• Ignorance of the work to be done or of the rules, regulations and work practices;
• Laziness and disinclination to hard work;
• Neglect of duty due to indulgence in sensual pleasures (for example chit chatting, browsing, social networking sites)
• Timidity due to fear of public discontent or uproar, (reactions from) evil persons or of untoward results;
• Corruption, particularly showing favors to selfish persons with whom the manager has had dealings;
• Short temper and tendency to violence (alienating those from whom he has to inspire to perform);
• Arrogance about his learning, his wealth or the support he gets from highly placed persons;
• Greed for incentives or higher pay which prompts him to use false metrics, observations, standards, or to make false assessments and calculations.

In such situations, Kautilya recommends that the penalty and disciplining shall be commensurate with the (gravity of the) offence. (i.e., not follow a rigid pattern but to take into account the circumstances of each case.)

This write-up is based on a section from Kautilya’s Arthasasthra dealing with productivity and economic wealth generation of the state. Though this was originally meant to assess the government servants in Maurya Kingdom in 3rd Century BC i.e., 23 centuries back. The wisdom is applicable to any business organization. In fact, to any organization including voluntary as well as government.

This write up is heavily modified from the original text because the social structure, livelihoods and economic activities were very different from the current economy and social situations. However, the negative characteristics of human nature specific to officers/managers have mostly not changed despite 23 centuries since the book was first written.

Necessity of scientific management
During F W Taylor’s days, workers used to choose their own work and trained themselves as best as they could. In those days, all the work and other responsibilities were thrown on the workmen. The management was unorganized as workers themselves used to take administrative decisions, which generally used to result in high expenditure costs to manufacturing output. F W Taylor was a mechanical engineer but sought to organize the management. So he began trying to discover a way for workers to increase their efficiency and productivity with low cost.

Principles of scientific management
According to Taylor, scientific management involves a complete mental revolution on part of workers towards their duties, their work, their fellow employees and their problems and towards their managers. The main objective of the management is to secure maximum prosperity for the employer as well as for each employee of the organization. He stresses more on the productive efficiency of each worker through scientific management which would maximize the earnings of workers and employers.

Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful examination of work. Taylor thought that by analyzing or assessing the work, “One Best Way” to do it could be found. He said that an organization should scientifically select, train, teach and develop workers. There must be equal division of work and responsibility between management and workers. Taylor focused more on cooperation, not individualism.

Techniques of scientific management
Taylor proposed the concept of functional foremanship under which a worker is supervised and guided by eight functional foremen or specialized supervisors. He didn’t believe in single foremanship where a worker receives orders from only one superior. Taylor’s time and motion studies were very popular, where he focuses on determining standard work methods or best way to work and standard time for completion of work. Scientific management involves setting up a large daily task by the management, with reward for achieving targets and penalty if the targets are not met.

Some of the core values of Taylor’s scientific management include improved quality, lower costs, higher wages, higher output, labor-management cooperation, clear tasks and goals, feedback, mutual help and support, and careful selection, training and development of workers. Since scientific management rests on clearly fixed laws, rules and principles, it is applied in all types of organizations universally. It helps simplify the work process, assesses the work and gives status of the work, and also helps improve quality and quantity of the production.

Applications of scientific management
The theory of scientific management had a significant impact on administrative thought and practice in both industrial as well as governmental organizations throughout the world. It spread from USA to other countries including former USSR. These principles can be applied in almost any activity including the management of our homes, our businesses, our universities and even our governmental departments. These principles form the foundation for more advanced areas or more extensively used in some widely admired companies.

One of the biggest users of scientific management today is McDonalds, an American fast food restaurant that has spread its business successfully throughout the world. Henry Laurence Gantt, an American mechanical engineer and management consultant applied Taylor’s scientific management principles in his ‘Gantt Chart’ which helps to measure worker efficiency and productivity. Henry Ford, the American founder of the Ford Motor Company applied the principles of scientific management to his car factories to increase productivity as well as profits.

During the 1940s and 1950s, scientific management evolved into Operations Research and management cybernetics. Today’s Six Sigma and lean manufacturing can be considered as new forms of scientific management, though their principles vary. Shigeo Shingo, one of the originators of the Toyota Production System, believed that Japanese management culture in general should be seen as a kind of scientific management. Even the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) ratings are given to organizations based on scientific management principles.

In France, Taylor’s scientific management was introduced throughout government owned plants during the first world war. In Switzerland, an International Management Institute was established to spread scientific management techniques. In the USSR, Stalin started Stakhonavite movement employing hard work or Taylorist efficiencies to over-achieve on the job.

