Management, By George:

Or,
CEO George’s Little Red Book on Management,
Or Let George Do It, by George

The basic teaching about the theory of management usually begins by explaining the Principles which govern and control it. There has always been problem determining how many of these principles there are. Some authorities (textbook writers) claim as few as five, some soar upwards of twenty. What can any rational being do?

Fortunately there is a new book on the market. It explains how too many principles can create problems for a manager. A manager is busy, has a lot of work to do, and it can be confusing at times. Part of the charm of this book is that it shows how to seize control of the problems, cut through the fog of work and boil down the theories into a few hard-headed ways to get things done.

So the author of this book will go with the basic five Principles of Management: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing and Controling. Let’s look at them in detail now.

Most important of all is Planning - it is always the first step in management, and far and away the hardest. Everything else depends on it. And the hardest part of Planning is the first part of it: Choosing the Objective. Here you have to look at needs of the organization and its mission, learn to know your clients and competition, determine possible alternatives, select desired criteria and establish measurement standards to weigh each of them. It’s a really hard way to earn a living.

Here is where “Management, by George”, really steals the show. You don’t have to figure out what the Objective should be - you are GIVEN the Objective. Kind of like in the old TV show, Mission Impossible. Here is an example of what I mean: Remember the lead in that show? “Your misssion, by George should you choose to accept it, is to . . . Invade Iraq!” If it is a valid mission, you may even hear background music. How do you find these missions? First you have to get right with God, then you have to listen to the right people. The rest is easy. All you have left to plan, in this case, is figure out how to invade Iraq. Pretty simple, right? Want more? OK, lets go on to the second principle: Organizing.

Let’s deal with the main problem of Organizing right up front. And that is, according to George, it shouldn’t be the second principle. Second should be Staffing. Organizing deals with establishing and delegating authority, responsibility and validity, determining unity of command, building balance into your organization, division of work, departmentalization, and other minor things like those otther trivial pursuits. Besides, how can you do that if you don’t know who will be working for you? So you need to move right on into Staffing.

Staffing concerns the building of jobs, determining actions that must be taken, specifying knowledge, skills and abilities that will be needed in your organization. You will have to build position descriptions and establish performance standards, then advertise, schedule, interview and hire applicants. Obviously, these actions will waste a lot of your valuable time and keep you from applying your own knowledge, skills and abilities to the really important things. If you’re planning a war in Iraq, for example. you wouldn’t have time to do all this grunge work. Staffing can be taken care of easily, by George, if you just hire one or two Top Guys and tell them to get the people they need. Then - the people your Top Guys bring on line can Organize their own organization. Amazing, isn’t it; you have to wonder why nobody else ever thought of this!

Now comes the principle of Directing. This is the fun part. All this requires is just simple Leadership. Someone has to decide, and after your Top Guys have briefed you, you will make their decision, by George. That’s right, you will be the Decider. You tell everybody where to go and what they can do. Then they will go do it, and since they are all good people you can be sure they will do it and do it right. You give orders. Speeches. Radio talks. TV programs. Press conferences. That way you can get the word out to the right people - the nation’s press - you know, the papers, radio stations, TV networks and so on - these have all been pre-selected as part of the Staffing principle. Your Top Dogs sift through the details and brief you, you decide what to do and you tell the media. They will get the word out to the masses.

Last principle is Control. This means inspecting to see what actually gets done is what you orderded to be done, and what you planned to do in the beginning. Clearly, this is only for beginning managers. When you move up the line you don’t need any Control. Your only Control will be to make sure everybody else is staying the course. You will never cut and run, so you never have to review what is going on.

What is really going on is what you had planned would go on at the beginning. This way you save a lot of time and you don’t worry about what you are doing, like everybody else does.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved