The Chinese proverb “Behind every able man there are always
other able men" is absolutely relevant in today’s modern management era. We
have able managers behind able workers. Managers decide the course for action
and guide the workers. Managers can be broadly classified into three levels as
shown in the figure below:
As
shown in the above figure, the decision making is completely done by the
managers. Workers solely focus on their specific task. The work is divided into
jobs and that is further subdivided into small activities and tasks(as shown in figure below) so that a
person with minimal skills will also be able to execute it. As the workers will
deal with their limited work area ,they will do it efficiently and hence the whole
productivity of organisation will increase
This is in complete contrast with the old management era
when the decision making and executing were done by the same person. As the
same person does both tasks, most of the time decision making gets hampered
because of pressure and hence the productivity decreases.
Modern Management Theory Old Management Theory
Though the above concepts were hard to digest initially but
Dr. Mandi explained them with his unique way of teaching. This time he came up
with wooden blocks. The task was to make a tower of blocks placing one over the
other by a blindfolded person and an open-eyed person. Blind-folded person
would be assisted by other person as he can’t see. Everybody predicted that
obviously an open-eyed person will make a bigger tower than a blind-folded with
an assistant. But, to our surprise, Blindfolded person with an assistant made a
bigger tower than an open-eyed person. We all were flabbergasted when we saw our
obvious prediction were proved wrong in front of us.
Prof. Mandi then
explained us correlation between this game and real corporate world. Blindfolded
person is the worker and his assistant who guides him is the Manager of modern
management system. Whereas, an open-eyed person who decides and does the work belongs
to old management system. This example clearly showed us that an able manager
and worker who solely focus on his task leaving
the deciding part to the manager will always do better than a person who does
both deciding and executing.The difference between old and modern management can be summarized as follows:
|
Parameter
|
Old
Management Theory
|
New
Management Theory
|
|
Work
|
Ambiguous
|
Crystal Clear
|
|
Decision
|
Ineffective decisions due to pressure
|
Better decisions by Experienced
Managers
|
|
Productivity
|
Low
|
High
|
|
Skill
|
Greater
|
Limited(Deskilling)
|
|
Satisfaction
|
Higher
|
Lower
|
Happy Reading !!!