Harvard, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management based its first-year curriculum on Taylor’s scientific management.

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Let us understand this with an example, ’1 yard = 91.43999 cms’. Accuracy refers to the ‘correctness’ of a measurement i.e 91 cms is a more accurate representation of 1 yard while precision could be identified as the ability to resolve smaller differences i.e. 91.44 cms is a more precise representation of 1 yard.

A measurement can be precise without being accurate, and it can be accurate without being precise. 91 cms is an accurate representation of one yard, but it is not precise. 91.3333 is as precise representation of 1 yard, but it is not accurate. Airline schedules, train timings are usually precise to the minute, but they are not very accurate. Measuring people’s height in whole feet might be accurate, but it would not be precise.

For example, suppose one employee estimates that the a particular project will be completed in 2 and 6 days but he actually completes the project in 5 days. Thus, the estimation is accurate, but not very precise. However, second employee estimates that the project will be completed in 6 days but takes 8 days to complete it. This estimation by second employee is very precise, but completely inaccurate.

Shortest possible execution is achieved by creating the most accurate estimates possible, not the most precise. If you want to achieve fastest execution, avoid false precision.

Suggested Reading:
Lessons in Management: From The Ancient Roman Centurions
Leadership Attitude: Stockdale Paradox – Confront the facts however unpleasant but never lose hope!
Management is a Practice, Not a Degree
How Soft Skills Are Recognized And How It Is Related To Performance
Role Of Soft Skills In A Person’s Career
Understand The Motivational Theories In Management

Culminating its look back on the century in business, FORTUNE magazine has named automobile giant and entrepreneur Henry Ford Businessman of the Century-beating out runner-up Bill Gates of Microsoft-and has chosen General Electric’s Jack Welch Manager of the Century. Ford was among four finalists chosen from a series of profiles on the Twentieth Century’s business greats that appeared in FORTUNE starting in the April 26, 1999 issue. The other finalists who were recognized for having dominated their respective quarter century in business were: General Motors’ Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1876-1966), IBM’s Thomas J. Watson (1914-1993), and Microsoft’s Bill Gates (1955- ). “Businessman of the Century” co-written by FORTUNE Executive Editor Peter Petre, FORTUNE Editor at Large Brent Schlender, and Thomas Stewart and Alex Taylor III of FORTUNE’s Board of Editors, appears in the November 22 issue of FORTUNE. The article is available on www.fortune.com beginning at 8:30 a.m. ET on Monday, November 1.

As Alex Taylor writes, Henry Ford (1863-1947) didn’t invent the automobile, but he invented the automobile business. And though he was the worst manager of the four finalists, Ford was also the greatest managerial thinker: “No fewer than three of the biggest management brainstorms of the century happened in Ford’s head: the idea of a moving assembly line, the idea of paying workers not as little as possible but as much as was fair, and the idea of vertical integration that made Ford’s River Rouge plant the chief wonder of the industrial world….[Ford] was a builder of industry that transformed the very land we live on; the first to create a mass market as well as the means to satisfy it; as great an entrepreneur as we’ve ever seen.”

At a time when the automotive landscape was dominated by Cadillacs, Packards and Pierce-Arrows that cost several thousand dollars, Ford’s genius was to make cars simple, solid and inexpensive necessities. That philosophy paid off when Ford’s $850 Model T became the most successful vehicle ever produced in America which helped propel Ford Motor Company to become the largest industrial organization of the early 20th century. As Stewart explains, however, Ford’s impact on Twentieth Century business was perhaps most important for the immeasurable impact he had on American life. “As Ford adapted the emerging principles of mass production to the automobile and hired tens of thousands of workers to put those principles into practice, he gave rise to an entirely new phenomenon: the blue-collar middle class.” Stewart continues: “In creating a huge body of un-like-minded people who shared not only their work but many social and economic interests, Ford, to his lasting regret, spurred the development of industrial labor unions.”

In describing Ford’s nomination as Businessman of the Century, FORTUNE makes clear that its decision was entirely shaped by the legacy he left to the world of Twentieth Century business and to America as a whole, regardless of the personal failings that ultimately stained his reputation: “In his latter years he surrounded himself with goons, spouted ugly anti-Semitic bile, and he left his company in terrible shape.”

