Working smarter no new idea

By SELWYN PARKER

If systems thinking takes hold as a universal management tool, it will join a surprisingly small hall of fame of deeply influential management ideas over the last century.

Most of them are American-made, starting with Frederick Winslow Taylor's "working smarter."

The foreman in a steel-making plant, Mr Taylor practically invented productivity in manufacturing by isolating every step in the production process and figuring out the most efficient way to do it.

Mr Taylor, who died in 1915, is often reviled as the man who dehumanised industry, but there is no doubt that "working smarter" boosted all-round economic wealth.

Alfred P Sloan jun is recognised as the father of the modern decentralised corporation. In his case, it was General Motors but look what they have done to it since. A few years earlier, Mary Parker Follett, a social worker and political scientist, empowered workers by advising bosses to include them in decision-making. However, workers had to share the responsibility too.

Then there was the guru-driven craze for re-engineering - including downsizing - in the 1990s. (As Peter Drucker, the father of modern management once said, the media only use the word "guru" because "charlatan" does not fit into a headline.)

As the age of the machine "screeches to a halt," argues futurist Alvin Toffler, and is replaced by an era when the quality of information becomes paramount, this idea looks like it could run for a long time.

Systems thinking seems to fit in somewhere around here.

* Contact Selwyn Parker at wordz@xtra.co.nz