Page 51 - (DK) The Business Book

START SMALL, THINK BIG 49

See also: Beating the odds at start-up 20–21 ■ Take the second step 43 ■ Reinventing and adapting 52–57 ■ The Greiner
curve 58–61 ■ The weightless start-up 62–63 ■ Beware the yes-men 74–75 ■ The capability maturity model 218–19

Companies must look
to the experience
of middle managers
for growth.
It is the structure of the
organization, rather than the
employees alone, which holds
the key to improving the
As a business
quality of output. matures and grows it
W. Edwards Deming This requires will require systems,
US business professor (1900–93) experienced handling.
procedures, and
protocols.

way to the comfort of habit, and Companies must balance Those systems are the
in ever-dynamic markets habit structure with purview of middle
can too easily lead to stasis and flexibility. management.
stagnation. The danger for
management is that, as US investor
Warren Buffet warned, “chains of
habit are too light to be felt until
they are too heavy to be broken.” But too much
process can stifle
innovation and,
Middle management
therefore, growth.
The importance of middle
management was described by
business historian Alfred Chandler
in his 1977 text, The Visible Hand,
a play on economist Adam Smith’s transportation and communication As standardization and mass
“invisible hand” metaphor, which allowed firms to grow beyond the production emerged in the early 20th
explains the self-regulating forces immediate gaze of friends or family, century, the role of management
of the market. Chandler noted that and beyond the immediate locale. grew. Business was taking place on
before 1850, family firms dominated But to prosper in this new an increasingly global scale. Even
business in the USA. These firms environment, companies needed before mechanization, coordination
had poor communication networks more rigorous processes and from managers enabled mass
and limited access to educated structures. The increasing production. Standardization turned
staff, so rarely grew beyond groups geographic scope and size of management into a science, and
of family and friends who could be businesses required new levels of managers into a vital cog in the
educated, trained, and trusted to coordination and communication. organizational machine.
manage the business. Businesses had grown too unwieldy
However, with the growth of for one person to manage; they Enablers and enterprise
national railroad networks in the required the oversight of a team of In a 2007 Harvard Business Review
1850s, the management landscape people. This marked the emergence article “The Process Audit,” US
began to change. Improvements in and rise of the professional manager. businessman Michael Hammer ❯❯