Businessman of the Century runner-up Bill Gates is described as perhaps the shrewdest business strategist of the last quarter of the century: flummoxing much larger competitors like IBM, stealing a march on brilliant IT innovators like Apple and Netscape, and unlike most techno-entrepreneurs of his generation, using his skills as an imaginative manager to keep pace with his company’s break-neck growth. According to Brent Schlender, Gates’ genius lies in the fact that Microsoft Windows, and its predecessor, the MS-DOS PC operating system, were the high-tech equivalents of Ford’s Model T. “They may not have been the sleekest or most elegant pieces of software, but Gates figured out how to make them almost universally used, and they transformed the entire IT world.” And, Gates’ decision to make Microsoft the first company to use stock options as an integral element of employee compensation minted literally thousands of millionaires, not to mention a handful of billionaires, and cemented employee loyalty in an era and industry rife with job-hoppers.

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. earned his place among the top four finalists for Businessman of the Century for having created the modern, divisionalized corporation and showing the world how to make it work. As president of General Motors, Sloan invented the art of managing a large corporation, first by creating a corporate office to allocate resources and coordinate the company’s operating divisions, second by linking the divisions by means of promulgating a set of “Standard Procedures” to guide operations, and finally by creating interdivisional councils where executives and staffs could share ideas or find ways to exploit economies of scale. According to Tom Stewart, “Every leader since stands on his shoulders-up to and including FORTUNE’s Manager of the Century, Jack Welch, the ultimate practitioner of the art Sloan invented.”

Thomas J. Watson, Jr. was lauded by FORTUNE for being one of the great entrepreneurs of the first half of the century. He not only put IBM on the map, the company he shaped was also the greatest success story of America’s postwar boom. During his tenure, IBM created more wealth for its shareholders than any company in business history-an achievement that stood until the bull market of the 1990s, and one that led FORTUNE in 1987 to declare Watson “arguably the greatest capitalist who ever lived.”

In selecting the Businessman of the Century, the editors of FORTUNE sought to choose someone who was “celebrated at the time he labored, and is still renowned today-that is, a person who was conspicuously successful in both the short run and the long. He should have been captain of an enterprise of some scale, for in this century, size matters. And the Businessman of the Century should have been part of one of the Businesses of the Century, of an industry characteristically Twentieth Century.”

In “The Ultimate Manager,” FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin describes how the genius in Manager of the Century Jack Welch’s thinking is that he returned power to the little people: the worker and the shareholder. Welch transformed GE and multiplied its value beyond anyone’s expectations: from a market capitalization of $14 billion to more than $400 billion today-making GE the second-most-valuable company on Earth. As Colvin writes: “Welch wins the title because in addition to his transformation of GE, he has made himself far and away the most influential manager of his generation….As the most widely admired, studied, and imitated CEO of his time, Welch has enriched not only GE’s shareholders but the shareholders of companies around the globe. His total economic impact is impossible to calculate but must be some staggering multiple of GE performance.”

Welch took the reins at GE at a time when the old, manufacturing-based world started giving way to the new one. According to Colvin, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world’s changes ahead, but for acting on them: “His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business people everywhere a method of attacking change of any kind.”

To educate Indian audience about the achievements of the Businessman Of The Century-Henry Ford, we are published a copy of an article from timewarner.com produced on November 01, 1999. It is an exceptional article, brilliantly written that we reproduced it as it is. We hope in the interest of educating people in India about Henry Ford, TimeWarner will excuse us for reproducing this article.

The reality check – Is entrepreneurship new?
From the independence period, self-employment existed as #1 employer in India. A sheer need to survive forced many into self-employment and subsistence entrepreneurship, which means a hand-to-mouth business earning less than required for basic existence. Almost every type of major employment from farming, LIC agencies, grocery stores, fruit vendor, auto rickshaw, electrician, plumber, carpenter, hair cutter, and beauty saloon is self-employment. Low per capita income countries typically tend to have many self-employed people, whereas thriving economies have more people working as employees.

Beyond the Hype – Why is entrepreneurship so high in India since independence?
Entrepreneurship is very high in India for many social, political and economic reasons. Also, most agrarian economies have high self-employment and a significant non-professional workforce in low paying jobs. The creation of a viable middle class requires at least an industrial economy.

• Very few government jobs

After independence, a limited number of public sector companies existed as government of India was still in the process of building PSUs. As a result, there were very few government jobs, which existed in India after independence. In addition, there were few private sector companies that existed in India after independence. This scarcity of jobs for educated persons led to forced self-employment.

