HENRI FAYOL
Henri Fayol (born 1841 in Istanbul; died 1925 in Paris) was a French management theorist.
Fayol was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management, having
proposed that there are five primary functions of management: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3)
commanding, (4) coordinating, and (5) controlling (Fayol, 1949, 1987). Controlling is described in the
sense that a manager must receive feedback on a process in order to make necessary adjustments.
Fayol's work has stood the test of time and has been shown to be relevant and appropriate to
contemporary management. Many of today’s management texts including Daft (2005) have reduced
the five functions to four: (1) planning, (2) organizing, (3) leading, and (4) controlling. Daft's text is
organized around Fayol's four functions.
Fayol believed management theories could be developed, then taught. His theories were published in
a monograph titled General and Industrial Management (1916). This is an extraordinary little book
that offers the first theory of general management and statement of management principles.
Fayol suggested that it is important to have unity of command: a concept that suggests there should
be only one supervisor for each person in an organization. Like Socrates, Fayol suggested that
management is a universal human activity that applies equally well to the family as it does to the
corporation.
Fayol has been described as the father of modern operational management theory (George, p. 146).
Although his ideas have become a universal part of the modern management concepts, some writers
continue to associate him with Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor's scientific management deals with
the efficient organisation of production in the context of a competitive enterprise that has to control its
production costs. That was only one of the many areas that Fayol addressed. Perhaps the connection
with Taylor is more one of time, than of perspective. According to Claude George (1968), a primary
difference between Fayol and Taylor was that Taylor viewed management processes from the bottom
up, while Fayol viewed it from the top down. George's comment may have originated from Fayol
himself. In the classic General and Industrial Management Fayol wrote that "Taylor's approach differs
from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the "bottom up." He starts with the
most elemental units of activity -- the workers' actions -- then studies the effects of their actions on
productivity, devises new methods for making them more efficient, and applies what he learns at
lower levels to the hierarchy...(Fayol, 1987, p. 43)." He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and
advisors working with individuals at lower levels of the organization to identify the ways to improve
efficiency. According to Fayol, the approach results in a "negation of the principle of unity of command
(p. 44)." Fayol criticized Taylor’s functional management in this way. “… the most marked outward
characteristics of functional management lies in the fact that each workman, instead of coming in
direct contact with the management at one point only, … receives his daily orders and help from eight
different bosses…(Fayol, 1949, p. 68.)” Those eight, Fayol said, were (1) route clerks, (2) instruction
card men, (3) cost and time clerks, (4) gang bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7) repair
bosses, and the (8) shop disciplinarian (p. 68). This, he said, was an unworkable situation, and that
Taylor must have somehow reconciled the dichotomy in some way not described in Taylor's works.
Fayol graduated from the mining academy of St. Etienne (École des Mines de Saint-Étienne) in 1860.
The nineteen-year old engineer started at the mining company Compagnie de CommentryFourchambeau-Decazeville, ultimately acting as its managing director from 1888 to 1918. Based
largely on his own management experience, Fayol developed his concept of administration. The 14
principles of management were discussed in detail in his book published in 1917, Administration
industrielle et générale. It was first published in English as General and Industrial Management in
1949 and is widely considered a foundational work in classical management theory. In 1987 Irwin
Gray edited and published a revised version of Fayol’s classic that was intended to “free the reader
from the difficulties of sifting through language and thought that are limited to the time and place of
composition (Fayol, 1987, p. ix).” Gray retained the 14 points shown below.
1. Specialization of labour. Specializing encourages continuous improvement in skills and the
development of improvements in methods.
2. Authority. The right to give orders and the power to exact obedience.
3. Discipline. No slacking, bending of rules. The workers should be obedient and respectful of the
organization.
4. Unity of command. Each employee has one and only one boss.
5. Unity of direction. A single mind generates a single plan and all play their part in that plan.
6. Subordination of Individual Interests. When at work, only work things should be pursued or thought
about.
7. Remuneration. Employees receive fair payment for services, not what the company can get away
with.
8. Centralization. Consolidation of management functions. Decisions are made from the top.
9. Chain of Superiors (line of authority). Formal chain of command running from top to bottom of the
organization, like military
10. Order. All materials and personnel have a prescribed place, and they must remain there.
11. Equity. Equality of treatment (but not necessarily identical treatment)
12. Personnel Tenure. Limited turnover of personnel. Lifetime employment for good workers.
13. Initiative. Thinking out a plan and do what it takes to make it happen.
14. Esprit de corps. Harmony, cohesion among personnel. It's a great source of strength in the
organisation. Fayol stated that for promoting esprit de corps, the principle of unity of command
should be observed and the dangers of divide and rule and the abuse of written communication
should be avoided.
Out of the 14, the most important elements are specialization, unity of command, scalar chain, and,
coordination by managers (an amalgam of authority and unity of direction).
The free dictionary by Farlex
Copied from an article on Wikipedia
Mary Parker Follett:
Modern management theory owes a lot to a nearly-forgotten woman writer, Mary Parker Follett.
Mary Parker Follett was born in Quincy, Massachusetts. She studied at the Thayer Academy,
Braintree, Massachusetts, where she credited one of her teachers with influencing many of her later
ideas. In 1894, she used her inheritance to study at the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women,
sponsored by Harvard, going on to a year at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1890. She studied on
and off at Radcliffe as well, starting in the early 1890s.
In 1898, Mary Parker Follett graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe. Her research at Radcliffe
was published in 1896 and again in 1909 as The Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mary Parker Follett began working in Roxbury as a voluntary social worker in 1900. In 1908, she
became chair of the Women's Municipal League Committee on Extended Use of School Buildings. In
1911, she and others opened the East Boston High School Social Centre - She also helped found
other social centres in Boston.
In 1917, she took on the vice-presidency of the National Community Center Association, and in 1918
published her book on community, democracy, and government, The New State.
