executives claim they love: businesses are shooting themselves in the foot with a shotgun. CEO’s everywhere are anxiously looking at next quarter’s P&L while the very structure of their economic enterprise is coming apart at the seams. They are the modern day Nero’s, actively and productively fiddling while their corporate Romes are ablaze.

Comments

[laurence haughton]

I'm impatient too. But where were we in our study of medicine after 140 years? Where were we in physics? My point (made first by Peter Drucker) is that management science is relatively new and we can't measure our progress as if we have been experimenting and learning for centuries. Overall I see a lot of progress.

I'm very interested to see where you go with this. The subject has been a two decade passion for me too.

[Jeff Hunter]

Great comment Laurence! Just for fun...

Physics:

Newton 1687 (Principia)
Einstein 1905 (Special Theory of Relativity)

Assuming Taylor as our starting point (1911 publishing of "The Principles of Scientific Management"), are you saying that we have to wait until 2129 before the paradigm (using that term as Kuhn intended) shifts? Or can we count on the futurists and assume the rate of change is changing, and so the time frame is compressed? Here's hoping it the later, because I only have another 40 years to give to the fight.

[Amitai Givertz]

First, daggit, Jeff! We missed you!

Second, how would you answer the suggestion that your argument in response to Laurence is fallacious?

For example I could argue your assumptions do not allow for the compression of time and space created by technology, the internet and access to data/distribution of content/social networking as just one example. It probably took you as long to write and distribute your post as it took Einstein to sharpen his pencil, relatively speaking.

Thanks for stirring us to think about things above the navel. I look forward to posts 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

[laurence haughton]

I think it will be much faster if we have the wisdom to learn from the mistakes of others who came before us.

One example:
At the age of 16, future Nobel Prize winning scientist Max Planck met with Philippe Von Jolly, a professor of physics at the university. He told Von Jolly he wanted to put his mind to new discoveries in physics. Von Jolly told him physics was essentially a "complete science" with "little prospect of further developments." (This was in the late 1800s.)

Later Max Planck created this famous dictum: "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents… What happens is that its opponents gradually die out and that the next generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning."

There are a couple of lessons to learn from that story.

[Jeff Hunter]

Ami - It is nice to be missed, especially by one I esteem as much as you. Yes, I was being facetious. If I thought I would pass without being able to change the conversation I wouldn't have started talking in the first place.

Laurence - I have always loved Planck's dictum. But given that MBA programs turn out new adherents to the old paradigm, I despair of hope when I think that I may have to wait for all those young stalwarts to retire before my children get a chance to work in a better place.

I take heart from Kuhn, since he explained that revolutions in thought happen because the new concepts are "sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity," and "sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve." (p.10)

By the way, I highly recommend a refresher on Thomas Kuhn's seminal work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (from which those quotes are taken), as it tells us much about the current crisis that is developing in business thinking. A great synopsis can be found here:

http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/220/kuhn.htm