Any practical person in charge of anything periodically asks the question: ‘How do we get things done most effectively?’ In asking such a question what is not required is a theoretical discussion about which model of organization, say socialist or capitalist, is better or whether private enterprise can do a better job than public administration. The whole big muddle in this area of theory and academic sloganeering was summed up beautifully by a statement once made by a Trade Minister of Sri Lanka.
“To my mind, today… we have taken a Socialist road, but in practical terms Socialism means whatever methods can be employed to improve the lot of the poor. If that includes Private Enterprise then that also is good.”
The fact is that practical men have to make all theories work. What yields the best results best serves mankind. Everything else is philosophy and intellectual entertainment.
It is thought by some that large organizations – big businesses or vast public corporations – hold the secret to efficiency. There is a strong tendency to place one’s faith in the economies and efficiencies of scale which great agglomerations supposedly give. Big firms seek salvation in taking over other companies to get even bigger. However, big organisations suffer from potentially fatal weaknesses. Consider just two flaws.
Motivation slackens and involvement diminishes. People lost in vast concerns withdraw themselves from deep interest in what is really going on. Some large concerns are better at motivating than others, but in general bigness breeds a feeling of remoteness from the action. If a big company is successful and making lots of money the heartbeat of the ordinary employee isn’t going to thud much faster nor will he usually sweat with much agony if the company is just ticking over or not doing very well. To get the best out of any man you have to convince him that his personal involvement and his individual contribution really matters and this can best be achieved in small groups. The group in fact has probably got to be very small. It is a cliché to point out that Jesus Christ tried twelve and that proved one too many.
Secondly, in any large organization there is an inexorable tendency towards bureaucracy – too much red tape, too many committee meetings, too much paper and forms and questionnaires and inter-department memos and monthly returns and circulating files, too many pettifogging regulations, too many references up or referrals down before decisions are made, too much settling for the lowest common denominator to get any agreement at all. Sad to say, in such an organization – whether it be big business, big corporation, or big ministry – even good impulses are ruined in practice. Take the praiseworthy impulse to keep everyone informed about what is going on. That is basically a good thing, but in a big organization what tends to happen is that an extraordinary amount of valuable time is spent by executives, managers and technical people holding countless conferences among themselves just to tell each other what they are all doing with the result that more and more they are all prevented from actually getting on with doing what they are so busy explaining to each other what they are going to do.
There is a growing school of thought that dynamic organizations even if they remain large, must simultaneously try to find ways of doing things in a competitive way within themselves, fostering what are sometimes called ‘intrapreneurial’ units. One of the seminal thinkers on this is Gifford Pinchot. He is quoted as saying:
“Decentralization alone is not enough. In a hierarchical organization, promotions can be won by special graces, loyalty to one’s boss, and general political skills. Courage, original thought and ability to observe and act on the obvious do not necessarily lead to success. If we are to get really good problem-solving in our decentralized corporations, we must introduce a system that gives rewards to those who get successful results, not to the inoffensive. Such people will be willing to take moderate risks and will be more concerned with achieving results than gaining influence.”
It is all very well to enunciate vast strategic schemes and wide-ranging theories. It is all very fine for people sitting at the center to issue general directives and outline marvellous projects. But in the end it is individual people working in small units away from the centre that have to get things done. The limelight must shift on to them and away from the overmighty, the oversized and the unproductive.
Poets are much wiser than politicians or businessmen or even scientists, engineers and computer programmers, so I will give a quotation from Edmund Spenser, the English Elizabethan poet: (He is the same one, by the way, who spoke for all public servants in hard-pressed times when he wrote: “And all for love and nothing for reward”).
A long time ago Edmund Spenser recognized that small was indeed not only beautiful but also all-important when he wrote:
How canst thou these greater secrets know
That dost not know the least thing of them all?
Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