Another book, Creative Experience, was published in 1924, encompassing more of her ideas about
the creative interaction of people in group process. In 1926, she moved to England to live, work, and
to study at Oxford. In 1928, Follett consulted with the League of Nations and with the International
Labour Organisation in Geneva. She lived in London from 1929 with Dame Katharine Furse of the
Red Cross.
In her later years, Mary Parker Follett became a popular writer and lecturer in the business world she was a lecturer at the London School of Economics from 1933.
Mary Parker Follett advocated for a human relations emphasis equal to a mechanical or operational
emphasis in management. Her work contrasted with the "scientific management" of Frederick W.
Taylor (1856-1915) and evolved by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, which stressed time and motion
studies.
Mary Parker Follett stressed the interactions of management and workers. She looks at management
and leadership holistically, presaging modern systems approaches; she identifies a leader as
"someone who sees the whole rather than the particular." Follett was one of the first (and for a long
time, one of the few) to integrate the idea of organizational conflict into management theory, and is
sometimes considered the "mother of conflict resolution."
In a 1924 essay, "Power," she coined the words "power-over" and "power-with" to differentiate
coercive power from participative decision-making, showing how "power-with" can be greater than
"power-over." "Do we not see now," she observed, "that while there are many ways of gaining an
external, an arbitrary power —- through brute strength, through manipulation, through diplomacy —genuine power is always that which inheres in the situation?"
Mary Parker Follett died in 1933 on a visit to Boston. After her death, her papers and speeches were
compiled and published in 1942 in Dynamic Administration, and in 1995, Pauline Graham edited a
compilation of her writing in Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management. The New State was
reissued in a new edition in 1998 with helpful additional material.
Her work was mostly forgotten in America, and is still largely neglected in studies of the evolution of
management theory, despite the accolades of more recent thinkers like Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker
called her the "prophet of management" and his "guru."
Mary Parker Follett
“Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but few have made me want to
do something...”
Mary Parker Follett, The New State (p. 230).
Mary Parker Follett's words, written some seven decades ago, seize our attention today as though
she was speaking with us personally about our most contemporary concerns. Sometimes they
dangle tantalisingly ahead, pointing toward a yet-to-be experienced tomorrow. "Who was Follett?"
first-time readers ask, "and why have I not heard of her earlier?" The natural inclination is to find a
professional tag to hang upon her. "Was she a management consultant? A political scientist? An
historian? A philosopher?" and so forth - she was each of these, and more. She avoided all such
labels, however, and out of respect for the universal nature of her thinking, I must as well.
For the purposes of this article examining her views through the lens of leadership, I shall forgo a
lengthy accounting of her personal history and say only that she was a remarkably experienced and
insightful turn of the century American woman who did not let real or imagined boundaries interfere
with her desire to understand the ways people related in groups. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts in
1868, her natural talents were sparked by a series of dedicated teachers who nurtured her promise.
Her pursuit of knowledge about "the laws of association" took her to many venues including the
Congress in her early twenties (Follett, 1896), the heart of Boston's burgeoning immigrant fed
communities in her thirties and forties (Follett 1918, 1924) and to the world of business and beyond in
her fifties and sixties (Follett, 1940, 1940/73). For the last ten years of her life she was a sought after
advisor and speaker by business leaders in the United States and England (Davis, 1989).
It is interesting to speculate about why Follett, who never managed a for-profit business enterprise
herself, held such strong appeal for business leaders. Credit, of course, must go to the soundness of
her theories so firmly grounded in her own and other's experience. In making a particular point, she
would draw upon illustrations ranging from the behaviour of husband and wife across the breakfast
table to the interactions among leaders at international peace talks. She was masterful at weaving
the threads of her experience with that of her readers or listeners. Still, Follett had another vital
quality, one more difficult to define, but one that shines throughout her writing - she had a way with
people and a way with words. Not long after Follett's death, her companion, Dame Katharine Furse,
summed up Follett's genius for communication in a letter to a mutual friend, Ella Lyman Cabot. "What
I miss most now is Mary's power of expression," she reminisced, "She knew how to find words for all
that is finest and best, never elaborate tiresome words, but the right words every time" (Furse, 1934).
One of Follett's most ardent admirers was Lyndal Urwick, who, along with Henry C. Metcalf, first
edited and published her talks before business leaders (Follett, 1940). Urwick's account of his initial
meeting with Follett offers a rather humorous clue to her extraordinary charisma (Urwick,1963). The
setting is York, England, circa 1926, where Urwick is a high level manager for Seebohm Rountree,
owner of a large international candy company. At the insistence of his boss, Urwick reluctantly gives
up a long-planned trip to London with his beautiful new wife to attend instead a conference where
Follett will be speaking. In describing their encounter at the conference, he freely admits to feeling
grouchy. There was rather a dull paper on the Friday evening. Mary Follett spoke in the subsequent
discussion. But I was feeling tired and rather fed up. I wasn't particularly struck by her contribution.
After the meeting was over, Rountree grabbed me and introduced us. As I looked at her I remember
thinking, "What on earth is my dear Seebohm up to? He's always most considerate of those working
with him. And here he's practically forced me to cancel a weekend to which I had greatly looked
forward in order to meet this gaunt Boston spinster. From what she said in the discussion she's a
pure academic. What in the world can we have in common?” Then Mary started to talk with me and
in two minutes I was at her feet, where I remained for the rest of her life" (Urwick, 1963).
Democracy as an infinitely including spirit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why is it important for the readers of this journal to meet Follett? Because ‘A Leadership Journal’
proudly proclaims that its articles "are embedded in a 'community-based, leadership approach' that is
facilitated by and through relationships.” (Reed, 1996). Follett was a pioneer of just such an
approach. In her 1896 look at the powers of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, she
chronicled the nature of leadership at the top (Follett, 1896). By 1918, after twenty years of work at
the grass roots, she used The New State to spell out her ideas for bottom-up democracy.
