Drucker on smallness

I really love management and organizational theories. I spend a fair amount of my time reading books on this subjects (Usually 2 or 3 at a time).

One cannot love those subjects without reading the materials and concepts of the biggest theoretician of them all – the late Peter Drucker.

Currently, I am reading his book “The Effective Executive” and I am enjoying every moment. While reading the book I have bumped into a very interesting idea of his concerning the complexity of organizations. It did remind me of the 37signals model.

And it goes like this (taken from page 14 on the book):

The fewer people, the smaller, the less activity inside, the more nearly perfect is the organization.

And it really works well with Seth Godin’s “Small is the new big” and Tom Peters’ idea of the Professional Service Firm (PSF).

The only difference is that Drucker wrote about this in 1967. 1-9-6-7. That’s right, 40 years ago. This man knew what he was talking about.

It’s time for innovation and focus!

Well… it’s always time for innovation and focus.

But, it seems that we will be facing some hard times in business in the coming year or two. It is in these times, when resources are scarce and options are limited, that innovation and focus are crucial for business success. Businesses and organizations must get out of their comfort zones. The old and pricey way of doing things will not work when budgets will be cut, and a blurry execution will not take advantage of the budgets left.

Consumers will get picky as to where they should spend their dollars, and businesses which will find innovative ways and will focus on effective execution to make their product cheaper or more valuable, will win the game.

Consider marketing – in the lack of adequate marketing budgets, people will have to find new and cheap ways to market their products and services. Some of the most amazing marketing initiatives were born when marketing budgets were too small to be using the traditional marketing channels. (Yes, yes… the same old half.com story).

Those are the times when the individuals within the organization matter the most. The organizations which have nurtured innovation will be getting now a return on their investment. Those who neglected innovation will pay the price…

Is there such a thing as multitasking?

In our modern world, most of us are coping with a handful of tasks at any given moment. 

The word Multitasking was originally invented to describe the computer ability to handle a couple of tasks simultaneously, and was quickly adapted by people as a way to describe the same capability in humans.  

The “Bystander Effect” in Management

n 1964, a young Queens woman by the name of Kitty Gevonese was stubbed a couple of times, in the middle of the street, during day-time while 38 of her neighbors watch the scene from their windows. The psychologists Bibb Latane of Columbia University and John Darley of NYU conducted a series of studies to understand the phenomenon now known by the name of: “The Bystander Effect”.

Their findings were that persons are less likely to take action in an emergency situation when others are present than when they are alone.

What’s that got to do with Management? Simple.

You can call it: “The multiple responsible parties effect”. The more responsible parties of completing a specific task, the chance that one of them will actually complete it, reduces dramatically.

When assigning a task, remember to make it clear who is responsible for it’s completion!