Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

Analytical Management: Structuring Activity

The analytical manager is engaged in:

• defining policies and procedures
• establishing strategies and structures
• articulating the production-market concept
• allocating roles and responsibilities
• delineating boundaries between departments and divisions
• channelling the flow of resources through formalized planning and control mechanisms

Such analytically based activities should represent a channelling of the potential created by the innovator, duly recognized and enriched by the developer.

The executive role played at Dexion by Norman Bailey in the 1960s and 1970s was a somewhat isolated one, preceding as it did the takeover of the company by a new management regime. Bailey recalled that, even in the Krisson days, quarterly reports were issued to parents about all aspects of the apprentices' work. In the 1950s Bailey issued a quarterly report to the sales force; it gave a statistical picture of sales performance, including budgeted versus actual sales, and a commentary on variance.

This kind of analytical role was anathema to Comino from the outset. His meticulous problem-solving processes were applied to production and marketing rather than finance and organization. Moreover, the role of the accountant was never strongly established in the company. Comino himself, aware of the problem if unwilling to confront it head on, maintained in 1965:

Though we are a successful firm, our success and further progress is hampered by one serious failing. ...