The number crunchers.

HISTORY, CULTURE AND POLITICS

In the following article, I will deal with the numerical approach of the Whiz Kids. McNamara's mistake, as I mentioned, was that he did not take into account "the history, culture, and politics of the (Vietnamese) people, as well as the personalities and habits of their leaders," before formulating the policies of the Johnson administration in the 1960s.

A PERPETUATING EVIL

As for current senior corporate executives, they are suffering the same pain as McNamara. They think figures, they talk figures and they exchange figures, instead of imagining projects, proposing visions and rewarding the behavior of actors in a situation of self-actualization in the space and time of work. They eat numbers, like a banker at a banquet!

SETTING OBJECTIVES OR SUPERVISING ACTIVITIES?

Unfortunately, it is not the numbers that make organizations, but the people who set the activity apart from them. And the performance on the job, which this imposes, has never been a matter of setting exercise objectives, and even less a matter of cutting production costs, but of motivating people to work in all organizational functions. Supervised management does not mean control, but rather motivation at work, support for the task, and recognition of people's contributions to the results of their activities.

MEASURE WHAT NEEDS TO BE MEASURED

If one wanted to measure staff performance on the job, one would have to start by measuring the degree of delegation of decision-making authority, the degree of transparency in governance, the degree of accountability of executives, and the degree of fairness of supervisors in the treatment of staff within organizations. All of these data are most often ignored, to the immediate benefit of financial statistics on capital, assets, and income. A real accountant's delirium taking himself for a broker or analyst on Wall Street... the time of a budget cycle in the organization.

CLAIMS SPECIFIC TO THE DEPRECIATION OF OTHERS

Managers seem to prefer a very particular work regime, as far as they are personally concerned. It is based on unproven claims of job-specific performance, whereas they hold depreciative views of the value added to the activity rendered to the rest of the organization's staff.

A SINGLE MEASURE, A SINGLE EXCESS

Double standards, not to say (more accurately) a single measure: that of the executives. But the same disproportion, that of the staff afflicted by such people at the helm of their organization's affairs. The former (executives) unerringly gain by appreciating themselves in terms of compensation in every conceivable form. The latter (staff) lose irretrievably by being discredited by those they serve... without being served in any way by the former. Banco! the dealer wins the bet because the deal was rigged from the start (a Trump trick, a form of moral delirium, by self-projection, in the appreciation of the intelligence of others).

THE WILL TO NUMBER FOR ONESELF, AND THE LACK OF HAVING FOR OTHERS

McNamara's mistake was to want numbers and value for oneself when one is an executive, and lack of numbers and value for others when they are subordinate. However, organizations, that perform best, know that the return on activity comes from the productivity of work because profit derives directly from it. The unfortunate thing for the staff is that the stock market is not keen on innovations in the productive organization, because R&D is costly and slow to induce profit.

CUTTING WHAT DESERVES TO BE CUT

If there is a need to cut, then executives are cutting back on novelty, including their business modes, methods, and practices. After all, what is known does not involve random risk, at least they imagine it. As for the unknown in new approaches to business, it is best to stay away from it and leave the boldest to pay the price for development before committing themselves to it. This explains the desolate slowness of reforms in the organization of antediluvian management modes, methods, and practices when the market for competitive advantage invites overtaking not by repetition but by innovative offers.

MORE IS NEVER ENOUGH

The rallying cry of "shareholder value" harvesters is More profit now and always! And better for me now, than for all others if ever!