• No meaningful jobs in traditional businesses

There were no meaningful jobs for educated persons in traditional businesses in the post independence period. Traditional businesses do not operate in a professional manner and the environment in such businesses is typically not conducive to educated people.

• Farming mindset fueled entrepreneurship aspirations

A farmer has a tendency to be one’s own boss. A farmer does not work for others. In many parts of India, the rural hired hand is called “salaried” and the term “salaried” has a negative connotation; it means someone who is not enterprising, unskilled person from a not so great family background. A typical farmer’s mentality is to take pride in being independent and self-employed. For generations, this mindset continued and fueled entrepreneurship aspirations.

• Private sector prior to 1991 reforms was not actively encouraged

Private sector in India before the 1990′s faced many bureaucratic hurdles, thus it did not grow fast enough to create jobs for the people seeking employment. During 1950-91 due to industrial licensing / socialistic agendas, private sector was not actively encouraged and had stunted growth. The government itself did not consider the private industry very kindly. People could understand the mood of the government and did not want to join private sector as everyday could be an uphill journey against the might of the government bureaucracy / prevailing public opinion. This environment affected growth of professional private businesses and led to insufficient job creation in the private sector.

If you see the movies of Amitabh Bachchan in 70’s and 80’s when he was Bollywood superstar, the common theme was the lack of meaningful jobs in educated India. The frustration of the educated Indian and the role of the angry young man played by Amitabh Bachchan strongly connected with the audience and made him a super star. The common scene in many movies of this time was the educated person holding a degree and roaming from office to office for a job till his boots get holes in them.

• Inability to work in organizations

In the earlier generations people were mostly into self-employment, which mostly didn’t required any interpersonal skills and awareness levels of teamwork. The younger generation grew up seeing this generation. Even if the younger people aspired to join PSUs and private sector jobs, they lacked the interpersonal skills and awareness levels to get and keep the job in such organizations. Their inability to get adjusted to work in teams made many educated people unfit to work in organizations. This also led many people to get into forced self-employment.

However, the real development in India is the growth of decent paying, good profile jobs in professional private sector companies. Many multinational companies also entered the Indian market and tens of lakhs of respectable jobs have been created. Contrary to what is the general perception, the reality is that it is not the growth of entrepreneurship that we are seeing today. The reality is the aggressiveness and the determination with which Indians have let go off the self-employment mindset to join the professional work force as employees.

In fact, this trend is such a strong trend that currently the professional employees and corporate taxes (mostly from PSU’s and professional private companies) account for more than 50% of the taxes collected by the Indian government.

For 2100 years, it is well known that the subordinate has a right to have a good manager who is capable to train and guide them effectively. The manager should have all-round expertise in various fields to face any kind of situations. To be lead by a capable manager is the right of a soldier, and it was recognized and followed even in 107 BC.

Who is a Centurion?
A Centurion is a professional officer equivalent to a captain in the Roman Army since 107 BC. Earlier, Centurions commanded a ‘centuria’ or ‘century’ that means a company or a tribe. Unlike by its word ‘century’, a Centurion led anywhere between 80 to 100 men, and in particular 100 at full strength.

A Centurion used different tools, as his role was different from his legionaries (army), and also to spot him easily in the battlefield. They wore horsehair chest on helmet, cloak of fine material, sword on left side, and a vine stick that was often used to punish his men. Each Centurion could hired an optio, who is a second in command in position for that century. A Centurion typically hires an optio to perform administrative functions like enforcing his orders, taking commands in battles, supervise subordinates, and to take lead in his absence.

He was often of the humble origin, and is not from the aristocracy. Moreover, a Centurion’s son can’t become a Centurion automatically i.e. it is not inherited. Centurion is not the aristocratic only position.

Centurions are personally responsible for training and disciplining his soldiers. They had a well-deserved reputation of giving harsh punishments for his soldiers under his command.

If there were enough Centurions to lead, some of the extra Centurions performed a variety of tasks ranging from training to cavalry, providing security to governors, and medical service to emperors based on the requirement both within the century itself and in other units.

Why Centurions are admired?
Centurion was the role model and led the Century at the drill, on the march, and in battle. He was a skilled professional and the best soldier who could be relied on to run a Legion on a campaign and in battle.

1. Lead from front
During war, Centurion usually led his soldiers from the front, occupying a position at the front right of the century formation. They led and inspired their men by example. Historians cite examples of them being the first over the enemies’ walls or through the breach in walls. They also have to display the skill and courage that made them to achieve the rank in the first place.