"Democracy is an infinitely including spirit," she concluded. "We have an instinct for democracy
because we have an instinct for wholeness; we get wholeness only through reciprocal relations,
through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations." (Follett, 1918, p 157).
It is a challenge to summarise Follett's philosophy for myself, let alone the reader, something akin to
summarizing Einstein's Law of Relativity; E=mc2 is a stunningly simple quotation, but to fully
understand it requires abandoning old well-established ways of thinking and entering less familiar
terrain - so too with Follett. Her ideas are at once extraordinarily simple and exasperatingly complex.
Follett believed that all people are linked together through evolving relationships in which their
differences, which are to be cherished since they are essential to the whole, serve as fuel for the
continuous creation of the new--the vital--through the confrontation and integration of desires, a
process which in turn leads to the continuous growth of the individual and the group. Her philosophy
of interrelatedness led her to develop such concepts as "circular response," "the law of the situation,"
and "power with, rather than power over." In the concluding chapter of Creative Experience, titled
"Experience as Evocation," she contrasts her thinking with that of others. "What I have tried to show
in this book is that the social process may be conceived either as the opposing and battle of desires
with the victory of one over the other, or as the confronting and integrating of desires. The former
means non-freedom for both sides, the defeated bound to the victor, the victor bound to the false
situation thus created--both bound - the latter means a freeing for both sides and increased total
power or increased capacity in the world" (Follett, 1924). This concept of social conflict as freeing is
central for Follett, who believed, "To free the energies of the human spirit is the high potentiality of all
human association."
Leadership flows where needed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By titling this introduction to Follett "Liquid Leadership" I mean to capture the fluid nature of her
thinking in general. She had an uncanny ability to see the world as a moving picture rather than a still
photograph. Perhaps a three-dimensional interactive hologram would be more to the point. "My
response is not to a crystallized product of the past, static for the moment of meeting; while I am
behaving, the environment is changing because of my behaving, and my behaviour is a response to
the new situation, which I, in part, have created.". Her ability to think so fluidly was as disconcerting to
some in her own time as it is to many of us today. She pokes fun at herself by letting us know that "a
professor of philosophy told me that it made him dizzy to talk with me because, he says, he wishes
always to compare varying things with something stationery." To the professor and those who desire
such static science, Follett offers a chiding response, perhaps anticipating contemporary chaos
theory, "You will have then to leave this universe; in this one we so often have variations in relation to
other variations that we are obliged to learn to think in terms of those conditions." (p. 69).
In keeping with her fluid, holistic thinking, leadership, as such, does not exist, certainly not as a static
condition within a particular person. Leaders and followers are in a relationship, and just as a
relationship does not reside in one or the other person, so too with leadership which is a dynamic
force acting between and among people. The role of leader flows to where it is needed, to those who
have the passion and perspective to use its creative potential to bring about something new. When
the situation no longer requires leaders to be in a leading role and followers to assist them, leadership
flows on. Follett called this dynamic interaction "reciprocal leadership" which she saw as "a
partnership in following, of following the invisible leader--the common purpose" (Follett, 1940/1973).
The partnership envisioned by Follett calls upon all involved in the enterprise to play a crucial role in
identifying concerns and creating solutions. "We want worked out a relation between leaders and led
which will give to each the opportunity to make creative contributions to the situation." To the extent
that leaders emerge during any situation, the role they must play is different than that recommended
by some leadership theories. "The best leader knows how to make their followers actually feel power
themselves, not merely acknowledge their own power." Along with leadership, Follett introduces the
notion of followship. "But if the followers must partake in leadership, it is also true that we must have
followship on the part of leaders - there must be a partnership of following."
Ironically, in her own day, she was pleased to see a reduction of leadership courses in college
catalogues and even toyed with the idea of giving up the word leader for she felt it a mistake to
identify leadership with ascendancy. In the end she concluded, leadership "is far too good a word to
abandon; moreover, the leader in one way at least does and should lead in that very sense. He
should lead by force of example. If those led obey the law of the situation, they must realise that he is
doing the same. If they are to follow the invisible leader, the common purpose, so must he. If
everyone must work overtime, the president should be willing to do the same - in every way he must
show that he is doing what he urges upon others."
She offers an example of such egalitarian leading which seems fitting to share in a journal housed in
South Carolina. "One winter I went yachting with some friends in the inland waterways of the South.
On one occasion our pilot led us astray and we found ourselves one night aground in a Carolina
swamp. Obviously the only thing to do was to try to push the boat off, but the crew refused, saying
that the swamps in that region were infested with rattlesnakes. The owner of the yacht offered not a
word of remonstrance, but turned instantly and jumped overboard. Every member of the crew
followed" (p. 256).
Integrating leadership lessons
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Being asked to write for the second volume of A Leadership Journal, I have the good fortune to
respond to those whose thinking appears in the first. Follett would have liked the implicit "process" in
such an opportunity. It is my turn to serve as a temporary leader on the leadership discussion. She
has taught me to wonder, "What are others thinking? Where does my thinking mesh with theirs?
Where does it differ? How might we integrate the thinking of all to give birth to new ideas?"
Gerri Perreault's article which focuses, in part, on "relational ethics,"confronts directly the "great man"
or "Lone Ranger" notion of leadership and offers in its place one which recognizes the "self and
others as connected and interdependent" (Perreault, 34). Here, Follett could not agree more strongly.
"Individuality is the capacity for union" she notes. She follows with a powerful notion which deserves
a moment of silent contemplation from the reader. "Evil is nonrelation." Then, relentlessly, Follett
continues to hammer home her theme, "The source of our strength is the central supply. You may as
well break a branch off the tree and expect it to live. Non-relation is death" (Follett, 1918, p. 62).
