Management is a Science as well as an Art

15-10-2014

Management is a Science as well as an Art

To manage Men is Management. Initially energy and enthusiasm produce results far greater than society so far has known. In early centuries, cultivation of crops, building houses, creating a family, organising public services were done with an immediate aim of producing results. The results so produced were abundant as against the previously existing conditions. That level of existence I call one created and maintained by energy, as well as enthusiasm.  Tracing the growth of every walk of life along a scale of energy, skill, efficiency, force, organisation, capacity, power, vast social results, we see the pattern remains the same everywhere. Looking at our own family, company, locality, and community, we see where we are on the scale of progress the country or the world has made. There is a vast scope for improvement at many fronts. Indian agriculture cannot stand comparison with either what is in Holland or America.  Intel in recognizing the most valuable manager, chose one in Bangalore, as he excelled others in harmony, cooperation and coordination. It reveals the scope of improvement in organisation in India, America and in the world. This is not a creative or innovative effort. It is one of intelligent imitation.

An unorganised work by the abundance of energy and interest is successful. Force is used here for skill. Installed organisational systems are unknown here. Physically a supervisor or a manager plays the role of organisation with the organisation in his Mind. The traffic policeman can be replaced by the traffic lights! This is a successful work but not yet organised. Organisation here can be used for work, coordination, system, rules, Time, and Space resulting in greater individual efficiency at a given point or raising the collective capacity to raise the local company to wider levels of market. This is planned management in about a dozen major levels or one hundred micro levels. Organised work makes Management a Science when the externally instituted organisation is upgraded and replaced by the insight of an all-comprehending Mind’s innate organisation. The Science becomes Art when even the Mind does not function in the field of production. Work becomes creative in an overall sense, revealing its art at many individual points. One who witnesses the local school sports and travels through various levels to the Olympics will witness the grades of the organisation expanding simultaneously horizontally and growing vertically. The CEO of a 100 crore company reviewing the existing organisation of his own company against the knowledge that exists in his own Mind today will see the distance to be travelled. It is well within his own capacity to conceive of an organisation in the light of his own present knowledge. It can be written down on paper in terms of implementation. As soon as it is fully implemented, his profits will rise to 100 crores. It is not necessary for him to devote one full year to achieve this. Surely, if he sees the software technologies available on the Internet, he will discover his utilization is around 20 or 25%. Once he raises his profits to the present level of turnover, it is an inescapable rule that every software in the market he can use MUST be used at once.

Writing the Report and implementing it is Great, Good work that consumes time and interested intelligent energy. Obviously the steps are:

1. Organise it in the Mind at the present level.
2. Introduce all the skills – punctuality, orderliness, accounts, cleanliness, etc. – in such a way that the staff accepts them as values. Labour will offer unprecedented cooperation as it is a process that enhances the value of their work. This is contrary to the feeling that labour will resist.
3. Establish harmony between parts till the work becomes smooth.
4. See that the work efficiency is directly related to the raising of the workers’ efficiency.
5. Emphasize total elimination of avoidable waste first and finally all the waste. The effort of elimination of waste must be upgraded to avail of every opportunity to save Time, Energy, Space, raw materials, process, etc. Organisation by itself will rise from efficiency to capacity. 
6. Change consciously the attitude of management from higher profits to greater productivity. Productivity admits of creativity if one is himself creative in work.
7. The aim is to rise to the level of the profession locally, if it is not there now. Next it must cross that level. Such an effort admits of comparison in wider national as well as international levels.
8. Utilization of new material, machine efficiency, worker energy is a scale in which there can be constant evaluation. Even if scales are not there initially, one can have this view. Scales are available and can be constructed patiently. Creation of such scales gives a very great conceptual clarity to the CEO which is a boon. Should he know how to pass on that clarity to other levels, he will have moved work from the physical to the Mental.
9. Even at the level of facts he will find the nation or the world has a lot to offer. A sugar factory discovered that importing an intermediate product for final processing gave him one thousand crores of extra profit. The CEO who has initially written a plan and implemented it with great profit must now consider upgrading this plan of work to be raised to the level of efficiency and capacity.

All companies that in a short period have witnessed a phenomenal growth have passed through this process without their knowledge. Reliance is based on securing a contract or a market monopoly by government influence. It is an axiom of work that the same advantage can be got by an intelligent inner planning. Over the decades the market has been doing it. Families and companies over generations have received this benefit by changing the values, as sending girls to work. 

So far I have spoken on what the CEO can do. If the company has seven divisions, each manager of a division trained to act as the CEO in his zone, will do very well. Theory admits it to carry to the worker. Education at the level of the worker does it. By the time the company raises its profit to turnover levels, the worker’s wage will have multiplied many times. Management resents it. The change of value in the management from resentment to appreciation is welcome. From organisation to Science to art is a process that exists at three or four levels in the company. My explanations belong to the first level only.