Management: It’s not what you think

CHAPTER 4

MYTHS OF MANAGING

Year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice

[Researcher in British Foreign Office from 1903 to 1950.]

Now it’s straight into the myths of managing. Management has had a long-standing love affair with formal rationality. ‘Crunch the numbers’, introduce the right systems, do your action plan (an oxymoron), and the Holy Grail of managing will be yours. How to explain this? Perhaps it reflects our obsession with control – having to bring under control at first things physical, then things social, and finally each other. Or maybe it’s all about our desperate search for comfort and security in the face of uncertainty. ...