Teaching as leading
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As mentioned earlier, a core value for Follett is the importance of every individual's ideas to the
creation of a constantly evolving whole. She sees "integration" occurring in the home, the community,
the workplace and in world affairs. She especially sees it in the schools with teachers playing the
challenging and exciting role of leader-learners. One delightful story by which she captures this
concept appears in the last chapter of The New (p. 364). Every pupil should be made to feel that his
point of view is slightly different from any one's else, and that, therefore he has something to
contribute. He is not to "recite" something which the teacher knows already; he is to contribute not
only to the ideas of his fellow-pupils but also to those of his teacher. And this is not impossible even
for the youngest. Once when I was in Paris I made the acquaintance of little Michael, a charming
English boy of five, who upon being taken to the Louvre by his mother and asked what he thought of
the Mona Lisa, replied, with a most pathetic expression, 'I don't think she looks as if she liked little
boys." That was certainly a contribution to Mona Lisa criticism.
Follett's appreciation of a five-year old boy's response to the Mona Lisa highlights her notion of the
teacher as a life-long learner alongside her students. In a 1928 address delivered to a Boston
University audience, she spells out her philosophy quite explicitly. "The teacher is not one who has
lived and the student one who is going to live, but that both are living now, in the present, that it
should be fresh life meeting fresh life" (Follett, 1940/1973, p. 306). She expands upon her advice
saying, "If does not mean coercion in any form, if it does not mean controlling, protecting or exploiting,
what does it mean? It means, I think, freeing. The greatest service the teacher can render the
student is to increase his freedom--his free range of activity and thought and his power of control (p.
304).
To forestall misinterpretation, she asks her teacher-audience not to confuse her philosophy with those
who promote "the pupil expressing himself." Some years ago a teacher told a class of little boys who
were beginning clay modeling that they were to express themselves in clay. They of course began
throwing the clay at each other, which was perfectly proper; that is the natural way for little boys to
express themselves in clay (p. 304). She was mindful of the responsibility of teachers to encourage
freedom on thought "within method, within the laws of group activity and group control" (p.
304).
Leaders are born in neighborhoods
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leadership is also the birth right of every community member, of this, Follett felt certain. She had
seen this capacity express itself first-hand in her work to turn local schools into community centers.
Here neighbours worked together to organize clubs around common interests, design courses of
study and plan community events. "In neighborhood groups where we have different alignments on
different questions, there will be a tendency for those to lead at any particular moment who are most
competent to lead in the particular matter in hand," she observed. "Thus a mechanical leadership will
give place to a vital leadership. Here in the neighborhood group leaders are born" (Follett, 1918, p.
223).
Interestingly, her description of the community leader reads much like the job description for someone
in my field of mediation, which, from my experience, is also at its most vital in the school and
community setting. "The leader of our neighborhood group must interpret our experience to us, must
see all the different points of view which underlie our daily activities and also their connections, must
adjust the varying and often conflicting needs, must lead the group to an understanding of its needs
and to a unification of its purpose. He (or she) must give form to things vague, things latent, to mere
tendencies. He must be able to lead us to wise decisions, not to impose his own wise decisions
upon us" (p. 229).
Follett was not naive about community life. She knew from bitter experience that before a leader
could help people reach agreement, he or she must elicit engagement. "We must remember that
most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them
respond somehow, to overcome inertia. To disagree, as well as to agree, with people brings you
closer to them." She was aware of just how volatile community relations could become, how quickly
people form "enemy camps." But, she did not despair; instead she observed, "We could not have an
enemy unless there was much in common between us. Differences are always grounded in an
underlying similarity." She continues this thought with an insightful observation I find deeply moving
and in concert with my own experience. "I always feel intimate with my enemies. It is not opposition
but indifference which separates [humans]" (p. 212).
Constructive caring
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The metaphor of leadership as a mature friendship would also appeal to Follett (Perreault, 36-37).
Follett sought out friends who would challenge her thinking, not confirm her thoughts. "A friendship
based on likenesses and agreements alone is a superficial matter enough. The deep and lasting
friendship is one capable of recognizing and dealing with all the fundamental differences that must
exist between any two individuals, one capable therefore of such an enrichment of our personalities
that together we shall mount to new heights of understanding and endeavor" (Follett, 1918, p. 41).
Always a believer in action over academia, she noted, "I learn my duty to my friends not by reading
essays on friendship, but by living my life with my friends and learning by experience the obligations
friendship demands" (p.198).
Yet, she might want to explore further the concept of "care ethics," which Perreault describes as
placing "primacy on care and responsibility for others" (Perreault, 34). For many years Follett worked
in Boston's teeming neighborhoods, fed daily by streams of immigrants leaving Europe and Canada to
seek the "good life" in America. After two decades, much of which she devoted to turning quiescent
neighborhood schools into active round-the-clock community centers, she was able to step back from
her own work, and the work of other Boston reformers, to examine their accomplishments and engage
in self-criticism.
At present nearly all our needs are satisfied by external agencies, government or institutional. Health
societies offer health to us, recreation associations teach us how to play, civic art leagues give us
more beautiful surroundings, associated charities give us poor relief. A kind lady leads my girl to the
dentist, a kind young man finds employment for my boy, a stern officer of the city sees that my
children are in their places at school. I am constantly being acted upon, no one is encouraging me to
act. Thus am I robbed of my most precious possession--my responsibilities--for only the active
process of participation can shape me for the social purpose" (p.235).
Presaging President Kennedy's famous inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country," Follett concluded that "The question which the state must
always be trying to answer is how it can do more for its members at the same time that it is stimulating
them to do more for themselves." Midstream she corrects herself, adding, "No, more than this, its
doing more for them must take the form of their doing more for themselves" (p. 237).