Though it is kings and other aristocrats who were the rulers, but when it comes to war and leading the cavalry, it is the leaders like Centurions who fought alongside of soldiers guiding from the front and winning battles. Centurions led their legionaries by guiding from the frontline and are among the first to break into enemy’s army.

As Centurions are stationed in the front of the century formation, they are heavily wounded in battles by taking the first strike from the enemy. For this reason, they often face disproportionate number of casualties in a battle.

2. Highly skilled in using all kinds of weapon
A Roman Centurion was chosen for his size, strength, and dexterity in throwing the missile weapons, and sword and shield using skills.

3. Right temperance and attitude
Centurions also had to have the right temperament and attitude. He has to be vigilant, active and ready to execute the orders he receives than to talk. In short, he is chosen for his expertness in all the exercises.

Julius Caesar is said to have promoted someone to Centurions for display of courage and spirit. Caesar even doubled the strength of the soldiers for his high performing Centurions.

4. With practical knowledge from prior experiences
Only the very best soldiers could hope to become Centurions and this would take 15 years! Therefore, if he had entered the army at age of 16, he would have spend almost half his life in the military, giving him the experience needed to know how to command his century well.

Lessons in Management From Roman Centurions

1. Capable – Centurions are chosen based on their abilities but not on their social class and inheritance. Any one can become a Centurion if he is capable enough.
2. Multi-skilled – The manager should be an all-rounder i.e. skilled in a variety of areas (swords, shield, Javelin, and knife).
3. Attitude, skills, courage, and knowledge of battle situations – 15 years of strong experience as a soldier at various positions gives enough tools and techniques to perform at the deciding moment. If he is not good enough to brace the situation, he could die in the first five minutes of the war, as he is among the first to face the enemy’s army.
4. A subordinate has the right to have a good manager
5. A manager has many authorities / privileges. But he has to be capable skill wise, attitude wise, and knowledge wise. This covers mental, physical, and emotional aspects.

Suggested Reading:
Leadership Attitude: Stockdale Paradox – Confront the facts however unpleasant but never lose hope!
Management is a Practice, Not a Degree
How Soft Skills Are Recognized And How It Is Related To Performance
Role Of Soft Skills In A Person’s Career
Understand The Motivational Theories In Management
Accuracy and Precision

James Stockdale was prisoner of war from September 9, 1965 to February 12, 1973 in Vietnam War. Stockdale credited that his stoic nature helped him to survive as a Prisoner of War.

Jim Collins included Stockdale philosophy as Stockdale Paradox in his renowned book ‘Good to Great’ as “confronting the brutal fact of the situation, yet at the same time, never give up hope.”

When interviewed by Jim Collins about Vietnamese Prisoner of War (POW) camp, Stockdale said “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

And when asked about who didn’t make it out, Stockdale replied, “Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Stockdale was born in Abingdon, Illinois in 1923. He graduated from Naval Academy in 1947 and joined Naval air station Pensacola, Florida for flight training. He received masters in International relations and Marxist theory from Stanford University and later preferred to be a fighter pilot. He rose through ranks quickly and reached highest position as a fighter squadron commander.

Stockdale was held as Prisoner of War in 1965 in North Vietnam while working on a mission in Vietnam War. There he was sent to one of the most infamous Hao Lo prison where he was brutally tortured physically and mentally. In the seven years where he was kept captive as prisoner of war, despite severely beaten, malnourished, asphyxiated, and spent few years in total dark room, he never succumbed to the North Vietnam captors.

During his seven years as POW, he resisted to cooperate with the captors, even when he was placed in solitary confinement. He was locked with leg irons in a bath stall, beaten, and whipped. He resisted them using him for propaganda by hurting himself relentlessly. When Stockdale came to know that he was to be paraded in public before foreign journalists by captors, he slashed his scalp with a razor to disfigure himself, so that the captors do not take him and use him for propaganda. When they put a hat, he had beaten his face with a stool to be swollen beyond recognition. When captors told him that other POWs are dying under torture, he slit his wrists to show that he preferred death rather to capitulate.

His uncanny determination is widely respected. He received ‘Medal of Honor’ in 1976, the highest military decoration awarded by the US government along with 26 other personal combat decorations.

Suggested Reading:
Lessons in Management: From The Ancient Roman Centurions
Management is a Practice, Not a Degree
How Soft Skills Are Recognized And How It Is Related To Performance
Role Of Soft Skills In A Person’s Career
Understand The Motivational Theories In Management
Accuracy and Precision