The Practice of Management by Drucker Peter F

Author:Drucker, Peter F. [Drucker, Peter F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-01T14:00:00+00:00

Without the proper organization principles, levels will simply multiply. Yet, how few levels are really needed is shown by the example of the oldest, largest and most successful organization of the West, the Catholic Church. There is only one level of authority and responsibility between the Pope and the lowliest parish priest: the Bishop.

3. Organization structure must make possible the training and testing of tomorrow’s top managers. It must give people actual management responsibility in an autonomous position while they are still young enough to acquire new experience. Work as a lieutenant or assistant does not adequately prepare a man for the pressures of making his own decisions. On the contrary, nothing is more common than the trusted and effective lieutenant who collapses when he is put on his own. Men must also be put into positions where they at least see the whole of a business, even if they do not carry direct responsibility for its performance and results. Though experience as a functional specialist is necessary, certainly at the start of a man’s career in management, if exposed to it too long, a man will be narrowed by it. He will come to mistake his own corner for the whole building.

Training is not enough. A man must also be tested in his capacity to manage a whole business responsibly. He must be tested long before he gets to the top. And he should be young enough so that failure on his part does not finish him for good but still allows the company to use his services as a specialist, or a lieutenant. The job, while independent, should be small enough so that failure in it does not endanger the prosperity or survival of the business. And in the large enterprise there should be several such jobs in succession for a man so that future top managers can be selected by the only rational principle of selection and tested by the only adequate test: that of actual business performance on their own.

The job must also be junior enough so that a man who fails can easily be removed. To remove a president or an executive vice-president is difficult. In the publicly owned corporation with its completely dispersed ownership it is well-nigh impossible. “Once you have a president you are stuck with him and can only hope for the intervention of providence through coronary thrombosis,” a cynical company director once phrased it.

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