Conclusion
~~~~~~~~~~
Ever the social anthropologist, Follett drew her inspiration and examples from wherever they
presented themselves. Richard C. Cabot, friend and professor of medical ethics, wrote a tribute to
Follett after her death in which he remarked that she was "a creative listener and a creative
questioner. She took an intense interest in the ideas of philosophers, economists, psychologists and
businessmen with whom she talked" (Cabot, 1934). He might have added that she did the same with
"salesgirls" in Filenes Department store, longshoremen on Boston's wharves, elevator operators,
ambassadors, nurses, Supreme Court justices, maids, friends—all who touched her life.
Undoubtedly she was influenced by the many remarkable women with whom she worked side-by-side
for so many years. In reflecting upon the power of leadership as the power of integrating, and thus
the power which creates community, she uses the distinctly feminine imagery of a hostess at a dinner
party. Most women and some men will recognize the myriad of interactive skills she is attempting to
honor by her use of this overlooked commonplace illustration.
With some hostesses you all talk across at one another as entirely separate individuals, pleasantly
and friendly to be sure, but still across unbridged chasms. While other hostesses have the power of
making you all feel for the moment related, as if you were one little community for the time being.
This is a subtle as well as a valuable gift. It is one that leaders of men must possess. It is thus that
the collective will is evolved from out of the chaos of varied personality and complex circumstances
(Follett, 1918, p.230).
If Follett were alive today, she would undoubtedly find a way to invite all the authors contributing to
the first volume of A Leadership Journal to a face-to-face gathering at her townhouse at the base of
Boston's Beacon Hill or her summer retreat in Putney, Vermont. There over sherry or tea, a
conversation about leadership would flow among the participants, building, growing, ever expanding
individual and group thinking. The sparks might fly, but all the better for she loved the energy of
difference. She felt confident that "all polishing is done by friction" (Follett, 1940/1973, p. 2).
Eduard C. Lindeman, Follett's friend and colleague and author of several books on community
leadership, captured the exhilarating nature of Follett as hostess in a testimonial to her published
shortly after her death. He begins by observing that "Mary Follett was the most highly sensitized
person I have ever known," He then traces her New England intellectual roots and the timeless nature
of her thinking. "She was preoccupied with questions of rather than quantity, wholeness rather than
parts, synthesis rather than dissection." He comments that her written reveals a mind "constantly
growing in richness of content and fineness of perception."
He ends on a more personal note, however, by recognizing "namely her great gift to me," which was
time spent together in animated conversation. As a prelude to collaborating on common interests,
Follett invited Lindeman, Herbert Crowley and Professor Albert Dwight Sheffield (and undoubtedly
Ada Eliot Sheffield, Albert's wife and T.S. Eliot's sister, but more importantly, an experienced
probation officer) to stay a week with her and Isobel Briggs, her companion of 30 years, at their
summer home in Putney, Vermont. Upon reflection, Lindeman said, "It seems to me now that this
was the most intellectual event of my total experience" (Lindeman, 1934).
That was her way--engaging all she met in an exploration of ideas, always grounded in experience,
but never tied to the old, always instead seeking to create the new. "Experience may be hard," she
believed, "but we claim its gifts because they are real, even though our feet bleed on its stones"
(Follett, 1924, p. 302).
Liquid Leadership: The Wisdom of Mary Parker Follett (1868 - 1933
By Albie M. Davis
Henry Gantt's legacy to production management is the following:




The Gantt chart: Still accepted as an important management tool today, it provides a graphic
schedule for the planning and controlling of work, and recording progress towards stages of a
project. The chart has a modern variation, Program Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT).
Industrial Efficiency: Industrial efficiency can only be produced by the application of scientific
analysis to all aspects of the work in progress. The industrial management role is to improve
the system by eliminating chance and accidents.
The Task And Bonus System: He linked the bonus paid to managers to how well they taught
their employees to improve performance.
The social responsibility of business: He believed that businesses have obligations to the
welfare of society that they operate in.
Wikipedia
Henry Laurence Gantt (1861-1919) was a mechanical engineer, management consultant and industry
advisor. He developed Gantt charts in the second decade of the 20th century as a visual tool to show
scheduled and actual progress of projects. Accepted as a common-place project management tool
today, it was quite a radical concept and an innovation of world-wide importance in the 1920s. Gantt
charts were first used on large construction projects like the Hoover Dam, started in 1931 and the
interstate highway network which started in 1956.
PLANNING & SCHEDULING
Use a Gantt chart to plan how long a project should take.
A Gantt chart lays out the order in which the tasks need to be carried out.
Early Gantt charts did not show dependencies between tasks but modern Gantt chart software
provides this capability.
MONITORING A PROJECT
A Gantt chart lets you see immediately what should have been achieved at any point in time.
A Gantt chart lets you see how remedial action may bring the project back on course.
Most Gantt charts include "milestones" which are technically not available on Gantt charts.
However, for representing deadlines and other significant events, it is very useful to include this
feature on a Gantt chart.
EVOLUTION OF THE GANTT CHART
Here's a simple example that
might have been used around
the time Gantt charts were
invented (if computers had
also been available to make
the charts look this precise:)
Early Gantt chart users showed
progress using a simple "fill in the bar"
method to show how much of the
project was complete:
They also might have shown the
planned bar along side the progress
bar like this:
Another type of chart which was
used along with the Gantt chart
was the basic "Milestone chart".
This type of chart shows only
important project events or
milestones:
Milestone charts are very popular today, especially for management reporting. A major benefit is
that it's easy to communicate a great deal of information in a single presentation slide. This example
shows how the complete overall progress of two major projects might be presented to upper
management:
Combining the gantt chart and the milestone chart was the next logical step. This "Remodeling
Project" uses bars to show the time required for each phase of the remodeling project. Important
milestones are shown with a single diamond symbol:
Gantt Chart Terminology
Term
Meaning
Budget
A fiscal plan of operations for a given time period.
Baseline
The project's original plan. Usually, the project's first set of start and finish dates.
