Management science isn’t scientific at all

 
Charles H. Green of “trust Matters” has a provocative piece today about sales, titled Why Your Sales Process Is Bad for Sales. What he writes can be applied much more widely to management as a whole, especially that slick, debased version known as Hamburger Management.

Here’s the crux of his piece:

Why this obsession with metrics, behaviors and processes? Like I said, physics-envy. For over a century, many academic disciplines — including business, more recently — have had a case of “physics-envy.” They believe that only “real” data is meaningful, only particles and precision make for real “science.” Neuro-fill-in-the-blank is just the latest manifestation. Sociologists have had physics-envy for years, as did MIT’s Business School. Harvard used to be immune, but caught it as well a few decades back.

Today’s metrics-mania has almost nothing to do with understanding and everything to do with looking good and putting a positive spin on following the herd. Instead of slowing down and thinking deeply about strategy and organizational purpose, executives abdicate their responsibility, making decisions on the basis of figures they often scarcely understand.

This isn’t science. It’s superstition. They might as well be like the Romans and decide by looking for patterns on the livers of sacrificed chickens. The level of “science” is about the same.

Back to Charles Green’s piece:

Selling is not at root, despite what web-searches will tell you, about process. It is about people and relationships and trust. We are in most cases far, far past the point of significant value-add by linking systems. And in getting there, we have run roughshod over the value-add by human connections.

Management too — and leadership — is about human interactions: one person showing others the way forward and helping them contribute to making a vision of action into reality. Measurement can only come after the event. Relying on it is running forward while facing backwards.

Is it any wonder so many business, apparently lead by intelligent, highly trained people, have been guilty of making so many utterly foolish choices of late, like the banks with all the sub-prime loan mess?

Executives are paid to use their brains, not their spreadsheets!

[ratings]

Technorati Tags: Hamburger Management, obsession with metrics, metrics-mania, human interactions,