(Refs:
THE FIRST THING AN EXECUTIVE OR MANAGER AT ANY LEVEL NEEDS TO KNOW IS THAT HE HAS TOOLS WITH WHICH TO MANAGE.
This applies to top levels of management, to middle-management echelons and in every org from the CO or ED down through the Exec Council and every head of a division or department.
This datum is the result of a recent, eye-opening breakthrough.
The breakthrough was not a matter of discovering or developing or improving the materials which make up the tools of management. Org boards, the Admin Scale, target policy, planning and programing, statistics, graphs and conditions (to name a few of these tools) have been a part of our technology, well-defined, available for use and used for quite some years now.
THE BREAKTHROUGH WAS IN DISCOVERING THAT A GREAT MANY EXECUTIVES DID NOT LOOK UPON THESE AS TOOLS.
But unless one does recognize them as tools, unless one actually puts them in the category of tools, like rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows, he is apt to think of them as opinions or theories or something of the sort. He won’t recognize that he does have actual tools with which to manage. And, not realizing this, he won’t USE them in managing.
Such a scene could be compared to somebody building a house who didn’t even know he was trying to build a house and, should this be pointed out to him, he would look at hammers and saws as if they were total strangers. He wouldn’t wind up with a house.
Any activity has its tools. And if one is going to engage in an activity, he had better know what its tools are and that they are for use.
We are rich in management tools but the most fundamental of them, required for use at any executive level from the highest to the lowest, are these:
Each of these fundamental tools is defined and covered briefly in HCO PL 31 July 1983, BASIC MANAGEMENT TOOLS.
None of these are complicated. They are actually SIMPLE but VITALLY, VITALLY IMPORTANT.
One gets some terminals, gets them some lines, gets the channels of command and echelon worked out, gets in strategic planning and with that one can achieve some coordination.
But it is necessary to be able to conceive of purpose (which, in target policy, becomes objectives). And it is necessary to be able to write targets that will accomplish that objective or that purpose. To get the targets done one needs lines and terminals there. And to have lines and terminals, of course, one has to have an org board.
SIMPLE. But VITALLY IMPORTANT.
In laying out these tools we are laying out the fundamentals of organization as that, most definitely, is what these tools are. And these tools will give one an organization. Without them, you don’t have an organization; you have a mob. And if one cannot figure out purpose or objectives or write targets and telexes and get hatting done and hats worn they’ll just keep on being a mob. But correct use of just this basic list of management tools can turn a mob into a producing organization!
A fast, instant-hat type of checksheet called Exec Status One is being provided to swiftly train execs and managers at all levels on these tools.
This is not a substitute for an OEC or FEBC. But it is vital that an exec starts using these tools right now, instantly and at once yesterday, if he considers himself an executive or is in a position of handling an organization of any type, size or kind. Because if he doesn’t use these tools, he’s going to lay an egg.
Once the exec has passed this first checksheet, Exec Status One, it’s an ethics offense to fail to use these tools properly. One would handle a first or second offense with cramming, but after that it’s a Court of Ethics and, in the case of a person having trained on these tools continuing to misapply or not apply these tools, it becomes a matter for a Comm Ev.
1. First, an executive or manager must know that actual TOOLS EXIST for his use in managing.
2. Second, he needs to know WHAT his tools are.
3. Third, he must realize that these tools are SIMPLE but VITALLY, VITALLY IMPORTANT, that they are for USE and he must USE THEM.
[Note: This issue was added just as the book was about to go to press and after the subject index was completely typeset. Thus index entries from this issue do not appear in the main subject index. However, a supplementary subject index has been added on page 731.]