Earned Value (EV)
Earned value is synonymous with the term BCWP (Budget Cost for Work Performed). The actual
measured performance; the value of the completed work.
Gantt Chart
A common way of showing tasks over time. Gantt chart EXAMPLES
Level of Effort (LOE)
Work which doesn't yield a final product. Examples: coordination, follow-up and other support
activities.
Milestone
An important event.
Time Now
or Current Date Line
A vertical line showing the date on which the status of the project was last done. Often this date is the
same as the current date.
If a task is on schedule, it will usually be shaded up to the time now line. If it is ahead of schedule it
will be shaded beyond the time now line. If it is behind schedule the shading will not reach the time
now line.
Project Management Institute (PMI)
A non-profit group dedicated to improving project management, providing education and certification
to project managers and more. (www.pmi.org)
PERT
Program Evaluation Review Technique, a project management method developed by the United
States Navy.
Task List
The list of steps in a project.
Statement of Work (SOW)
A document describing the work to be done on the contract.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
A tree-like representation of the work to be done on a project. The WBS graphically shows the
division of work.
Kidasa software
Harold S. Geneen, an executive seen by many as both the architect of the international conglomerate
and the most significant and controversial businessman of the 1960's and 70's, died of a massive
heart attack at New York Hospital on Friday evening, his secretary, Marie Serio, said. He was 87.
An accountant by training, during his life Mr. Geneen was compared to Gen. George S. Patton,
Alexander the Great and Napoleon. He was called a great leader but was also a corporate autocrat
who treated foreign governments like subsidiaries. He was a man, some said, who would have bought
up the world if given the chance.
As it was, he made the most of the opportunities that were provided.
When he was named president and chief executive of the International Telephone and Telegraph
Corporation in 1959, it was a company concentrating on the foreign telephone business, one that had
less than $800,000 a year in revenue.
Over the next two decades, Mr. Geneen transformed ITT, virtually inventing the international
conglomerate. He did it by buying companies. All sorts of companies.
When he stepped down as chief executive at the end of 1977, ITT was the 11th-largest industrial
company in the United States, a colossus with more than 375,000 employees and $16.7 billion in
revenue.
Among other things, the companies he bought -- some 350 in 80 countries -- baked bread, rented
cars, built houses, made grass seed, wrote insurance policies, rented billboards and ran hotels.
Along the way, Mr. Geneen stretched his people and his company to the legal limits, scarring the
company's image to the point where it became a popular symbol of corporate arrogance and
insensitivity.
There were charges in 1972 and 1973 that ITT had offered $400,000 in contributions to the
Republican National Convention in return for a favorable settlement in an antitrust case. The charges,
prompted by a memo from Dita Beard, an ITT lobbyist, were denied and never proved.
There were also disclosures that in 1970 ITT tried to block the election of Chilean President Salvador
Allende Gossens, a Marxist who nationalized an ITT subsidiary and was overthrown in 1973.
ITT initially denied the charges but subsequently admitted in 1976 that it ''might'' have sent $350,000
to Chile in 1970 for what it described as ''political'' purposes. Mr. Geneen maintained that the
contribution was legal under Chilean and American law and had not been used to support any
irregular or violent action.
Evidence of questionable ITT payments to foreign governments and others in the 1970's kept
appearing after Mr. Geneen left the company.
In its sweep, Mr. Geneen's career brought him into the heart of debates about an individual's role in a
corporation and a corporation's role in the world that have preoccupied the financial community for
two generations.
He was lionized and demonized for everything from ITT's voracious acquisitiveness to the
compensation of its executives. Before shareholder revolts were common, there was shareholder
dissension at ITT, and the allegations about interference in Chile made ITT board meetings a magnet
for demonstrations .
But nothing shook Mr. Geneen's self-confidence. Among the 250 acquisitions ITT made during his 18year tenure were the Sheraton hotel chain and Avis Rent-a-Car. At the same time, ITT's sales rose
from about $700 million to about $17 billion. Its profits rose from $29 million to $550 million.
Mr. Geneen's management practices and style were widely imitated. His diversification strategy was
one that other American business moguls, including Charles Bludhorn, the man who transformed
what was once Gulf and Western, and J. Peter Grace Jr., who ran W. R. Grace & Company, rushed
to embrace.
But Mr. Geneen, who was born in Bournemouth, England, and came to the United States when he
was a year old, was there before anyone else.
''He had the ideas first,'' said Rand V. Araskog, who became ITT's chairman and chief executive in
1979 and has spent the last two decades selling or spinning off most of the companies Mr. Geneen
acquired.
''Everyone else was a follower,'' he said.
Mr. Geneen's management philosophy, which has been studied in business schools, dissected in
academic papers and was the subject of a book, ''Managing,'' which he co-wrote in 1984, was to give
his managers overlapping responsibilities so that checks and balances existed on everyone.
Confrontations, which were inevitable in such a system, were tolerable as long as all facts were made
available.
And as the man at the top, Mr. Geneen, the prototypical workaholic, made sure he had all the facts.
He worked 70 to 80 hours a week when he ran ITT and was a man who always needed to know
everything.
More than 100 managers were required to furnish him with weekly reports and more detailed filings
every month. A month before he retired, 146 reports totaling 2,537 pages poured into his office. He
read them all.
''I don't believe in just ordering people to do things,'' he said in an interview for an article in The New
York Times in 1977 that looked back at his tenure at ITT.
''You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them,'' he said. ''My philosophy is to stay as close as
possible to what's happening. If I can't solve something, how the hell can I expect my managers to?''
Mr. Araskog said Mr. Geneen ''felt it was his job to carry ITT on his shoulders.''
''He worked incredible hours,'' he added, ''and motivated people with fear, kindness, threats,
everything under the sun to get the most out of people.''
And Mr. Geneen was always mindful of the Government's power. Aside from the antitrust action, in
the 1970's he backed away from a bid to acquire the American Broadcasting Corporation when it
appeared the Government might fight him.
