Taylor and Weber brought statistics to management. Unfortunately their concepts often also engendered an unhealthy and unproductive chasm between the new management positions it implied and the workers it no longer asked to think. [...]
Physicality
Maslow considered physical needs as the most basic. Obviously if a person is hungry or cold, they have no time for higher conceptual arguments, friendship or philosophy. Physical needs, or base needs also presuppose a stable, holistic foundation, and it is in this analogy that we wish to develop our concepts. [...]
Complexity
Imagine for example, an organization that can efficiently build a world class car even while it discovers and branches out into other related market niches, improving its profitability in the vehicle market as it progresses. Now imagine it doing so without clear leadership or hierarchy, able to successfully adapt to apparently disastrous scenarios such as the loss of half its staff, or the invention of an alternate fuel. [...]
Jim Leis
Qualifications I have held consulting, technical, and executive positions in systems design, strategy, finance, marketing and business development in a combination of private equity, public and private firms. I managed product lines totaling $4 billion in my last formal position. In the hundreds of product lines I have developed, our teams at least doubled previous [...] [...]
Alternatives to address Departmental Inefficiency
As organizations grow, alternatives exist to mitigate the inefficiencies of departmental hierarchies. Most of them, including adding people, don't address all the issues. Only embedding staff in multi-disciplinary groups and avoiding the overhead altogether are true solutions. Measurement can also help. [...]
