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Accidents of Management "It is accident" (about disintegration of the USSR) Lazar Kaganovich
Today accidents of management are perhaps the most complex, artful and at first sight imperceptible of all the accidents the mankind has to face. The processes provoking them are considered very slow. Sometimes it seems to me, that almost no economic, social, political or other crises can be caused by human activity alone. It is the essence of the management accidents phenomenon, and crises are the consequences of the latter. Let me draw the following example: the building ruined by an earthquake. Management accidents are similar to earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, being however more crafty and severe. It is quite difficult to define and diagnose them, and the developed preventive and fighting measures are still far from being perfect. However, the consequences can be far more terrible - civil wars (even world wars), revolutions, changes of governments, etc., plus broken economic and economical bases - famine, cold, horror, sometimes destruction of cultures and civilizations. Frequently we attribute social cataclysms to a certain functionary, whom we consider incapable of operating the state or region, making him "the switchman" of history and the one to blame for all sins. But it is far from being so. Certainly, our rulers may be partially guilty - but, most likely, cataclysms happen due to our incapability to make correct decisions in complex situations, to adequately and operatively estimate a situation and try to correct it properly. The society is even more guilty, being involved in the epidemic destruction of general management principles, is even more guilty. Who can measure the guilt of a briber in the progress of corruption? And why we choose presidents who lead us to the crash - who is to blame: the president or its voter? Unfortunately, there are no universal rulers - each person can be a good manager only in well-defined conditions - stable progress, crisis management, transition periods - a leader capable to pull the nation out from the abyss of chaos and fear often cannot provide systematic and progressive development of the nation - "there is no war, we can start it", is not it familiar? So, it is important for the progress of the human system that such persons should occupy the key positions in certain historical periods. It is frequently defined as continuity of generations, when a dictator is followed by quite a loyal head and the nation continues to develop progressively. So let us define the accident of management. First of all, any human system, it can be a state, an enterprise, a party, a family, etc., represents a developed management hierarchy. It is impossible for two people to rule a boat together in the open ocean, as it is not clear who will be responsible for running the boat aground or landing late to the port. We can speak of the controlled and predictable system in case the hierarchy of management carries out the orders adequately. Predictability here is defined as accordance between any influence on the system (an order or an installation) and its results. I mean that an order to screw up a hundred screws requires that all of them (perhaps a little more or less) should be screwed up. However if instead of screwing up the staff chops firewood, it is minimum a signal of management accident. Thus, the human system has to adequately and according to the accepted laws and principles react to any external and internal influences. Otherwise, we shall expect the civilizations run into forests and disappear further on (with no reasons obviously seen for the future generations). This is the accident of management itself - a spontaneous and fast destruction of the management structure of the human community. It may seem strange, but I often ask myself: if the mankind keeps creating good laws, than why they do not always work and why so many problems in the society remain unsolved. It is most likely that human society, as well as any other system, constantly faces certain shakings (similar to movement of air flows or earth), which influence our life. But it sometimes happened that "human" typhoons, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions destroyed the whole civilizations. And people get puzzled, trying to understand how a highly developed civilization could disappear. These shakings also represent the waves of management and organization of the human community. Our laws will work only in case they will correspond to the nature of phenomena. Otherwise, the law guards can turn into robbers and extortionists. Actually, the new century is likely to be the century when the mankind will learn to properly operate and prevent cataclysms and their consequences, using all the information power of new technologies. To prevent means to predict an accident and to have a complex of measures, which will allow smoothing of consequences (same as with natural accidents - where to run, what to switch off, what to do and what not to do). For its history the mankind has created many devices and developed many algorithms, which help to predict natural accidents. Now it is time to decide what we want to do and how to develop our business. Thus, we are facing a great progress of computers and automation algorithms in various fields of activity, which is more important, as well as a development of numerous standards. So, we can say that we have finally started to operate ourselves in the right way. However, the problem of understanding the essence of the management accidents phenomenon is very actual and still awaiting to be solved, because people have created much tools of self-destruction, now it is important to learn not to use them. It is even more important to prevent any uncontrollable processes to start against our will. It is necessary to make the thesis "we wanted to do our best, however it has all turned out to be bad as always" remain just a comical example in books on management - it is surprising how dull they once used to be. "Accident of management" - I hear the magic phrase with increasing frequency. It means, that the mankind has started to realize the need to create a management science, and, thus, to develop certain measures to struggle with such a dangerous phenomenon as accidents of management. | |||||||
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