''He gave up on ABC because at the last minute he was scared about the cash flow and the
Government,'' Mr. Araskog said.
Mr. Geneen got his first job, at the New York Stock Exchange, when he was 16.
Before joining ITT, Mr. Geneen worked for several years as an accountant at the firm of Lybrand Ross
Brothers and Montgomery. Later, he held executive positions at companies including the American
Can Company, the Bell and Howell Company and the Raytheon Company.
And he did not sink into a soft retirement after he left ITT.
From an office in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, he continued to buy and sell companies and
remained active in business until his death.
In 1984, he boasted in another article in The Times that his post-retirement deal-making had earned
him far more than he ever made at ITT.
''I have a belief that if you keep working, you'll last longer, and I just want to keep vertical,'' he said.
''I'd hate to spend the rest of my life trying to outwit an 18-inch fish.''
At the time of his death, Mr. Geneen was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Salk Institute, of
New York University and was on the board of Governors of the School of Medicine of the University of
Miami. He also continued to serve as chairman and director of four companies and was a board
member on three others.
Although work was an all-abiding passion, Mr. Geneen did make some time for hobbies.
He fished and played golf into his 80's, enjoyed photography and listening to Dixieland jazz and
picking at the banjo.
The death of Mr. Geneen, who is survived by his wife, the former June Hjelm, comes less than two
weeks after ITT shareholders approved a takeover proposal that by early next year will eliminate it as
an independent entity.
The shareholder vote came at the end of a bitter 10-month struggle with the Hilton Hotels
Corporation, which at the end of January began a hostile takeover of ITT.
If all goes according to plan, by the end of January ITT will become part of Starwood Lodging Trust, a
company that emerged at the eleventh hour to rescue ITT from Hilton.
In an interview a few weeks ago, Mr. Araskog said he thought Mr. Geneen would have approved of
the deal but would have liked it better had ITT been acquiring Starwood.
Subsequent to that interview, but before the vote, Mr. Geneen telephoned Mr. Araskog.
''He called me to say he was with us,'' Mr. Araskog said yesterday.
Photo: Harold S. Geneen. (The New York Times, 1984)
KENNETH N. GILPIN
Sumantra Ghoshal - Professor of the Spring Strategy
Frank & Lillian Gilbreth - Motion Study Pioneers
Lillian Moller Gilbreth, PhD, (May 24, 1878 – January 2, 1972) was one of the first working female
engineers holding a PhD. She was born in Oakland, California to William and Anne (née Delger)
Moller.
She is arguably the first true industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband Frank
Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. were pioneers in the field of industrial engineering. Their interest in time and
motion study may have had something to do with the fact that they had an extremely large family. The
books Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes, written by their children Ernestine and Frank
Jr., are the story of their family life with their twelve children.
She served as an advisor to Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on
matters of civil defense, war production and rehabilitation of the physically handicapped.
She and husband Frank have a permanent exhibit in the Smithsonian National Museum of American
History and her portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA (1900) and MA (1902)[1][2]. Lillian
completed her dissertation to obtain her Ph.D from the University of California, but did not receive the
degree because she was not able to complete the residency requirements. Her dissertation was titled
The Psychology of Management. She later earned a Ph.D from Brown University in 1915, having
written a dissertation. It was the first degree granted in industrial psychology. She also received 22
honorary degrees from such schools as Princeton University, Brown University, and the University of
Michigan.
In her work, Lillian Gilbreth combined the perspectives of an engineer, a psychologist, a wife, and a
mother; she helped industrial engineers see the importance of the psychological dimensions of work.
She became the first American engineer ever to combine a synthesis of psychology and scientific
management. She and her husband were certain that the revolutionary ideas of Frederick Winslow
Taylor, as Taylor formulated them, would be neither easy to implement nor sufficient; their
implementation would require hard work by both engineers and psychologists to make them
successful. Both Lillian and Frank Gilbreth believed that scientific management as formulated by
Taylor fell short when it came to managing the human element on the shop floor. [3] The Gilbreths
helped formulate a constructive critique of Taylorism; this critique had the support of other successful
managers.[4]
On top of having twelve children, writing books, helping companies with their management skills,
managing women consumers, Lillian was instrumental in the design of a desk, that she designed in
1933 in cooperation with IBM for display at the Chicago World’s Fair.
Management Theory
Lillian Gilbreth's work focused on inefficiency and waste - not only the waste of time and motion but
also the waste of potential human satisfaction and fulfillment that could be derived from work. She
believed that poorly planned jobs made work tiresome and destroyed enjoyment of the task. Her
theory was that managers and owners needed to structure authority in the workplace and that each
employee deserved basic human dignity. In The Psychology of Management, she argued that
psychology could and should become part of scientific management.
One of her studies is motion, which could “make visible the invisible.” The Gilbreths state that work is
made up of an infinite number of cycles-molecules-and that each cycle should in itself be made up of
correct minute parts of the cycle-therbligs-atoms, otherwise there is lost motion or waste". Lillian
Gilbreth, unlike Taylor, brought human elements to industrial engineering. She believed that
satisfaction comes from using one’s skills, that standardized work could also be skilled work.
