The 6 Management Gurus

Management Gurus

Frederick Taylor

Taylor is the father of scientific management.

What he thought:

He taught workers didn’t want or need to have responsibility. Without their managers, workers were nothing. It was the manager’s job to find the best workers and to teach them to work in the best possible way. It didn’t matter if the workers were unhappy. They were paid an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work and it was their job simply to obey.

From his point of view, machines came first and people came second. Managers learnt to control and workers were taught to obey. The boss’s word was law.

What he did:

He believed workers were lazy and he was sure that he could make them work harder. He studied each worker’s job until he had found a quicker way of doing it. Then he taught them the new way of working.

He timed the workers in order to force the pace. Those who couldn’t keep up with the others were fired. They didn’t have a word to say in the decision-making process.

The workers received incentives such as bonuses and fringe benefits.

Alfred Sloan

Sloan was the managing director of General Motors, the biggest and richest company in the world in his time.

He realized that he could win customers if he offered something different. He believed that General Motors should sell a car for every pocket and every purpose. So they reduced the number of companies and each of them sold its cars to a different part of the market.

=> a new product creates a new market

For him a manager was not just a business person who was interested only in profit, a manager was a professional. Even in the most difficult times, Sloan wanted the opinions of his managers. This decision-making process means that managers spent a long time in meetings and that the company often took decisions slowly.

Sloan built an organization which accepted competition, had a clear direction and a central financial control.

        Henry Ford

        Henry Ford was the CEO of Ford. His company produced only one car : the Ford T.

While Sloan was building an organization which accepted competition, HF was trying to increase his central control. Ford has spies everywhere in the company who told him about any new ideas or plans. The result was that his managers were afraid of taking any decisions.

Sloan listened to his workers whereas Taylors doesn’t take them into consideration.

Peter Drucker

Drucker invented modern management.

He predicted changes long before they happened.

For him, business wasn’t just about money. He said that a business should always be a part of society and act responsibly.  He thought the purpose of business was to create a customer and serve society. A business should always make something that people want to buy.

He believed a manager was someone who could see into the future, who could bring together people’s skills and energies to produce something that was exciting and new. One way to achieve that is by applying “management by objectives”. A manager should always understand where he or she wants to go. A company shout set an objective for a manager and then reward that person when they succeed.

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