Human and organization problems in corporate planning

Any management method which is to work in practice must start by recognizing man as he really is, and not what he ought to be. The typical textbook company of the 1960's was peopled by obedient, logical, profit-oriented, ox-like employees—sterilized and faceless characters with£'s signs in their thought bubbles, but the study of Behavioural Science in recent years has taught us that man is a rather more complex animal than we used to think. Simple observations tell us that in practice no business is as tidy, flawless and rational as a 1960's textbook. The reason is that we are people—difficult as individuals for a start and infinitely more complex still when we combine in groups. “Businessman” must be accepted in his full glory, with his ungovernable motives, his intelligence, creativity, his desire for a quiet life, his intuition, his private needs, fears and ambitions and his paradoxical self-seeking ability to cooperate. Everybody who has worked in a company knows the gloriously complicated muddles which “businessman” can get himself into; the misused routines; the convoluted organization structures; the dreadful panics during which all the rules are broken, and the peculiar thing is that, in spite of all these untidinesses, things seem to get done just the same. My point is that management and planning is an extremely complicated business, it is complicated because it is a matter of handling people, it is an art not a science.