Work for Companies
Her most obvious work included the marketing research for Johnson & Johnson in 1926 and her work
to improve women’s spending decisions during the first years of the Great Depression. She also
helped many famous companies like Johnson & Johnson, and Macys, with the companies’
management departments. In 1926, when Johnson & Johnson hired Lillian Gilbreth as a consultant,
the firm benefited in three ways. First, it could use her training as a psychologist in measuring and the
analysis of attitudes and opinions. Second, it could give her the experience of an engineer who
specializes in the interaction between bodies and material objects. Third, she would be a public image
as a mother of 11 and a modern career woman to build consumer trust. While at Johnson & Johnson
Gilbreth studied psychological effects of the outer packaging of sanitary napkins. [3]
Books/Essays
It was through Lillian Gilbreth’s writing and speeches that she had her most direct impact on
management. She wrote The Psychology of Management (1914), ISBN 1437522181, her unpublished
doctoral dissertation, and Fatigue Study (1916). She wrote the index for Field System, she and her
husband Frank together wrote his purportedly single-authored books Concrete System and
Bricklaying System while their children were asleep (Gilbreth 1998). In. addition, she has written
essays, Motion Study, Primer of Scientific Management, Applied Motion Study, and Motion Study for
the Handicapped, Gilbreth contributed about 50 percent or higher. [3]
[edit] Marriage
Lillian married Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr., on October 19, 1904, in Oakland, California. As planned,
they became the parents of twelve children, eleven of whom lived to adulthood. [5][6]
Gilbreth, Inc.
Together she and her husband were partners in the management consulting firm of Gilbreth, Inc.
which performed time and motion studies. A time and motion study would be used to reduce the
number of motions in performing a task in order to increase productivity Productivity is a measure of
output from a production process, per unit of input. For example, labor productivity is typically
measured as a ratio of output per labor-hour, an input. Productivity may be conceived of as a metric
of the technical or engineering efficiency of production. As such, the emphasis is on quantitative
metrics of input, and sometimes output. Productivity is distinct from metrics of allocative efficiency,
which take into account both the monetary value (price) of what is produced and the cost of inputs
used, and also distinct from metrics of profitability, which address the difference between the
revenues obtained from output and the expense associated with consumption of inputs. Courbois &
Temple 1975, Gollop 1979, Kurosawa 1975, Pineda 1990, Saari 2006
The best known experiment involved bricklaying. Through carefully scrutinising a bricklayer's job,
Frank Gilbreth reduced the number of motions in laying a brick from 18 to about 5. Hence the
bricklayer both increased productivity and decreased fatigue.
The Gilbreths developed what they called therbligs ("therblig" being "Gilbreth" spelled backwards), a
classification scheme comprising 18 basic hand motions. 1920 Frank B. and Lillian Gilbreth
developed their time and motion studies. The Gilbreths showed the importance of the total working
environment by reducing unnecessary motions.
Their children often took part in the experiments, and the family worked as a team.
She died on January 2, 1972 in Phoenix, Arizona.[13]Legacy
Gilbreth, sometimes called "The First Lady of Engineering," was the first woman elected into the
National Academy of Engineering. She also held Professorships at Purdue University, The Newark
College of Engineering (currently known as New Jersey Institute of Technology) and the University of
Wisconsin–Madison.
In 1984, the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp in Gilbreth's honor[14], and she was
lauded by the American Psychological Association as the first psychologist to be so commemorated.
While psychologists Gary Brucato Jr. and John D. Hogan later questioned this claim, noting that John
Dewey had appeared on an American stamp 17 years earlier, they also emphasized that Gilbreth was
the first female psychologist to do so[15]. Moreover, a complete, international list of psychologists on
stamps compliled by Psychology Historian Ludy T. Benjamin indicates that Gilbreth was only the
second female psychologist commemorated by a postage stamp in all the world, preceded only by
Maria Montessori in India in 1970
Wikepedia
Dr. Goldratt is lauded as the father of the Theory of Constraints Theory of Constraints (TOC) is an
overall management philosophy that aims to continually achieve more of the goal of a system. If that
system is a for-profit business, then the goal is to make more money, both now and in future. Theory
of Constraints (TOC) is an overall management philosophy. Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt introduced the
Theory of constraints in his seminal 1984 book titled The Goal. It is based on the application of
scientific principles and logic reasoning to guide human-based organizations. The publicity and
leadership behind these ideas has been dominated by Dr. Goldratt through a series of books,
seminars and workshops.
TOC is geared to help organizations continually achieve their goals.[1][2]
TOC is based on a set of basic principles (axioms)[3], a few simple processes (Strategic Questions,
Focusing Steps, Buy-In processes, Effect-Cause-Effect), logic tools (The Thinking Processes or TP)
and through the logical derivation of these some applications to specific fields (Operations, Finance,
Distribution, Project Management, People Management, Strategy, Sales and Marketing).
According to TOC, every organization has - at any given point in time - at least one constraint which
limits the system's performance relative to its goal (see Liebig's law of the minimum). These
constraints can be broadly classified as either an internal constraint or a market constraint. In order to
manage the performance of the system, the constraint must be identified and managed correctly
(according to the Five Focusing Steps below). Over time the constraint may change (e.g., because
the previous constraint was managed successfully, or because of a changing environment) and the
analysis starts anew.
His best selling book, The Goal, is included in the curriculum of many major business schools around
the world.
Viable Vision is based on Goldratt's years of practical experience testing and applying scientific
principles to transform real manufacturing, distribution and project management-type companies.
"When I do a Viable Vision analysis of a company, I am satisfied only when I clearly see how it is
possible to bring the company to have, in less than four years, net profit equal to its current total
sales," says Dr. Goldratt.
During the Viable Vision Offer Event, Dr. Goldratt will explain how it is possible for a company to
substantially increase sales and profits and how the Viable Vision tools and solutions are difficult for
competitors to copy. The result of the Viable Vision process is a road map for companies to achieve
exponential growth Extremely fast growth. On a chart, the line curves up rather than being straight.
Contrast with linear. in profits without relying on new product breakthrough or focusing on niche
markets A niche market also known as a target market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a
market sector.
By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or
service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.
..... Click the link for more information..
"When we were presented with the Viable Vision concept, we were intrigued," says an owner and
President of a manufacturing business. "However, we were skeptical that someone could come up
with something that we hadn't thought about ourselves. But, after meeting with Dr. Goldratt, we had to
agree that his Viable Vision for our company could be real."
The Free Library