This continues the post reviewing Auren Uris’ 1986 book: 101 Greatest Ideas in Management. This part reviews management ideas on Procedures.
As a line supervisor for five years, I have applied many of the ideas found in Uris’ book, such as:
Brainstorming: Alex F. Osborn (1979) conceived brainstorming “a form of group thought, a procedure to mobilize a group’s creative resources to solve problems and develop ideas.”.
Annotations : Brainstorming was useful during pre-privatized NSC’s Quality Circle.
The Exception Principle: is a time and effort saver . . . bypassing acceptable performance and concentrating on the exceptional and unacceptable in a manufacturing operation..“ Items within the given range require little attention, while concentrating on the exceptions that demand remedy.”
Annotations : I am still using this principle even in this blogs. I have deliberately ignored most of the time, acceptable performance and concentrated on the exceptional and, especially, unacceptable in management practices at GSPI. I believe that by focusing on the unacceptable, some of the readers—including the expats—could learn something, and decide to change their ways.
Management by Objectives is a technique whereby if conditions change, objectives and methods must change accordingly. MBO is accomplished through the “development of realistic objectives, agreement on the means by which the goals will be achieved, comparison of actual to expected results at the end of subgoal period, and review of achievement or adjustment of plans, if necessary.”.
Annotations : NSC was a disciple of MBO from 1980s. This principle rub itself to the manner I deal with my subordinates.
The Pareto Principle: Developed by Vilfredo Pareto using the distribution of the vital few and the trivial many. This also known as the 80-20 rule: “20 percent of the known variables will produce 80 percent of the results.”.
Annotations : Used especially when I became a Maintenance Planner. Focusing on the vital few equipment troubles almost took care of the trivial many. This principle can be used in conjunction with Management by Exception.
Participative Management: “. . . is an amazingly simple way ‘to share in common with others.’ . . . share knowledge and information with others in order to get their cooperation . . . share the decision process itself so that employees can do some things the way they’d like to.”
Annotations : When I became the Team Leader of Technical Planning, I used participative management as an aspect of my personal leadership style: gets data, ideas and suggestions from my co-employees, to make a decision. Shared problems and together we worked out a solution, or sometimes specified the problem and asked my co-employees to develop solutions and made the final decision.
Notes:
Osborn, Alex F. (1979). Applied Imagination New York: Scribners, 1979. back to text
Strauss, George & Sayles, Leonard R. (1980). Behavioral Strategies for Managers New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1980. back to text
Uris, Auren (1986). 101 Greatest Ideas in Management New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1986. 310pp. back to text
The Grey Chronicles 